My rent is going up in February. If you’re a rent stabilized renter like me in Los Angeles, yours probably is too. In the coming days, the Los Angeles City Council is going to decide how much your rent is going to go up next year and how much it can go up every year after that.

This vote, which affects the rents of millions of people living in Los Angeles, will show  whether Democratic leaders in Los Angeles are willing to actually do something about the cost of living for working people.

The City of Los Angeles currently has one of the weakest rent stabilization ordinances in California. This has meant that our city has allowed rents hikes to outpace inflation 23 out of the last 30 years, and outpace Social Security for seniors on fixed incomes about the same amount of times. It’s no wonder seniors are the fastest growing group falling into homelessness.

Council members are weighing the housing stability of millions of renters against the business interests of a much smaller number of landlords, who claim high rent increases are needed to keep up with rising costs. While it’s true that operating costs for landlords are indeed outpacing inflation, a study by Economic Roundtable commissioned by the Los Angeles Housing Department found that landlords of rent-stabilized units are still making a tidy profit, with their net operating incomes also outpacing inflation, and their property values doubling over the last 10 years, from an average of $150,000 to $300,000.

A landlord lobbying group that has spent millions of dollars on Los Angeles City Council campaigns recently launched a faux-progressive website that is eerily reflective of Democratic leader-turned-Independent Andrew Cuomo’s argument against Mamdani’s rent increase freeze proposal: that the real issue with rent control is that it isn’t reserved for poor people. But isn’t that missing the point? Mamdami’s candidacy is broadly appealing precisely because it’s centered around making the city more affordable for all residents.

On the other hand, a diverse coalition of labor unions, tenant rights groups, homeless service providers, and housing advocates have advanced a progressive and expansive vision of affordability for LA’s rent stabilization ordinance: capping annual rent increases at 3%, with no minimum increases, and tying annual rent hikes to a portion of inflation rather than the whole thing. This cap would bring financial relief to not only the most vulnerable renters in Los Angeles, but also to the more than 40 percent of middle-income renters who are now rent burdened.

Similar policies are currently helping stabilize housing prices for a broad swath of renters in cities across California. In Santa Monica, for example, the median long-term tenants pay under the rent stabilization ordinance is half that of the median rent for market rate units. This has allowed Santa Monica to remain affordable to many working- and middle-class households—the teachers, firefighters, nurses, service workers who are an essential part of any well-functioning city.

It’s also worth noting that Santa Monica, like most cities with rent-stabilization policies, including Los Angeles, allows landlords who are not getting a fair return on their rents to petition for an exemption or financial assistance. These policies are designed to support renters and small landlords alike.

Voters have been abandoning the Democratic party because it has continually propped up leaders that pay lip service to issues of affordability while sitting idly by as working families are being pushed out of their cities and states by rising rents and stagnating wages.

The Los Angeles City Council has a chance to show that Democratic leadership can actually create the affordability Angelenos desperately need.