Two sides of a coin

WITH apologies to David Letterman, the Top Five reasons why landlords hate rent control are:

No. 1. As private citizens, they believe they shouldn't be forced to do government's job of providing low-cost housing.

No. 2. In few sectors of private enterprise does a city tell a business how much it may charge.

No. 3. Rent-control buildings sell for less, even in high-rolling realty days.

No. 4. Capping what they may collect in rents translates to capping what they can spend on maintenance and repair -- and then they get dinged for lousy upkeep.

No. 5: It's virtually impossible to evict undesirable tenants from a rent-controlled building; owners of buildings not under rent control can boot them out for nearly any reason.

For their part, owners of rent-controlled properties feel that everyone hates them. If this were a fairy tale, they'd be the big bad wolves that prey on little old grandmas, which is actually pretty close to what they often are accused of doing. But, they argue, nothing could be further from the truth. They say the perception of landlords as bad guys out to make a buck at the expense of tenants' health and safety flies in the face of their daily reality: running and maintaining a business with a marginal financial return and the government calling every shot.

"These units," said Malcolm Bennett, president of the Apartment Assn., California Southern Cities, "are more a pain in the neck than they're worth."

Despite that, there are some landlords who are proud of their role as affordable-housing providers, but like other business owners, they expect to make money on their investment.

Bennett, who owns five four-unit apartment buildings in South-Central L.A. and manages 1,500 other units across the city, believes that the original idea of preserving inner-city housing and keeping costs down was admirable, yet he questions the fairness of a system that holds one private-sector group responsible for subsidizing housing costs, when that should be the job of government.

"Cities don't tell grocers how much to charge for milk, automakers how much to charge for cars, or homeowners how much to sell their properties for," Bennett said. "But they tell us how much to charge rent."

In 1979, after the Rent Stabilization Ordinance took effect, the most a Los Angeles landlord could raise the rent was 7% per year. The rate then dropped to 4% or 5% for eight years. For the next 13 years, the allowable increase was 3% per year; since July 1, 2006, it's been 4%.