Sites that host rental listings in the Los Angeles County area are scrambling to address rent gouging amid the destructive, deadly wildfires ravaging the region and displacing thousands of residents.
Real estate marketplace Zillow told ABC News that it has “removed hundreds of Zillow listings due to price increases that exceed the state of emergency threshold.”
Housing providers can fix the “pricing issues” and re-list the homes or apartments once addressed, the company said.
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) warned businesses not to price gouge during a declared emergency. Prices for goods and services — including hotel rooms, rental housing and emergency supplies — cannot be raised more than 10% in a time of emergency.
Some residents have seen increases in prices or rooms they are renting or houses that they are leasing go up by 100%, 200% or even 300%, according to LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.
“If you’re one of these people who have engaged in price gouging, not only do you need to stop it immediately, I would strongly recommend that you go back and fix it, go back and refund the amount that you have overcharged people,” Hochman said in a Jan. 15 press conference. “We will certainly take that into consideration in deciding whether or not to charge you.”
Hochman noted that violators would face both criminal and civil penalties.
“And as importantly, your name will get out there, your company’s name will get out there,” he said. “You will be publicly shamed. I want to make that crystal clear. So stop it right now.”
Failure to comply with price gouging laws can result in fines of up to $10,000 or one year in jail, or both, according to the DCBA.
In a statement, DCBA Director Rafael Carbajal said his office stands “ready to investigate reports of price gouging and to hold violators accountable.”
This comes as Los Angeles County continues to face a housing crisis and residents prepare to feel the sting of allowable yearly rent increases on Feb. 1.
“We know rents in the city were already spiking, and the estimated 75,000 homeless people in the County, before the fires, shows how impossible it is to keep a roof over your head in LA,” Paul Lanctot of the LA Tenants Union told ABC News. “With so many homes destroyed, more people looking for fewer apartments, we know the rents will spike.”
Co Star Group, which owns Homes.com and Apartments.com, told ABC News it is actively evaluating the impact of the wildfires across the local market.
The real estate marketplace network found that occupancy at local hotels increased 13.9 percentage points year-over-year.
It also told ABC News it has implemented measures to actively monitor landlord behavior.
Those measures include: “eliminating listing fees and application fees for IO listings in SoCal; exploring eliminating any listing that is obvious price gouging and removing those listings; manually reviewing, as well as adjusting automated tools, for all listings added on Apartments.com to seek out price gouging and listing fraud” and more.
On Jan. 15, real estate app Redfin told ABC News in a statement that they had not removed any listings for illegal price increases exceeding the state of emergency threshold at the time.
“That could change in the coming days/weeks,” the statement noted.
Airbnb said in an online statement that any host trying to raise prices by more than 10% on their services will receive an error message.
Residents are also taking it upon themselves to monitor the price gouging.
Chelsea Kirk, the director of policy and advocacy for a tenant’s rights organization in the area, is tracking rental increases via a public spreadsheet and working alongside dozens of volunteers to report potential cases to 311.
“I’ve been working in advocacy for about eight years,” Kirk told ABC News. “A couple of days after the fires broke out, when it was kind of becoming clear what the level of devastation was in terms of, you know, [the] number of people displaced, number of homes lost — one of my first thoughts was the rent’s going to go up and I bet it already is.”
An analysis of data obtained by ABC News shows nearly 400 listings with prices that appear to have spiked after the fires.
The average cost to rent a single-family home in Los Angeles is roughly $5,500 a month. However, since the evacuations began, some residents are willing to pay even more — sometimes double — to outbid others and get a roof over their head.
Erica Lee, a resident who lost her home in the blaze and has been bouncing between Airbnbs with her family, says she’s lost out on at least five listings.
“They just say that they’re already taken,” she told ABC News. “Or the one that changed the rent on us last minute. We couldn’t afford that anymore.”
The uncertainty is taking a toll on Lee’s family, which includes her 7-year-old son.
“It’s hard because my son keeps asking me, ‘When are we going to stop moving?’ And I don’t have an answer for it,” she said.
ABC News: Top Stories
Read the full article .
