The Brief

In a heated committee meeting on Wednesday, Los Angeles city councilmembers struck down a proposal for a six-month extension on a pandemic-era ban on rent hikes that has covered most L.A. apartments for the past three-and-a-half years.

Instead, the council’s housing committee voted to advance a plan that would lower allowable rent increases scheduled for Feb. 1 from 7% to 4%. A rule that allows an additional 2% for landlords who cover gas and electric costs will remain, bringing the highest allowed increase to 6% in some cases.

That plan will now advance to the full city council for a final vote.

Where the idea for a six-month delay came from 

The six-month extension was proposed last week by councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez. He said delaying the return of annual increases in L.A.’s rent-controlled apartments from Feb. 1 to Aug. 1 would give councilmembers more time to study how to craft rent control limits moving forward. A number of cities in the L.A. area with rent control now limit increases to 3% or less.

Soto-Martinez said the looming increase of 7% (plus the additional 2% for landlords who cover utility costs) would be “catastrophic” for L.A.’s housing and homelessness crisis. But councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the council’s housing and homelessness committee, said the six-month delay did not have enough support to advance.

A ‘compromise’ plan emerged

During Wednesday’s committee meeting, councilmember Bob Blumenfield proposed an alternate plan he viewed as a compromise. His proposal keeps the Feb. 1 date in place, but with smaller allowable increases based on more recent — and lower — inflation data.

“I looked at that as both being more up to date, and frankly, a reasonable compromise,” Blumenfield told LAist, in an interview after the committee passed the compromise. He said the 4% limit on allowable rent hikes come Feb. 1 is a plan “nobody will be thrilled with, but sometimes that's a sign of good compromise.”

Heated comments on a high-stakes issue

The decision followed an hour of raucous public comment in which landlords and tenants traded cheers and taunts over a highly contentious issue in a high-cost city.

Landlords said the city’s rent freeze has hurt their ability to keep up with rising maintenance and insurance costs. Tenants said most L.A. renters already pay more than what’s considered affordable by federal standards, and increases of up to 9% would only worsen the city’s homelessness crisis.

The rent freeze and the city’s limits on annual increases only apply to rent-controlled housing, generally meaning any apartment built before 1978. Because so much of L.A.’s housing stock is older, the city’s rent control ordinance covers almost three-quarters of all L.A. apartments.

Where the proposal goes from here 

Blumenfield’s proposal passed on a 3-2 vote. Raman and councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson joined Blumenfeld in voting to lower the Feb. 1 cap on rent increases to 4%. Citing concern for small landlords, councilmembers John Lee and Monica Rodriguez voted against lowering the rent caps.

The plan could be altered again before a final vote in the full city council, where the details could be altered again.

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.