Ellis Act Evictions Take Toll On Los Angeles Rental Market As Incidents Of Long-Time Rent-Controlled Tenants Getting The Boot Increase

In Los Angeles, California, the Los Angeles Times reports:

• Looking to cash in on a booming real estate market, Los Angeles property owners are demolishing an increasing number of rent-controlled buildings to build pricey McMansions, condos and new rentals, leading to hundreds of evictions across the city.
  
  More than 1,000 rent-controlled apartments were taken off the market last year — a nearly threefold increase since 2013, according to a Times analysis of housing data. Evictions from such units have doubled over the same time.
  
  Across L.A., more than 20,000 rent-controlled units have been taken off the market since 2001, city records show. The removals peaked during the housing bubble and then bottomed out in the recession, but they have risen significantly since then.
  
  The number of lost units is a fraction of the roughly 641,000 rent-controlled apartments in the city, but in a tight market the removals have had an outsized effect, tenant advocates say, eating away at the supply of affordable housing at a time when L.A. has become one of the least affordable cities in the country.
  
  "Our housing situation is beyond crisis," said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant advocacy group. "It's a catastrophe and it's getting worse."

For more, see More rent-controlled buildings are being demolished to make way for pricier housing.