On April 22, the L.A. City Council introduced a motion to explore the creation of a Commercial Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance. This is a first-of-its-kind effort to protect the city’s small businesses from coercive, retaliatory, and bad-faith landlord practices that are driving displacement in commercial corridors.
The motion was introduced by Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado (CD14), Eunisses Hernandez (CD1), and Heather Hutt (CD10). SAJE staff and members of our South L.A. Business Alliance, who pushed for this legislation, were there to give public comments. And the Small Business Alliance for Equitable Communities (SBAEC) coalition, which SAJE is a member of, was there, too.
Small businesses in L.A. have long operated without the legal safety net available to the city’s residential tenants. That’s because most protections for commercial renters are preempted by state law. California’s Costa-Keene-Seymour Commercial Property Investment Act outlaws commercial rent-stabilization ordinances and prevents local jurisdictions from imposing mandatory arbitration or mediation processes for commercial tenants dealing with problem landlords.
As a result, L.A.’s commercial renters have had little recourse when landlords act in bad faith.At SAJE, we’ve heard from business owners whose landlords have shut off utilities, ignored essential repairs, or raised rents by more than 300% to force small businesses owners to self-evict in order to re-rent the space at a higher rate or redevelop the property.
The study proposed by today’s motion would examine protections modeled in part on the city’s existing residential Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, which prohibits landlords of residential properties from harassing tenants by removing housing services, withholding repairs, or refusing to accept rent payments. We are hoping this is a first step in establishing strong renter protections for L.A.’s small businesses, and that more can be done, including repealing the Costa-Keene-Seymour Commercial Property Investment Act.
You can read the motion here.
If you or someone you know is interested in getting involved with SAJE’s campaign for a more equitable rental market for L.A.’s small businesses, we invite you to join our monthly Business Alliance meetings on the second Wednesday of the month. We meet right here at SAJE and also on Zoom. Meetings are currently held in Spanish, and English interpretation is available on request. To learn more, email info@saje.net.
