Rent strike: LA tenants resort to practice from the 1900s as city’s housing crisis worsens
Led by the fledgling LA Tenants Union, inhabitants of multiunit buildings are joining forces and refusing to pay rent until a suitable rent increase agreement with the landlords is reached
A few dozen tenants from a working-class neighbourhood here hopped into their vehicles, creating a caravan that would head to affluent Orange County.
After the hour-long drive in late May, the group converged on the pavement in front of a two-storey house with Spanish-tile roofing belonging to Gina Kim – their landlord’s daughter. Chung Suk Kim had bought the seven-building flat complex in Los Angeles for US$8.5 million in September. Eviction notices for all 80 residents – almost all of them black or Latino – went up a few weeks later, indicating that the owner wanted to convert the units, located near the University of Southern California, into student housing.
“Vulture landlord, get a real job! Vulture landlord, get a real job!” the tenants shouted. A pair of police cars soon arrived.
But chanting is not the only way the tenants are making their feelings known. Since the eviction notices were posted some eight months ago, they have refused to pay rent.
“I’m not against student housing, don’t get me wrong,” said Robert Evans, a 32-year-old African-American security guard who makes US$14.50 an hour and shares a US$1,700 three-bedroom unit with six people in one of Kim’s buildings. “But if you want to come in and invest in property, you can’t just put people out on the streets.”
