The Brief

Four months ago, the Palisades and Eaton fires delivered twin jolts to Los Angeles County’s already fragile housing landscape. The region’s supply of housing fell sharply as entire neighborhoods turned to ash.

And demand surged when thousands of families were forced into a rental housing market with few affordable options.

The result was as predictable as it was disturbing. Rents quickly spiked on home listings, often above the 10% limit established by California’s law against post-disaster price gouging.

Chelsea Kirk, a policy director with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, started tracking these listings in an online spreadsheet that soon went viral, attracting national and global attention from onlookers who were outraged at how L.A. landlords were responding to the tragedy.

“I just got fired up,” Kirk told LAist in the latest episode of our Imperfect Paradise podcast.

The episode traces the growth of the Rent Brigade, a collective of like-minded rent hike investigators who assembled around Kirk with the goal of fighting post-fire price gouging.

You can listen to the full episode here:

Listen • 39:27

Listen • 39:27

How the Rent Brigade took on LA’s landlords

In the days after LA’s early-January wildfires, tenant advocate Chelsea Kirk noticed a trend: rent gouging. Rents were shooting up past their legal limit. In the wake of the fires, as natural disaster collided with LA’s severe housing shortage, we trace how a collective of volunteers organized themselves to bring rent gouging to light in LA County. What did they find? And where do we stand on rent gouged listings and charges, four months later?

Before January was over, the Rent Brigade released a study that found more than 1,340 Zillow listings in apparent violation of the state’s price gouging law less than two weeks after the fires started. As of this week, the tally had grown to more than 8,000 listings.

Thousands of questionable listings; four criminal cases

Rent Brigade volunteers gather at Bernie's Coffee Shop near LACMA.

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Courtesy of the Rent Brigade

)

For months, the group continued to document thousands more listings that appeared to have broken the law. But, so far, the number of criminal cases filed can be counted on one hand.

Prosecutors have filed misdemeanor charges over alleged price gouging in four cases:

• California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed charges against La Cañada Flintridge real estate agent Mike Kobeissi for allegedly raising rent on a listing by 38%. Kobeissi told LAist he had not broken the law.
  
• Bonta’s office later filed charges against real estate agent Lar Sevan Chouljian for allegedly attempting to rent a Glendale home for more than 50% above the listed rent. Chouljian said in a text message to LAist, “There was absolutely no price gouging involved.”
  
• In a third case, Bonta’s office charged landlord Edward Kushins and real estate agent Willie Baronet-Israel for allegedly increasing rent on a Hermosa Beach home by 36%. Baronet-Israel and Kushins’ attorney both told LAist they did not intend to price gouge.
  
• L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto filed charges against homeowner Noelle Cooke and real estate agent Roger Perry for allegedly illegally raising rent by 38%. Perry’s attorney told LAist that Perry “de-listed the property in less than a day and a half on his own accord once his company advised that the listed rent exceeded the newly enacted mandate… there was no financial harm to anyone.” LAist also reached out to Cooke for comment, but has not heard back.

In a separate case involving a short-term rental operation, prosecutors in Feldstein Soto’s office said they uncovered evidence of post-fire rent hikes of up to 56% in Zillow listings posted by Blueground US, Inc. The city attorney filed civil charges in that case, not criminal.

Some prosecutors have yet to file any charges

About a week after the fires broke out, L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman joined LAist’s Airtalk and said his office had received dozens of rent gouging complaints. He said people breaking the law were “engaging in completely disgraceful and shameful conduct,” and justice would be “swift and the penalties will be severe.”

Hochman has yet to file any price gouging charges.

“The district attorney’s office cannot file charges unless law enforcement presents a case to our office for charge evaluation and case filing consideration,” a district attorney spokesperson said in an email to LAist.

“To date, while there are many pending investigations, law enforcement has not presented a case to our office to charge under California’s price gouging law,” the spokesperson said.

All the cases brought forward so far are in early stages. Arraignment dates in two of the cases filed by Bonta’s office are set for later this month. If found guilty, the defendants face up to one year in jail and up to $10,000 in fines.

For those fighting rent gouging, ‘a sense of defeat’

Rent Brigade volunteers at an event in Pasadena on May 4.

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Courtesy of the Rent Brigade

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The Rent Brigade says they’ve now found more than 8,000 listings that appear to have broken the law. Kirk said it’s been disappointing to see charges filed in connection with less than 1% of the listings documented in the spreadsheet she started.

“There was so much outrage publicly and by political actors that I thought maybe people will see justice for once,” Kirk said.

Months later, she acknowledged: “There is a sense of defeat.”

State and local prosecutors say they’ve sent hundreds of warning letters to property owners suspected of price gouging. They say these admonitions have succeeded at getting many landlords, who are sometimes unaware of the law, to lower their rents to within legal limits.

Prosecutors also say they need to see more than a fishy Zillow listing before filing charges. In order to confidently bring forward a criminal case, they want to find renters who were actually harmed. They’ve encouraged people to submit complaints that include screenshots, texts and emails showing landlords and real estate agents engaging in price gouging.

Kirk said she brought one example with a clear victim — including screenshots of text messages between a landlord and prospective tenant — to the  L.A. County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs and to the L.A. city attorney’s office.

She said there’s been no movement on that case. Prosecutors have said they won’t comment on ongoing investigations.

Chelsea Kirk and a Rent Brigade volunteer at a community action night in February.

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Courtesy of the Rent Brigade

)

Giving up on L.A.’s rental market

Tenant advocates say they believe some landlords have felt emboldened by the limited enforcement, raising rents above legal maximums with little fear of repercussions.

Meanwhile, some families who lost their homes to the fires became so discouraged by stratospheric rent hikes that they gave up looking at publicly listed properties.

Tina Poppy said she saw lots of price gouging in L.A.’s rental market after her family’s home in Altadena was destroyed. She said hunting for a longer-term living situation was maddening.

“I saw my old house in Silver Lake, and it was $7,000 a month,” Poppy said. “I had rented it up until 2019 for $2,000 a month. When I saw that, I just closed my laptop.”

Instead, she started working her social circle. She went down her list of friends and acquaintances to ask if any homes were available for her, her husband, two children and three dogs.

Eventually Poppy’s family landed in the home of a friend who planned to move to Pennsylvania. That friend is charging them the equivalent of her monthly homeownership costs.

Poppy said since the fires, her family has seen the best and the worst of L.A.

“People trying to profit off of your pain, and then on the flip side, people that are like, ‘Here, you can live in my home and I'll move out and I'll find another place to live,’” Poppy said. “Really, you see both sides of it — the human generosity and then, just human greed.”