Thanksgiving was only one week away, but there was no festival atmosphere in 62-year-old Jose Naria Nuñez's apartment. He and his wife, Juanita Nuñez, live in a 25-unit building on East 61st Street in Los Angeles. Since April, the landlords have been trying to evict them.

Jose Naria Nuñez and his wife, Juanita Nuñez sitting in their apartment

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Nuñez says they have been living for a long time with severe roaches, rats and mold problem. After ignoring their complaints for years, the building owners now want to renovate the building and raise the rent from $678 a month to $1,050 a month. Fourteen other families also got the 60-day eviction notice, and five of them have already moved out.

"They are just trying to get us out in any way they can without any consideration for what that means to people that live here," says Nuñez.

Nuñez used to work at a plastics manufacturing factory, but he lost his job two years ago when he hurt his back at work. His wife broke her right foot and some ribs after falling down the stairs in their apartment. After several surgeries, she is recovering. Their current income is Nuñez's $965 disability check, which covers their rent, electricity, water, and food.

If the couple move out, it is unclear what they'll be able to afford on their fixed income.

They are one of 15 families being evicted from the building and one of thousands of Angelenos facing increasing rent and displacement.

Voters in California last month defeated Proposition 10, which would have allowed cities to impose rent-control measures. With the rent crisis remaining unsolved, tenants remain on edge waiting for solutions.

"I strongly encourage the cities across California consider very strongly ways in which they can protect tenants," says René Christian Moya, an housing campaign organizer at Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. "There is still an opportunity they might be able to expand even limited rent control."

On November 13, L.A. County Board of Supervisors finalized a temporary rent stabilization ordinance, which is expected to go into effect on December 20, in the unincorporated areas. The ordinance will protect renters threatened by skyrocketing rents.

"With a balanced approach that provides certainty to tenants while recognizing the need for property owners to make a reasonable return on their investments, we can begin to bridge the gap in availability of housing while continuing to build responsibly and with an eye on the future needs of all Angelenos," says Councilman Mitch O'Farrell, whose 13th district includes Hollywood, East Hollywood, Silver Lake and Atwater Village.

Current Rental Market

The average monthly rent in Los Angeles County is about $1,370 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,760 for a two-bedroom, 40 percent higher than the rest of the country. It is estimated that over half the renters in L. A. spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

According to Zillow, an increase of 5 percent could force 2,000 Angelenos on the street. By some estimates, in Los Angeles, median rents this year are already up 5 percent over the same time last year, and rents will go up 4.5 percent next year.

For example, in Pico-Union, the rent for a single-bedroom apartment went from $800 a month to $1,100 a month; in Highland Park, and two-bedroom ones went from $1,200 a month to $2,700 a month.

"Those are prices that average people cannot afford," Elena Popp, a housing rights attorney, says, "so it will then lead to doubling up or tripling up people ending up on the street."

Renters' suffering requires Los Angeles County to come up with a solution to ease the tension of the high rent.

WHERE TO NOW?

Rent Control

One possible solution comes immediately to people's minds is rent control. However, since the Costa-Hawkins Act prohibits the county and cities from enacting rent control, how much space left for rent stabilization laws or more restrictive ones in some cities is dubious.

Among 88 cities and 76 unincorporated communities in L.A. County, four cities have rent control, or what is called "Just Cause Eviction Protection," which protect tenants from being evicted for no reason.

In Nuñez's case, since the building he lives in is in an unincorporated community, he can be evicted with only a 60-day notice.

The rent stabilization ordinance approved by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors requires landlords, except for those properties that are statutorily exempt from rent control, to impose a 180-day moratorium on rent increases in excess of 3 percent per year and evictions without just cause. This ordinance will protect an estimated 200,000 renters. This measure gives renters some hope that their voices are heard by the government officials.

Even though this ordinance is not going to directly influence Nuñez because his eviction notice was issued in April, he is now negotiating with the landlord under the legal help from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and he says he feels hopeful about the future that he is going to benefit from the ordinance, and he is prepared to continue to fight for more restrictive renter protection laws.

Legal Aids

Another possible solution is to provide legal support to tenants facing a housing crisis. One study found that two-thirds of tenants who had a legal aid attorney stayed in their homes, compared with a third of tenants who represented themselves in housing court.

"We think it's because when you increase representation, landlords file fewer cases because it is expensive to fight against a lawyer," Popp says.

Popp launched a grassroots legal aid organization, Eviction Defense Network in 2003 in response to the fact that 72,000 evictions had been filed in Los Angeles County the year before. Popp says that some 1,300 families got to keep their apartments because of being represented by free legal services.

At the county level, in response to 56,000 eviction filings in 2016, officials set up an eviction defense program in 2017 and spend $8.5 million on counseling, as well as legal and financial assistance, for families and individuals at risk of eviction in 2018.

Affordable Housing Constructions

A report by the California Department of Housing and Community Development in 2017 found that in South Los Angeles, population growth outpaces the supply of housing. Housing can only meet the needs of 25 percent of the growing population.

Finding more affordable housing opportunities is key to solving the rent crisis — not rent control, says.

Daniel Yukelson, the executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. He says rent control could benefit wealthy renters and harm low-income tenants.

RENT CONTROL OR NO RENT CONTROL: OUTLINING THE DEBATE

Pro Rent Control

Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, wrote in his recently published article that rent control can help provide stability for families and communities.

In 2016, 14 percent of homeless residents surveyed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority cited eviction or foreclosure as the direct result of homelessness.

René Christian Moya, an organizer of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and a board member of LA Tenants Union, says that rent control makes sure that "fewer people end up getting thrown out of their homes."

Moya graduated from Dartmouth University and worked in the UK for almost 10 years. He returned to the United States last year and shares an apartment with his mother.

"As someone who was very educated," Moya say, "I never have the hope of ever owning my own home because a house in the city of Los Angeles is far too expensive for someone like me to be able to afford."

Popp says that "When you put people up against the wall and force them to pay rents they can't afford and force them to choose between feeding their children and paying the rent, people will rise up, they will demand rights and they will demand affordable rents."

Oppose Rent Control

However, some people contend that rent control cannot ease the tension of the high rent but cause more problems.

Dorit Dowler-Guerrero is a mom-and-pop landlord. She and her husband own five buildings, three of which are multi-family buildings and two are single-family homes, in the city of Los Angeles.

Guerrero says that half of their apartments are rented to formerly homeless with housing vouchers, and one of their single-family homes is being used as a bridge housing for homeless families.

According to Guerrero, if one person buys a $1.3-million-dollar multi-family building in Los Angeles city, the insurance may be $2,000 a year for just fire insurance. The Utilities are seriously expensive, $800 every other month, and the property tax is 13,000 a year.

"Landlords have a bill, and we cannot go into this as a charity," Guerrero says. "You got to understand that we have to make a living as well."

Arnulfo Ruiz has been a building developer and broker for 33 years. He says that if rent control were passed in Los Angeles County, landlords would be losing control over their properties. And because of the eviction limitation, properties' values go down.

"People out there are losing real money," Ruiz says. "Who's going to pay that the difference to the homeowner?"

Ruiz says that the county should not make homeowners be the only ones responsible to solve the rent problems, especially when they have already had many bills to pay. According to him, in some rent-controlled areas, "landlords could not afford to fix their buildings" with the imposed three percent increase each year.

The California Apartment Association is a leading organization of the opposition. Debra Carlton, the senior vice president of public affairs, said rent control combined with the lack of housing will only make the housing situation worse. "People such as small landlords will get out of the business," Carlton says. "They will convert their housing to owner-occupied housing, or they will convert them to condominiums."

Besides landlords leaving the rental market, less housing will be built, worsening the housing problem, the state's Legislative Analyst's Office predicts.

"The state needs to find a way to provide housing for low-income individuals and not take housing away," Carlton says.

Los Angeles renters' images

After bouncing in and out homelessness for over 40 years since he was 19 years old, John Francis became homeless again in his 70s because of unaffordable rent. Before he left the Grandview Retirement House, he paid $1,056 a month, after one increases in a year, for a one-bedroom apartment, which he shared with another person. "Having a bed is luxury," Francis says.

People who have jobs also struggle with paying rents. Alvaro Gomez, a security guard at the Korea Times, has been living in Koreatown for almost 21 years. He says he has seen housing prices soar in his neighborhood. He juggles three jobs and feels he's deprived his two kids of any quality family time because he and his wife work constantly just to keep "a roof over their heads and food on the table."

Gomez, and the tens of thousands of other tenants living on the edge, hope city leaders and housing advocates can tame the economic forces that threaten their homes.

"It's only a matter of time," he says, "if we start losing jobs or they cut down our working time, we may become homeless."