Yasser Nokoudy still remembers the day his family's 14-year wait for affordable housing came to an end in April 2017. Nokoudy and his parents soon moved into the Hillside Villa apartments in Chinatown, Los Angeles hoping for a stable life.

His parents were both immigrants who moved to the United States to create a better life for themselves. They worked hard, but they struggled financially. When the family was finally approved for Section 8 housing, a program that helps low-income families with their rent, Nokoudy said they all felt a sense of financial relief.

“It was a really good time for us,” Nokoudy said.

The sense of peace would not last long because their landlord began raising the rent beyond the means of many tenants.

The 124-unit Hillside Villa was built in the 1980s as affordable housing. The units had a 30-year affordability covenant, which is an agreement with the city of Los Angeles that obligates an owner to designate a number of units for low-income households.

The affordability covenant ended in late 2018. Thomas Botz, the Hillside Villa landlord and owner, began raising the rent.

Botz said the rent was increased because he only had one opportunity to increase it to market value before it could only be increased once per year after the affordability covenant expired. He added that knew that the covenant was going to expire.

According to the Hillside Villa Tenants Association tenants were not aware of the covenant expiring.

“It was not a great time in general, because the pandemic was looming…there was just a lot of uncertainty,” Nokoudy said.

During this time the Hillside Villa tenants began to unite and they created the Hillside Villa Tenants Association in an effort to advocate for their rights.

“We don't have to just accept what's hegemonic in our society, which is that landlords have all the power and tenants have no power,” said Janis Yue, a Hillside Villa Tenants Association organizer. “That we can actually change that relationship is really important, and nobody's ever going to do that besides tenants.”

The Hillside Villa Tenants Association is just one example of the growing number of tenant unions in Los Angeles that play a crucial role in advocating for the rights of tenants. The city of Los Angeles has taken steps to address tenant concerns and the housing crisis, which has received mixed reactions from tenants and landlords.

The fight for tenant rights

The city of Los Angeles is home to about 4 million people and about 63% of residents are renters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of the units available for renters about 624,000 are subject to the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which many oppose.

“Our current rent stabilization doesn't go far enough,” said Jillian Burgos, a business owner and member of the North Hollywood Neighborhood Council.

The RSO is applied to rental properties built before October 1978. This ordinance allows annual rent increases by a certain percentage in the city. In July 2024 landlords were allowed to increase the rent by 4% with an additional 2% for those covering tenants utilities.

The annual rent increase for units under the RSO were forbidden from March 2020 to January 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hillside Villa tenants continued to receive rent increases during this time, which led to their rent strike because they did not fall under the RSO because of the affordability covenant.

“We lost family members, my mother passed away during the pandemic in 2020 and then a couple of other family members passed away,” Nokoudy said. “So, it was a really tough time for us.”

The rent strike led to evictions and in the case of Alejandro Gutierrez, a longtime resident of Hillside Villa, the landlord filed an eviction lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2023.

Hillside Villa families advocating for change at the Los Angeles City Hall. (Photo courtesy of Hillside Villa Tenants Association)

The landlord alleged that Gutierrez entered into an agreement that rent would be paid on the first of each month, but he was served with a three-day notice demanding $13,300 in unpaid rent.

Gutierrez argued that the plaintiff illegally raised his rent in February 2021 by more than 100%, which was in violation of Penal Code 396, which prohibits rent increases by more than 10% during and after a state of emergency.

According to court records, Judge Andrew Esbenshade ruled in favor of Gutierrez and against the landlord.

Tenants who participated in the rent strike will be required to pay what they owe under a $15 million deal approved by the Los Angeles City Council in April. The deal was not discussed with the Hillside Villa Tenant Association.

“Everything had been done behind their backs; they were not included in the conversations,” Yue said.

Nokoudy said the Association was able to set up a meeting with Botz a few weeks ago to try to negotiate a new deal regarding the back rent many tenants owed, but he was not willing to make changes to the deal.

“The negotiations ended earlier than we thought, and we decided to just continue the rent strike if they weren't willing to come to an agreement,” Nokoudy said.

The deal would extend the affordability covenant, with a $15 million payment to Botz subsidizing rent for 106 units.

“At some point there's got to be an end to the public subsidies,” Botz said. “People get very upset when they hear that the government paid $15 million to extend these people's subsidized rents for 15 more years, and they've already had 30, and you've got all these other people who are working two or three jobs so they can pay market rents or living on the street. So where's the fairness in any of this?”

It would require tenants to repay their rent debt in monthly installments over six years, following a six-month grace period. About 35 families who are currently facing eviction would be required to repay their debt.

“This isn't an ideal situation for us,” Nokoudy said. “We'd rather like to pay our rent and live easy and not have to worry about evictions that a lot of us have ongoing right now.”

Nokoudy added that in his situation his job is to make a living and to take care of his father, who is 76-years old. This situation has been stressful because he is not really aware of his rights, but the Association has been very helpful in providing resources to him and other tenants to fight this battle.

“I think what grounds us is all the people who are in solidarity and in support too, which is the rest of you know, the LA renters movement, but also nationally and internationally,” Yue said.

The city’s response

Sachin Medhekar, director of housing and homelessness prevention for Council District 13 said the City Council will be reviewing the RSO for the first time in over 39 years.

“The formula that we currently have was set decades ago, and what we're starting to look at is, ‘Hey, look, let's look into making this formula more fair,’” Medhekar said.

Last year, the City Council commissioned a report to study the city’s formula for setting the RSO annual rent increases. According to the motion the report was commissioned because of the city consistently being ranked as one of the most rent burdened cities in the nation.

The report “Equitable Rent: Rent Stabilization Standards in the city of Los Angeles” was published by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization, in September.

The report recommends that the city revise how annual rent increases are calculated. It argued that the use of the Consumer Price Index All-Items Index has been criticized for not considering the expenses of operating an apartment building. It also recommends that there be no additional increase for units whose gas and electricity are covered or allow the increases, but have it reflect the actual cost of gas and electricity inserted of specific percentage.

Daniel Yukelson, a property owner and CEO of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, a trade association and government advocate serving rental housing providers, said these recommendations would cause housing providers to sell their properties and leave the business, which would cause bigger housing shortages.

“Now the city wants to come in and not even allow owners to keep up with inflation,” Yukelson said. "It's ridiculous. No business can operate like that. No other business has those types of strict price controls.”

According to the report, about 35% of the rent tenants pay goes to operating expenses for apartment buildings. About 1/5 of renters have incomes below the federal threshold leaving them to spend 90% of their income on rent.

“Renting used to be the alternative to home owning, because owning a home is so expensive,” Burgos said. “I mean, it's the American dream. Everybody wants to own a home. Renting used to be economical, and now it's like, it's almost unlivable.”

Medhekar said the City Council will be taking the recommendations into consideration to hopefully make new changes to the RSO.

The Los Angeles Housing Department has received more than 13,000 complaints alleging harassment from landlords since the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance went into effect three years ago. Some two dozen complaints were referred to the city attorney's office, but no cases have been criminally prosecuted.

“Tenants are looking for a payday,” said Yukelson.

The Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance applies to all residential units in the city and prohibits landlords from harassing tenants by removing housing services, withholding repairs or refusing to accept rent payments.

“I've never heard of a landlord harassing tenants,” Botz said. “Tenants like to say that they're being harassed when they're being asked to pay the rent.”

The City Council recently directed the city attorney to update the ordinance for the first time since it was approved in June 2021.

“There's been a significant lack of enforcement of that law,” said Mark Gaynor, co-chair of Power to the Tenants, a campaign created by the Democratic Socialists of America - Los Angeles. “Providing more resources and capacity for that is really important.”

The amendments passed clarify the definition of harassment, increase the penalties for violating the ordinance, make it easier for tenants to file complaints and seek legal help, protect tenant privacy and provide clearer guiltiness for landlords when renewing leases.

Yukelson said the most important thing in a housing provider and renter relationship is open communication, but these new amendments are going to stop communication for fear that they could be accused of harassment.

“It's opening up the doors very wide to allow unscrupulous attorneys to make claims valid or false, probably mostly false, against property owners for something they may have said to a renter,” Yukelson said.

Medhekar said the city attorney will draft a new ordinance that will first be considered by the Housing and Homelessness Committee before it goes to the City Council.

“This starts to close the gap on the toll that tenants experience when they're facing harassment, but it also, importantly, serves as a deterrent to landlords who might otherwise want to weaponize harassment to get tenants to self evict or to skirt some other protections,” Medhekar said.

The power of tenants organizing

The Hillside Villa Tenants Association continues to be at the forefront of the fight for tenant rights in Los Angeles by continuing to voice their concerns and opinions. Through their rent strike, protests at city council meetings and councilmembers homes, the Association has advocated for eminent domain and challenged the rent increases and evictions.

“Realizing that when we come together and we use our agency to organize and fight as a collective, then we actually do have the power to change,” Yue said. “To stay in our homes and fight for these long term goals of empowering tenants everywhere to be less vulnerable to eviction and exploitation in different ways.”

Hillside Villa Tenants at an Association meeting in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Hillside Villa Tenants Association)

The Association has been successful in advocating for the City Council to purchase Hillside Villa with the use of eminent domain, which is the power of the government to take private property for public use, with proper compensation to the owner. In 2022 the City Council unanimously voted to explore the use of eminent domain.

Eminent domain has historically been used against tenants, which has caused displacement, but this time it would benefit them.

“That was really quite a radical demand to leverage something that has historically been used to disenfranchise and dispossess working class communities of color, and actually kind of flip the script and try to use that to actually preserve affordable housing instead,” Yue said. “I think that we were able to get much further than anybody ever thought we would with that demand.”

Despite the vote the city has made little progress in acquiring the building. According to the covenant agreement documents, the city has abandoned plans to purchase Hillside Villa. Instead the city and Botz have agreed to extend the affordable rent covenant for about 15 years and provide a longer repayment deal for tenants who owe back rent.

“I think now, in hindsight, what they were doing was kind of using bureaucracy right to actually just kind of like delay, push things down the line,” Yue said.

Nokoudy said he has a few eviction notices put on his front door, but he has been able to fight the evictions with help from the Association because it has equipped tenants with lawyers who have helped them figure out what to do.

He hopes that the advocacy work that the Association is doing can lead to a place where tenants can live and take care of their families without being in fear of evictions or having a difficult relationship with their landlord.

“To zoom out a little bit, hopefully this is kind of the model for a lot of other buildings in LA that are going through the same thing,” Nokoudy said.