Two sides of a coin

Frail but feisty, 79-year-old Doris McKendall could be the poster child for the rent-control cause. She lives on $851 a month from Social Security and pays $653 for a rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment a few blocks west of La Cienega Boulevard. When she moved there in 1984, the rent was around $400.

Spending 75% or so of one's income on housing is not unheard of in Los Angeles, a city with one of the biggest gaps between housing prices and income. It's "a perfect storm" regarding the cost of living here, said Mercedes Marquez, head of the Los Angeles Housing Department.

Of the city's 780,000 rental units, Housing Department figures show, the 1979 Rent Stabilization Ordinance covers 550,000 that had a certificate of occupancy issued on or before Oct. 1, 1978.

Without rent control, the average market-rate rent for an apartment in central Los Angeles is $1,485, as of the third quarter of 2006, said Delores Conway, director of the Casden Real Estate Economic Forecast at USC. In the West L.A. area, which includes Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and the Westside, it is $2,079. In the Hollywood, West Hollywood and North Hollywood grouping, $1,625; and in the San Fernando Valley, $1,398.

McKendall pays much less than the market rate for her neighborhood east of Cheviot Hills. Should she move out, state law allows the landlord to raise the rent as high as the market will bear. Similar apartments in the area rent for $1,000 per month.

Clearly, her landlord isn't bringing in top dollar on her unit. But that's the way it is for apartments covered by the rent stabilization ordinance, said the Housing Department's Marquez, and owners who have purchased buildings since the ordinance went into effect knew the rules when they bought.

The city's Housing Department enforces the ordinance, including the annual allowable rent increase -- currently 4% -- and the requirements for eviction and relocation assistance.

"The regulations are in the public interest," Marquez said, citing the affordable housing shortage and low vacancy rate. Without regulation, she said, disabled tenants, seniors and those on fixed incomes would suffer.