The LA wildfires have caused unprecedented havoc, killing at least 25 people and destroying thousands of structures.
But homelessness and housing experts are also preparing for even more devastation to come, as the city's already tight rental market will likely get even more competitive (i.e., pricier). Despite Attorney General Rob Bonta’s warning this past weekend that price gouging is "a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and fines," some LA landlords area already trying to profit from the catastrophe, as Kiley Price of Inside Climate News writes in a story published on our site today as part of the Climate Desk collaboration:
In September, a furnished, four-bedroom home in the ritzy LA neighborhood Bel Air was listed at $15,900 per month on the real estate marketplace Zillow. On Saturday morning, as firefighters struggled to contain the still-burning Palisades fire a few miles away, the same home was relisted for $29,500, LAist discovered.
When the news outlet asked the listing agent about why the advertised rent for the Bel Air home had surged, “she said she was getting another call and hung up,” LAist’s David Wagner wrote. The listing was later taken down. But it’s far from the only instance in which a landlord or agency is looking to profit off the city’s fire-fueled housing plight. A New York Times analysis of Zillow active rental listings revealed that several property rental prices in West Los Angeles have risen by more than the legal 10 percent since last Tuesday.
Despite the eye-popping anecdote about the nearly $30,000-a-month rental, the people who will suffer the most from landlords' exploitation will be those who were already struggling to get by, or pay rent, before the fires. As Limón Corrales, an organizer with the LA Tenants Union, told Mother Jones’ Alex Nguyen, "We’re seeing some houses listed at over $20,000 a month, where so many people in LA live off of $20,000 a year...A lot of people are going to lose income for months or years. People are going to have to choose between food and rent and other necessities." And all this is unfolding just days before the inauguration of a president who is a climate change denier and could very well withhold federal disaster aid from California to settle political scores, as he has before.
—Julianne McShane
