Harassment or neglect? How market dynamics and rent control shape landlord behaviour in Los Angeles

Abstract

Chinese

This paper examines whether and how housing market dynamics shape landlords’ profit-seeking behaviours, focusing on harassment and property neglect. Leveraging household survey data, we assess whether differences between market and contract rents, rent control and gentrification influence landlord behaviour. Findings reveal that one-quarter of respondents reported inadequate maintenance from landlords within the past two years, and more than one-fifth reported at least one form of harassment. However, the incidence of these issues varied across contexts. Tenants in rent-controlled buildings and gentrifying census tracts were 14.8 and 9.4 percentage points more likely than peers not in those situations to experience harassment, respectively. Moreover, rent-controlled tenants were more likely to experience illegal eviction practices while those in gentrifying tracts were more likely to experience threats and assault. In contrast, paying lower rents relative to market estimates alone was not associated with a greater likelihood of refusal to provide maintenance and a lower likelihood of harassment. These results suggest that landlords respond in illegal ways when frictions in the market make it difficult to simply increase rents in response to strengthening market conditions.

Keywords

gentrification harassment neglect rent control rent gap

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Angst

(2022) Affordable South Los Angeles: Survival, Support, and Different Futures. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.

Angst

Rosen

De Gregorio

et al. (2024) How do renters survive unaffordability? Household-level impacts of rent burden in Los Angeles. Journal of Urban Affairs: 1–24.

Autor

Palmer

Pathak

(2014) Housing market spillovers: Evidence from the end of rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Journal of Political Economy 122(3): 661–717.

Betancur

(2011) Gentrification and community fabric in Chicago. Urban Studies 48(2): 383–406.

Brummet

Reed

(2019) The effects of gentrification on the well-being and opportunity of original resident adults and children. Federal Reserve Board of Philadelphia working paper no. 19-30.

Bunten

Preis

Aron-Dine

(2024) Re-measuring gentrification. Urban Studies 61(1): 20–39.

Carmody

(2024) Best rental listing sites for July 2024. Investopedia. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20240217115435/https://www.investopedia.com/best-rental-listing-sites-5075293 (accessed 9 August 2024).

Chen

Jiang

Quintero

(2023) Measuring the value of rent stabilization and understanding its implications for racial inequality: Evidence from New York City. Regional Science and Urban Economics 103: 103948.

Chisholm

Howden-Chapman

Fougere

(2020) Tenants’ responses to substandard housing: Hidden and invisible power and the failure of rental housing regulation. Housing Theory and Society 37(2): 139–161.

10.

Christophers

(2022) Mind the rent gap: Blackstone, housing investment and the reordering of urban rent surfaces. Urban Studies 59(4): 698–716.

11.

County of Los Angeles Public Health (2015) Social determinants of health: housing and health in Los Angeles County. Report from County of Los Angeles Public Health. Available at: http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/reports/LAHealthBrief2011/HousingHealth/SD_Housing_Fs.pdf (accessed 17 June 2018).

12.

Desmond

Shollenberger

(2015) Forced displacement from rental housing: Prevalence and neighborhood consequences. Demography 52(5): 1751–1772.

13.

Diamond

McQuade

Qian

(2019) The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review 109(9): 3365–3394.

14.

Divringi

Wallace

Wardrip

et al. (2019) Measuring and understanding home repair costs: A national typology of households. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Available at: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/community-development/reports/measuring-and-understanding-home-repair-costs/0919-home-repair-costs-national-report.pdf (accessed 23 August 2020).

15.

Federal Reserve Board (2019) Report on economic well-being of U.S. households in 2019. Report by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Available at: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2019-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202005.pdf (accessed 13 October 2020).

16.

Ferrer

(2021) Beyond wall street landlords: How private equity in the rental market makes housing unaffordable, unstable, and unhealthy. Report from strategic action for a just economy. Available at: https://www.saje.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Final_A-Just-Recovery-Series_Beyond_Wall_Street.pdf (accessed 12 January 2022).

17.

Freeman

(2006) There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification From the Ground Up. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

18.

Garboden

Rosen

(2019) Serial filing: How landlords use the threat of eviction. City and Community 18(2): 638–661.

19.

Gibbons

Barton

(2016) The association of minority self-rated health with black versus white gentrification. Journal of Urban Health 93(6): 909–922.

20.

Graetz

Gershenson

Hepburn

et al. (2023) A comprehensive demographic profile of the US evicted population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(41): e2305860120.

21.

Gromis

Desmond

(2021) Estimating the prevalence of eviction in the United States. Cityscape 23(2): 279–290.

22.

Gyourko

Linneman

(1989) Equity and efficiency aspects of rent control: An empirical study of New York City. Journal of Urban Economics 26(1): 54–74.

23.

Hall

Greenman

(2013) Housing and neighborhood quality among undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants. Social Science Research 42(6): 1712–1725.

24.

Huynh

Maroko

(2014) Gentrification and preterm birth in New York City, 2008–2010. Journal of Urban Health 91(1): 211–220.

25.

Hyra

Moulden

Weted

et al. (2019) A method for making the just city: Housing, gentrification, and health. Housing Policy Debate 29(3): 421–431.

26.

Immergluck

Law

(2014) Investing in crisis: The methods, strategies, and expectations of investors in single-family foreclosed homes in distressed neighborhoods. Housing Policy Debate 24(3): 568–593.

27.

Izenberg

Mujahid

Yen

(2018) Health in changing neighborhoods: A study of the relationship between gentrification and self-rated health in the state of California. Health & Place 52: 188–195.

28.

Korver-Glenn

(2018) Compounding inequalities: How racial stereotypes and discrimination accumulate across the stages of housing exchange. American Sociological Review 83(4): 627–656.

29.

Krieger

Higgins

(2002) Housing and health: Time again for public health action. American Journal of Public Health 92(5): 758–768.

30.

Los Angeles County (2018) 2010 census tracts. ArcGIS. Available at: https://egis-lacounty.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/lacounty::2010-census-tracts-2/about (accessed 17 July 2018).

31.

Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) (2023) Building and safety code enforcement case. Available at: https://data.lacity.org/City-Infrastructure-Service-Requests/Building-and-Safety-Code-Enforcement-Case/2uz8-3tj3 (accessed 9 January 2023).

32.

Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) (2023) RSO overview. Available at: https://housing2.lacity.org/residents/rso-overview (accessed 12 February 2023).

33.

Los Angeles Mayor’s Office (2016) Index of Neighborhood Change. Available at: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=57e9231c3bd34d44ae49b309b0cb440e (accessed 27 July 2024).

34.

Mallach

(2014) Lessons from Las Vegas: Housing markets, neighborhoods, and distressed single-family property investors. Housing Policy Debate 24(4): 769–801.

35.

Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC) (2019) Census tract data. Available at: https://map.myneighborhooddata.org/ (accessed 19 March 2019).

36.

Olsen

(1972) An econometric analysis of rent control. Journal of Political Economy 80(6): 1081–1100.

37.

Preis

Janakiraman

Bob

et al. (2021) Mapping gentrification and displacement pressure: An exploration of four distinct methodologies. Urban Studies 58(2): 405–424.

38.

QGIS Development Team (2023) QGIS: A free and open-source geographic information system (Version 3.32). Available at: https://qgis.org (accessed 17 July 2018).

39.

Ramiller

(2022) Displacement through development? Property turnover and eviction risk in Seattle. Urban Studies 59(6): 1148–1166.

40.

Raymond

Duckworth

Miller

et al. (2018) From foreclosure to eviction: Housing insecurity in corporate-owned single-family rentals. Cityscape 20(3): 159–188.

41.

Rentometer (2019) House and apartment rental rate comps. Available at: https://www.rentometer.com (accessed 1 April 2019).

42.

Rosen

Ciudad-Real

Angst

et al. (2023) Rental affordability, coping strategies, and impacts in diverse immigrant communities. Housing Policy Debate 33(6): 1313–1332.

43.

Rucks-Ahidiana

(2022) Theorizing gentrification as a process of racial capitalism. City and Community 21(3): 173–192.

44.

Sharkey

(2013) Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

45.

Sims

(2007) Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics 61(1): 129–151.

46.

Slater

(2021) Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

47.

Smith

(1979) Toward a theory of gentrification a back to the city movement by capital, not people. Journal of the American Planning Association 45(4): 538–548.

48.

Smith

(1984) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

49.

Travis

(2019) The organization of neglect: Limited liability companies and housing disinvestment. American Sociological Review 84(1): 142–170.

50.

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (2019) Small-area fair market rents 2019. Available at: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr.html (accessed 12 August 2019).

51.

Urban Displacement Project (UDP) (2020) Los Angeles – gentrification and displacement. Available at: www.urbandisplacement.org/maps/los-angeles-gentrification-and-displacement/ (accessed 18 June 2020).

52.

Vogell

(2022) Rent going up? One company’s algorithm could be why. ProPublica. Available at: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent (28 October 2022).

53.

Zhu

Burinskiy

De la Roca

et al. (2021) Los Angeles housing crisis and local planning responses. Cityscape 23(1): 133–160.

54.

Zillow (2019) Zillow Observed Rent Index. Available at: https://www.zillow.com/research/data/ (accessed 22 August 2019).

55.

Zuk

Bierbaum

Chapple

et al. (2018) Gentrification, displacement, and the role of public investment. Journal of Planning Literature 33(1): 31–44.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.04 MB