LOS ANGELES (September 10, 2019) AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), which for the past several years has aggressively pursued creative solutions to the intertwined housing affordability and homelessness crises in Los Angeles and statewide in California through its advocacy, by proposed legislation on rent control and by also directly providing extremely-low-income housing, today applauded the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for its unanimous vote to reestablish a permanent rent control ordinance in unincorporated areas of L.A. County.
The measure will tie maximum annual rent increases to the rate of inflation (but no higher than 8% in any given year) and is expected to apply to roughly 100,000 renters of the approximately 3 million or so residents thought to live in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.
“We are both grateful and encouraged to see the Board of Supervisors take this crucial step voting to permanently restore rent control in unincorporated areas of the county; however, given the magnitude of the housing affordability and homelessness crises, there remains a tremendous amount more to be done all around,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AHF.
Over the past two years AHF has worked diligently to address these twin crises:
- Through AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation (HHF), it has brought nearly 600 housing units online in Los Angeles for extremely-low-income and formerly homeless individuals by renovating and repurposing un- and/or under-occupied SRO hotels and a motel.
- Through its Housing Is A Human Right (HHR) advocacy organization, it aided in derailing or short-stopping misguided statewide legislation (SB 50, SB 827) to fast-track housing development near transit stations—overreaching laws that misguidedly relied on ‘trickle-down’ economic theory to somehow apply to housing markets.
- In 2018, AHF sponsored Prop. 10, a statewide ballot measure to fully repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, which fell short at the polls after deep-pocketed real estate interests spent over $70 million to mischaracterize and defeat the measure, and
- AHF is currently sponsoring the Rental Affordability Act, a California statewide ballot measure planned for the 2020 presidential election that would amend—but not fully repeal—Costa-Hawkins, allowing local cities, towns and municipalities to decide and determine on their own if rent control is suitable in their own communities.
“We challenge City Hall leaders to quickly follow the County—and AHF’s—lead on rent control and other critical affordable housing issues,” added Weinstein. “The gentrification of middle- and working-class neighborhoods must stop, with an immediate halt to the destruction of rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments in order to make way for new luxury developments. County leaders did the right thing here and we thank them. It’s now time for the City of L.A. to step up–the very essence and soul of community in Los Angeles is at stake.”
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