According to AAGLA, the city’s Rent Freeze Ordinance prohibits residential rental property owners from increasing rent on properties subject to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) for a period of one-year following the end of the declared “Local Emergency.” The city declared an end to the local pandemic-era emergency as of Feb. 1, 2023 – but the Rent Freeze Ordinance will continue until Feb. 1, 2024, or approximately four years after the city’s local emergency declaration was made in March 2020.

AAGLA argued the city’s rent freeze violated the California and U.S. Constitutions by depriving its members of due process by preventing annual rent increases. The lawsuit, which was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, seeks to overturn the city’s ordinance that blocked rent increases.

“This ordinance, which has frozen all rent increases for more than three years under a period of extreme inflationary pressures, has been a tremendous financial strain on the city’s rental housing providers,” said Cheryl Turner, president of the AAGLA Board of Directors and a Los Angeles based attorney.  “As a result, many housing providers in Los Angeles have been forced to exit the rental business, liquidate retirement savings to keep up with rapidly rising costs, or in extreme instances, are facing foreclosure proceedings. No other type of business or entity, not food suppliers, medical professionals, nor the government itself, have been burdened by what will ultimately be a four-year mandated ‘freeze’ on income from which housing providers will never be able to make-up.”