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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia announced Tuesday his office will begin a new audit investigation into the implementation of the city's Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, known as TAHO, with the intent of evaluating its effectiveness.
"Los Angeles has one of the highest costs of living in the country and a majority of residents live in rental housing," according to a statement from the controller's office. "Rent-burdened Angelenos continue to face rising rents and a dwindling supply of affordable housing. As a result, it is critical that Angelenos currently inhabiting affordable or rent-controlled housing are protected from harassment and other harmful actions by their landlords."
In June 2021, the city adopted the TAHO ordinance and it went into effect August 2021. TAHO applies to all residential units in the city, prohibiting landlords from harassing tenants with actions such as removing housing services, withholding repairs or refusing to accept payments.
TAHO is intended to serve as a safeguard against landlords who take adverse actions with the ultimate intention of forcing tenants to "voluntarily" move out from the low-cost housing unit. Often, this allows landlords to list the newly-available unit at market-rate rents, according to the controller's office.
The ordinance also provided remedies for aggrieved tenants to pursue a private right of action in court as a civil matter. But the language of the ordinance does not guarantee an aggrieved tenant reimbursement of their attorney's fees in prevailing cases.
As a result, low-income tenants facing harassment may face difficulty finding legal representation.
The city's Housing Department is the primary department responsible for preserving and protecting affordable housing through Los Angeles. The department reported that from the period of August 2021 through October 2022, LAHD's investigation and Enforcement Unit received approximately 12,550 complaints, of which 3,700 cases were complaint filing alleging tenant harassment.
In November 2022, LAHD reported that it had begun referring confirmed cases of tenant harassment to the city attorney's office. However, at that point, the city attorney's office had not yet filed any TAHO-related civil actions against landlords, according to Mejia's office.
The lack of cases accepted and prosecuted by the city attorney and the lack of meaningful private litigation suggest that TAHO is not functioning as intended by the City Council or envisioned by the city and tenants' rights advocates.
The project aims to answer whether the ordinance has improved protections for tenants facing harassment by landlords; how many TAHO complaints the city has received, processed and reviewed; evaluate the city's process for investigating TAHO complaints as well as enforcement measures; how success of the ordinance is measured; and how the city of L.A. compares to other California cities with anti-harassment laws