Rents rise as refugees from the fires squeeze into L.A.’s tight housing market
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When the flames destroyed Ria Cousineau’s Altadena house and damaged the home of her partner, Emily Allen, a horrific situation gave way to what felt like an impossible task.
In an effort to find a semi-permanent home while they rebuild, Cousineau estimated the couple toured about 10 houses over four or five days, with one house seeing at least 30 families stroll through in just 10 minutes. Under pressure, they offered to pay $250 more than the asking price on a Pasadena rental.
Although Cousineau said some prospective tenants offered more, they were first and accepted.
“We didn’t know what we were going to do,” said Cousineau, 65. “I feel so lucky.”
The fires that tore through Altadena and Pacific Palisades have created a mad rush for a place to live, as thousands of newly homeless families enter what was already a housing market in crisis.
In interviews, housing and disaster recovery experts said that while the crisis creates an uncertain future, at least in the short term it’s likely to put swift upward pressure on rents in areas near the destruction as the displaced try to stay near their communities. And as housing costs rise in a market with no wiggle room, some existing tenants could be pushed out to make room.
“Evictions tend to go up post-disasters,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow with the Urban Institute think tank.
Los Angeles has dealt with mass destruction before.
In 1994, the Northridge earthquake destroyed or seriously damaged tens of thousands housing units. Tallies are ongoing in the Palisades and Eaton fires, but the latest estimate is that the conflagrations seriously damaged or destroyed more than 11,100 single-family homes and more than 240 multifamily properties.
It’s not known how many units were in those multifamily structures, but it’s not likely to be enough that the fires destroyed as many units as the earthquake.
But back in 1994, the San Fernando Valley and the city of L.A. had a rental vacancy rate of more than 8%, and households were swiftly rehoused with the help of federal rent subsidies, according to research from Mary Comerio, a disaster recovery expert at UC Berkeley
This time around, less than 4% of the rentals within the city and county were vacant as of 2023, census data show, and there’s been outrage that a sizable number of landlords have ignored temporary price gouging rules in place because of the fires.
Coverage of the firefighters’ battle against Eaton and Palisades fires, including stories about the dangerous weather and victim frustration.
Authorities have vowed to crack down, but even if everyone followed the law, increases up to 10% — like those paid by Cousineau — are allowed. And experts said low vacancy rates mean fire refugees will have to fan out farther in their search for housing, driving rents up in a larger area.
Michael Lens, an urban planning professor at UCLA, said the situation could be described as one similar to musical chairs: A wave of the displaced will take the available homes near the fires, driving up rents there and forcing others to search in different neighborhoods, where the process starts anew.
On Saturday, the dynamic could be seen at an open house in Palms — a 10-mile drive from hard-hit Pacific Palisades.
Simon Beardmore, the listing agent for the three-bedroom single-family rental house, said he received over 100 inquires in the days before the showing.
At noon, two women stood outside, waiting for Beardmore to let them into the house that was listed for $10,500 a month.
“Fellow Palisadian?” one asked the other, who responded that yes, she was, and yes, she too lost her home.
Within 40 minutes, at least six groups of people had toured the house — all displaced from the Palisades fire. At least two left to view additional homes, including one nearby in Culver City.
“It’s not just going to be adjacent neighborhoods, but two, three, four neighborhoods away that are going to feel these effects,” Lens said.
And some real estate agents are noticing a change far beyond that.
“Everyone in our office has been getting calls nonstop,” said Nyla Patzner, a Coachella Valley agent with Desert Sotheby’s International Realty.
Michelle King, a Santa Barbara real estate agent and property manager with King & Co., said that luxury listings north of $20,000 per month have the highest demand.
“It’s all the Palisades people,” King said. “It’s like the pandemic all over again, when everyone fled cities and bought or rented in quieter areas.”
Rumbach, the Urban Institute expert, said research has found evictions rise after a disaster, probably because some landlords take the opportunity to remove tenants for people who will pay rising rents. Rent increases themselves can also force people to leave if the cost blows past their budget.
But if such displacement occurs, there’s likely to be limits.
Most units destroyed appear to be single-family homes, and experts said that generally the upward pressure on rent should grow more muted as homes get both smaller in size and farther from the fires.
There’s a total of 3.7 million homes in L.A., and someone now looking for a one-bedroom apartment in central L.A., for example, isn’t likely to notice much of a difference in price, even if there could be slightly more demand, said Jose Loya, another urban planning professor at UCLA.
“L.A. is still a very, very large place,” he said.
Time should also minimize the impact to rents in areas closer to the fires, experts said, as rebuilding relieves pressure.
Rebuilding could take years, however, and for Pacific Palisades and Altadena, specifically, there are additional questions.
It’s possible home prices could fall there if fewer people want to own homes in areas that just burned, are likely to be a construction zone for the foreseeable future and could burn again.
Rumbach said the opposite may happen. In other catastrophes, many people can’t afford or don’t want to rebuild, and sell their lots to others who tend to construct more expensive housing.
“We call it disaster gentrification,” Rumbach said.
Juhi Bansal and her husband, Nicolas Gerpe, rented in Altadena and it will be their landlord’s choice whether to rebuild the one-bedroom house they called home for nearly 15 years.
The couple, both musicians, have other decisions to make. Before the fires, Bansal said that she loved Altadena as a relatively calm oasis in a giant metropolis but had tried to convince her husband to move somewhere that was less expensive and had less traffic.
Now, after she’s seen the community come together to help, Bansal said she has a greater desire to stay. They just need to find a place to live.
“I was looking at some rentals on Craigslist,” Bansal said. “They are more expensive than what we were paying and they are smaller.”
Times staff writer Sandhya Kambhampati contributed to this report.
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