LA officials tout housing resources as Tuesday's rent debt repayment deadline arrives
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles city officials continue to push out their message that "help is available" to ensure that tenants remain housed -- as Angelenos face a deadline Tuesday to repay back rent for the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic.
"I want to close by emphasizing that our goal is to keep people in their homes," Mayor Karen Bass said during a Monday morning news conference at City Hall. "The city is taking unprecedented actions to keep Angelenos inside, and to make sure that landlords, especially small landlords, do not go into foreclosure."
Previous protections enacted by the City Council set an Aug. 1 deadline for tenants to pay any back rent due for the period between March 2020 and September 2021. For rent due between October 2021 and Jan. 31 of this year, tenants have until February 2024 to pay any back rent.
Ahead of Tuesday's deadline for the first rental period, city officials are pushing to inform tenants and landlords of their rights and obligations, with the aim of preventing what Bass called a possible "wave of evictions."
Information on tenants' rights and a list of resources can be found at stayhousedla.org/tenant-rights.
The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles -- an independent nonprofit that supports Bass' vision for the city -- committed its resources to homelessness prevention.
The organization's "We Are LA" program began recently, intended to help at-risk Angelenos stay housed. Outreach teams connected with nearly 41,000 Angelenos and made case management appointments with more than 10,000 Angelenos.
Measure ULA, also known as the "mansion tax," is a 4% sales tax on properties exceeding $5 million, and 5.5% sales tax on properties exceeding $10 million. The revenue from the sales tax will be collected and earmarked for renter protections, including protections for low-income seniors at risk of homelessness, rental assistance programs and building more affordable housing units.
City officials initially reported the measure would generate between $600 million and $1.1 billion annually, but that estimate was lowered to $672 million. The mayor's office reported Thursday that $38 million has so far been raised from the measure.
The mayor's office indicated the ULA spending plan will come before the council's Housing and Homelessness Committee on Wednesday, and then to the full council soon after.
"We would be totally defeating our goal here if we just paid attention to the tenants and then the landlords fell behind in their mortgages," Bass said at Monday's news conference.
City News Service contributed to this report.
