LA County to end ban on rent gouging, 16 months after fires created rental market chaos

Landlords in Los Angeles County will soon be allowed to raise rents by more than 10% from their baseline before the January 2025 fires.

A vote by the county’s Board of Supervisors that could have extended a ban on post-fire price gouging for another month failed on Tuesday. Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis voted in favor, but Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained.

As a result, the long-standing countywide prohibition on rent gouging will expire May 29. The milestone comes more than 16 months after the L.A. County fires destroyed thousands of homes and plunged families into a hectic rental market.

Arguments for and against keeping post-fire rent limits

In her motion to keep the rules in place through June 27, Horvath argued the ban should be preserved because about two-thirds of fire survivors are still in temporary housing.

Horvath wrote that many families “have run out of financial displacement coverage from their insurance companies, which reinforces the need to continue price gouging restrictions, to protect these homeowners from drastic price increases.”

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Horvath said she was "deeply disappointed" that most of her colleagues abstained from the vote.

"We continue hearing from residents who are struggling to recover financially and stay housed as they rebuild," she said.

Landlord groups have been pushing county leaders for months to end the rent gouging ban. During public comment in Tuesday’s meeting, Jesus Rojas with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles said the rules have long outlived the post-fire emergency.

“They are wrongfully being used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the entire county,” Rojas said. “This must stop, and it must stop now.”

How the rules have worked so far 

In March, the county ended post-fire price gouging restrictions on hotels, because survey data found that few displaced families were still staying in temporary motel rooms. Horvath argued the rent-gouging ban should be continued until the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs could deliver further data on resident displacement and the rental market.

The rules have banned landlords from raising rents by more than 10% from advertised pre-fire levels. They also prohibited rents exceeding 200% of fair market value, as established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, on previously unlisted properties.

Tenant advocates found thousands of likely violations

Following the 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires, prosecutors filed a handful of misdemeanor charges against landlords and real estate agents accused of violating the price gouging rules.

In the days after the fires, LAist spoke with one agent who encouraged her client to raise the rent on a Bel Air home nearly 86% from a previous 2024 listing.

The agent, Fiora Aston with Compass, said at the time, “I've never seen anything like this. People are desperate. There’s so many families without a house.”

The listing was later taken down. But tenant advocates with a group called The Rent Brigade started compiling data on other listings that appeared to violate price-gouging laws. By January 2026, the group reported finding 18,360 listings featuring likely violations.

Chelsea Kirk, one of the founding organizers of The Rent Brigade, said the protections likely wouldn’t have lasted this long without pressure from tenant advocates. But she said she was disappointed to see how infrequently the rules were enforced.

“Now that these protections are actually ending, any political will or resources towards getting this enforced no longer feels like a possibility,” Kirk said.