The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted to end its COVID-era eviction moratorium early next year, despite the pleas of tenant rights advocates who rallied outside city hall.
“Two-and-a-half years later, the most stringent COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, people have returned to the workplace, vaccines are widely available, and we are learning to live in this new normal,” Councilman John Lee said. “The moratorium has served its purpose and now it is time to move on.”
Starting Feb. 1, after nearly three years, landlords in L.A. will once again be allowed to evict tenants for nonpayment of rent and other reasons, including unauthorized pets and unauthorized residents.
The city’s COVID-19 eviction protections were among the last remaining in California and the nation and had been in effect since March 2020.
On Tuesday, council members also agreed to move forward a permanent expansion of some eviction protections, the Los Angeles Times reported. Among them, tenants in rent-controlled apartments cannot be evicted without documented lease violations.
Earlier in the day, demonstrators gathered in front of City Hall urged council members to extend the eviction moratorium to keep residents from being pushed into homelessness.
“It’s time for the City to recognize housing as a basic human right,” Keep L.A. House Coalition said in a news release. “We cannot go back to a world where renters across Los Angeles go unprotected from needless eviction and we become accustomed to the large increases in homelessness that we experienced pre-pandemic.”
The organization called for universal just cause protections against evictions and permanent protections against evictions for tenants who are struggling to make rent, among other things.