LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – Ending Los Angeles’ moratorium on evictions would be unfair to Black and Latino renters in the city, scholars from UCLA are hoping to convince a federal judge.
The group has asked to file an amicus brief in the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles’ challenge to L.A.’s decision to give relief to renters who are going through financial troubles during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The proposed preliminary injunction threatens mass displacement in Los Angeles,” they wrote Oct. 9 in Los Angeles federal court. “In times of economic prosperity and low unemployment, Los Angeles tenants already endured back-breaking rent burdens.
“Without local policies in place to protect tenants from the COVID-19 crisis, hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles households are at risk of eviction, and many of those evicted will remain unhoused.
“Amici’s studies of COVID-19 impacts in Los Angeles show that most of this suffering will be concentrated in the city’s working-class communities of color, which are already bearing the burden of high infection and death rates.”
The lawsuit against the City, Mayor Eric Garcetti and his city council says they “hastily” implemented ordinances that prevent landlords from giving the boot to tenants who refuse to pay.
Rather than providing relief to tenants, the ordinances at issue infringe on the constitutional rights of landlords, the plaintiffs say.
Landlords lost a similar debate in New York earlier this year.
The UCLA motion to file an amicus brief says an estimated 129,000 households in L.A. are currently unable to pay their rent and that one-third of evicted families would end up homeless. Some 130,000 children would be affected, it says.
“The proposed preliminary injunction would amplify systemic inequality that disadvantages Black and Latine communities in Los Angeles and is therefore at odds with the public interest,” the motion says.