Cudahy Joins Growing List Of Cities Enacting Rent Control And Tenant Protections

The Cudahy City Council passed two housing ordinances this week that cap annual rent increases at 3% and provide safeguards for tenants, including relocation assistance if they’re forced out of their homes without cause.

The council voted in favor of the ordinances with a 4-0 vote at Tuesday’s meeting, with one member absent.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Councilmember Elizabeth Alcantar. She pushed for a rent increase freeze last fall, and it was extended twice before the city council began discussing rent control.

Why now

The move in Cudahy is part of growing efforts to enact rent control in Southeast L.A. Last year, the Bell Gardens City Council voted unanimously to limit annual rent increases at 4%. In Maywood, some community members are pushing for rent control and tenant protections.

A snapshot of Cudahy

Renters make up about 85% of the population of Cudahy, a largely Latino city of nearly 22,000 residents about 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Average household income there is $55,752, and more than a quarter of the city’s residents live in poverty.

A city analysis found that nearly 56% of renter-occupied households spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Details of the new law

Cudahy’s new rent control law applies to most rental housing, with exemptions for units built after Feb. 1, 1995, single-family homes and condominiums. Renters facing no-fault evictions qualify for relocation assistance equal to three times their monthly rent.

To help the city keep track of rental units and increases, landlords will be required to register their properties. Landlords who attended a public hearing and others on social media expressed their opposition to the rent control ordinance, citing growing operational costs.

Reaction

Alcantar, a longtime resident of Cudahy, said the response to the rent freeze was overwhelmingly positive.

“I got so many calls from residents saying, ‘This is a lifeline.’” Some said they were able to save for a rainy day, she said. Others said it enabled them to put food on the table.

As the eldest daughter of immigrants from the Mexican state of Jalisco, Alcantar translated rent increase notices for her parents when she was a child and still recalls the worried look on their faces when the news sank in.

“I vividly remember ... how that made my parents feel, how that made me feel, going to school worried sick because I knew that that was going to be harder on my parents to pay,” she said.

Alcantar lived in a property with several rental units. She realized her neighbors were going through the same experience.

“Wages weren't increasing,” she added, “but the payments that we had to make were. That emotion, that feeling absolutely politicizes you.”

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