L.A. residents displaced by wildfires face spiking rents as authorities warn of price gouging
The Los Angeles wildfires have set off a stampede to find housing, leading some property owners and managers to raise rents higher than the 10% limit in emergencies.
Joe Thompson’s desperate post-wildfire scramble to find a new place for his family to live led him Saturday to a five-bedroom home in Santa Monica, California, that had been put on the market the day before for $28,000 a month — more than double the rent posted a year ago. The agent was asking for three months’ rent up front and already had applications from multiple people.
Thompson and his partner turned away, appalled.
“We’re not going to do that,” Thompson, 44, a trader and investor, said later. “We’ll just keep looking.”
The couple and their two young children were displaced by a wildfire that leveled much of their Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades last week. Although their house was left standing, they don’t know the extent of the damage or when they will be allowed back. So they have joined thousands searching for housing in a city that had a dire shortage before the disaster.
The stampede has resulted in some homeowners and property managers jacking up prices on short-term rentals, including dozens that appear to violate a California law against increasing prices by more than 10% during a state of emergency, according to a review of Zillow listings and interviews with real estate agents, housing advocates and home-seekers.
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