The Brief

The ash hadn’t yet settled on thousands of destroyed homes when eagle-eyed tenant advocates started noticing the massive rent increases posted on a popular real estate website.

Within days of the historic fires in Los Angeles County, advocates began tracking listings for rental housing on Zillow that raised asking rents far above the 10% limit under California’s law banning post-disaster price gouging.

Now, after weeks of combing through listings (more below on the methodology), a group of volunteer rent gouging investigators has released their analysis, which they say is evidence of widespread illegal activity.

The study’s findings

Calling themselves The Rent Brigade, the group released a study Monday with their findings:

• Between Jan. 7 and Jan. 18, a total of 1,343 listings on Zillow appear to have violated the state’s price gouging ban.
• Those listings appear to have collectively sought to illegally overcharge tenants by $7.7 million per month, or $92.4 million per year.
• Rent hikes outside of legal limits were steeper on the lower end of L.A.’s housing market. The bottom quartile of listings by price saw a 46% median rent increase compared with a 27% increase in the top quartile. [Keep in mind that 10% is the post-disaster cap.]
• ZIP codes in areas including West Hollywood, Malibu and Venice had the most listings that appear to be over legal limits. But lower-income neighborhoods like Koreatown and Vermont Square also had high numbers of listings.
• Of the 1,343 listings analyzed, the study’s authors said Compass had 58 listings that appear to exceed legal increases, the most of any single real estate brokerage.

In her day job, Chelsea Kirk is a policy director with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, an L.A. tenant rights nonprofit. She said she independently started this effort to track rent gouging by launching a crowd-sourced online spreadsheet.

“For lack of a better word, it became viral,” she said.

One alarming conclusion from analyzing all this data, Kirk said, is that more dramatic rent hikes have been happening on traditionally lower-priced housing.

“One of the most surprising things was seeing how widespread this is, not just in affluent areas,” Kirk said.

How the study came about

The Rent Brigade is a new independent collective made up of tenant advocates, web programmers, housing researchers and ordinary Angelenos. Those involved in the effort say they naturally gravitated toward working together after posts about alleged rent gouging flooded social media in the days after the fires.

Lauren Harper said they got involved after seeing an Instagram post by Kirk about her efforts to build a crowd-sourced rent gouging spreadsheet.

“I messaged her and said, ‘Hey, I think we can scrape that data,’” Harper said. “I got very quickly swept into this whole project.”

Initially, the group relied on user submissions to collect data on listings, looking for rentals where rates were increased above legal limits. By Jan. 15, tech savvy volunteers with The Rent Brigade had built a tool to systematically scrape data from Zillow listings in L.A. County.

Kirk said more than 150 volunteers have now contributed to this work.

“I've been fielding a lot of questions about who's responsible for this spreadsheet,” Kirk said. “We're just a group of people. But what connects us is that we're all Angelenos and we're really pissed off about what we're seeing in terms of rent gouging being rampant across the city in the wake of the wildfires. And we're committed to doing something about it.”

How the data was gathered

Monday’s study combines user submissions that have been filtered along with that scraped data to conclude that 1,343 listings appear to have broken the state’s price gouging law in one of two ways.

• Either the listings had increased their pre-fire asking rents by more than 10% in the days after the fires
• Or they newly came on the market after the fires at more than 160% of the area’s Fair Market Rent as determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The study found 442 listings that increased pre-existing rents by more than 10% after the fires. But the majority (901 listings) were new listings that violated the Fair Market Rent threshold.

“There’s a question about all of these empty listings that are suddenly coming onto the market,” Harper said. “We're really interested in using this data set for further questions about vacancy rates in Los Angeles and getting a better picture of what's happening in the rental market.”

The study’s limitations 

The study comes with some important caveats. Without a detailed investigation of each listing, it’s impossible to be certain that they all violated the law. Zillow users can sometimes misclassify or inaccurately input data for their listings, the study’s authors note.

In response to LAist’s questions about the study, Zillow representatives said they have already taken down many listings that appear to have illegally raised rents.

In an emailed statement, a company spokesperson said, “We believe it is essential for housing providers to follow local housing rules, including consumer protections against price gouging during and following a natural disaster, and we are providing resources to help them understand their responsibilities.”

LAist reached out to Compass to ask about the study’s findings, but we have not yet received a response.

Anne Russell, president of the Greater Los Angeles Realtors Association, said in an email to LAist, "Our association fields calls every day from our members with questions about the price gouging law to make sure that they are complying with both the letter and the spirit of the law. Realtors have a duty under the law and the Realtor code of ethics to not partake in rent gouging, and we would encourage anyone who feels that they are encountering price gouging in the market to report it to the Attorney General or the relevant authorities.”

What’s next for anti-rent gouging efforts

Prosecutors have started enforcement of the state’s price gouging laws.

Last week, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed criminal charges against an L.A.-area real estate agent over alleged rent gouging for a La Cañada Flintridge home, allegations the agent strongly denied. The listing at the center of that case was on The Rent Brigade’s spreadsheet. Bonta has said more investigations are in the works.

Kirk said it’s not clear that threats of enforcement are deterring landlords and agents. Even after prosecutors pledged to crack down, the study finds that listings appearing to break the law grew, with the most of any single day posted on Jan. 16 — more than a week after the fires broke out.

“I kind of expected that it would be curbed — that we would see it kind of taper off,” Kirk said. “But I'm actually feeling like people are learning, oh, I can do this.”

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.