Price-gouging laws designed to protect tenants in crisis aren’t stopping some LA landlords

Analysis by Allison Morrow, CNN

New York (CNN) — Los Angeles was already in a housing crisis before the wildfires consumed large parts of the county: There weren’t enough homes to keep up with demand, making it one of the least affordable real estate markets in the country. Now, the word “crisis” fails to capture the situation on the ground. Thousands of people suddenly need homes. And thousands of homes are suddenly ash.

In academic terms, you might frame this as a supply-and-demand problem: fewer houses, a sudden influx of people in need, prices go up. Econ 101.

But with housing, particularly with rental markets, prices don’t just “go up” on their own. Landlords decide to raise them — and there’s evidence that’s happening all over LA right now, despite laws designed to prevent them from price-gouging during an emergency.

See here: Real estate agents are already seeing prices of rental units climb hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month — sometimes as much as 20% in the span of a week, my colleague Chris Isidore reports.

Similarly, the progressive news site Popular Information reviewed Zillow rental data to find “dozens” of properties where landlords sharply increased prices since the fires began on January 7. In one case, Popular Information identified a five-bedroom home listed on December 31 for $8,750 a month. As of this week, the rent had been bumped up 125% to $19,750. In another instance, a $4,100 a month three-bedroom house shot up 93% between the end of December and January 7.

“Unfortunately, this is an all too common occurrence after a natural disaster, which is why most states have price-gouging laws on the books,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative.

California’s law makes it illegal for landlords and businesses to raise prices more than 10% in a state of emergency — punishable by up to $10,000 in fines or a year in jail. The LA county sheriff said this week that law enforcement officials “are very eager to prosecute anyone who thinks they’re going to take advantage of the people who have been through this tragedy.”

In practice, though, these laws are difficult to enforce.

For starters, the onus falls on renters themselves to report abuses by landlords, said Larry Gross, executive directors of the Coalition for Economic Survival, an LA-based nonprofit that advocates for tenants.

In other words, if your home just burned down and you find a rental unit where the landlord appears to be price-gouging, you can file a complaint with the attorney general or district attorney and wait for a response.

Meanwhile, you still don’t have a place to live.

“When you’re out on the streets and you’re looking, you have no leverage whatsoever,” Gross told me. “So the price-gouging law in itself is not going to protect tenants who need housing immediately. The landlord is going to go on to the other tenant who can pay a higher price.”

Gross also noted a “huge loophole” in which landlords can advertise the price at no more than 10% higher, but they’re still free to take a higher price if someone offers it.

“There are ways for them to wink their eye and say, ‘hey, I got these higher offers if you want to try and match that,’” Gross said.

He described the price-gouging law as a necessary but not sufficient tool in the fight to protect tenants. Ultimately, he said, city and state prosecutors and lawmakers need to move quickly.

“There haven’t been any prosecutions … We saw a news conference where they threatened to do it, but threats aren’t going to do tenants any good. We need action, and that’s what we’re still waiting for.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.