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Inglewood rent control approved

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The Inglewood City Council voted unanimously this week on a permanent rent stabilization ordinance for its residents.

According to the city of Inglewood’s Housing Element, 64 percent of Inglewood residents are renters and 47 percent of households are spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing. The vote  will inhibit landlords from increasing rent more than 5 percent annually. However, there are exceptions, where the cap will be 8 percent in some cases.

This comes after more than three and a half years of community-led advocacy fought by the Uplift Inglewood Coalition and is a victory for housing justice advocates everywhere. The ordinance includes “Just Cause” eviction protections, caps rent increases at 8 percent annually, and requires landlords to pay relocation allowance to tenants who are unable to pay rent increases between 4 – 8 percent.

Members of the coalition hope that the passing of rent stabilization in Inglewood sends a clear message to State Sen. Holly Mitchell (30th District), Sen. Steven Bradford (35th District), and other California state legislators as they consider AB 1482 to cap rent increases statewide. With recent reports of homelessness increasing by 16-17 percent in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, advocates for affordable housing believe it is  time for legislators to take further action.

“We have fought long and hard to see permanent rent stabilization come to fruition in Inglewood. While this is a major victory for the housing justice movement at large, we need to ensure that it provides the protections that Inglewood residents deserve,” Uplift Inglewood member, Dr. D’Artagnan Scorza said. “That’s why we are mobilizing to ask the city to amend the proposed ordinance so that annual increases are tied to the Consumer Price Index and do not exceed 5 percent per year. We are also demanding that the ordinance include an elected rent board and a rent rollback to the rates of October 2017 to accommodate hard working residents who have already been gouged in the corporate real estate market.”

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