Los Angeles landlords are being named and shamed in an online effort to combat illegal price gouging following Southern California’s historic wildfires.
According to Ken Haskett, section chief for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, “well over 5,000 homes have been destroyed just in the Palisades.” At the same time, a grassroots effort to track price gouging has emerged in the form of a Google Sheet that’s now circulating on social media.
The document, currently listing 996 entries, aims to “name and shame” rental properties with substantial price increases. Of the 427 reviewed so far, many claims have proven legitimate. One example, a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home saw its monthly rent jump from $16,000 to $24,000 on January 9, just as 150,000 California residents found themselves displaced.
”Tonight in about an hour and a half, my chat found over 33 listings that were explicitly illegally price-gouging rental prices that weren’t already catalogued in the over 1,000 price-gouged listings on this Google doc,” another X user added. “L.A. landlords must pay for this.”
A quick scan of online rental platforms such as Zillow paints the same bleak picture. One X post highlighted a specific listing where a home originally priced at $7,500 per month in late October jumped to $11,000 as of January 11. “This is illegal,” the X user wrote.
just a quick scan of zillow reveals a few egregious instances of price gouging by landlords and agents.
— mervyn (@britrican) January 11, 2025
this is illegal. https://t.co/aXlbsiqx1W pic.twitter.com/oLd6KleUKd
As well as naming and shaming, others are taking matters into their own hands. “Just reported my old landlord,” another X user posted. “Moved out 6 months ago due to cockroaches & shady monthly price bumps even though they were rent-controlled. Sure enough, Jones & Jones Property Management is preying on the L.A. fires & price gouging.” They reported that rent on available 2-bedroom properties had been raised by as much as $800.
In a press conference on Sunday, the Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, warned against “anyone taking advantage of anyone who’s been victimized already, whether it is burglary, looting, or any other crime, whether it’s a scam of some kind that you’re conjuring up to make money off of the poor people that have been involved in this.”
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, also reminded that if people engage in price gouging, looting, and scamming amid the ongoing response to the wildfires, they are breaking the law and will be held accountable. “We’ve seen businesses and landlords . . . jack up the price,” Bonta said at a press conference. “It’s called price gouging. It is illegal. You cannot do it. It is a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and fines.”
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