Tenants Score Eviction Protection Victory

On Tuesday the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted in favor of finalizing an ordinance that will provide tenants more eviction protections. The measure will significantly close a loophole regarding evictions for "Good Faith," such as for owner move-ins and for moving in an owner's family member. This has been an area of extreme abuse and fraud resulting in many unjust evictions.

The City Council also, unfortunately, reduced relocation assistance in very limited cases where a landlord owns properties that don't exceed 4 units. And, while this is something CES couldn’t support, in truth, the increased tenant protections won will have a more far-reaching impact on providing many more tenants with additional needed protections.

As I told the Council, while we support the increased tenant protections in this ordinance, we can’t see justification for reducing tenant relocation assistance, especially in these hard economic times.

It was a truly unfortunate and disappointing choice being made, but that said, we do fully support the increased tenant protections, and truly hope many more people will benefit from these added protections than are hurt from reduced relocation assistance.

The tenant relocation assistance reduction, even in this limited way is hard to except, though we were successful in increasing the original proposed relocation reduction by $3,100 for "qualified" tenants which are seniors, disabled and low-income families. This amount will now be $14,000 instead of the proposed $10,900.  Get details of the new eviction protections at www.CESinAction.org. (Larry Gross is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival. He can be reached at CESinAction.org).

CityWatch
Vol 7 Issue 47
Pub: June 12, 2009

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http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/2375/75/

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