LA Tenants Have Won a Breakthrough Against Landlord Abuse

Since Los Angeles passed its tenant anti-harassment law in 2021, the city received over 21,000 complaints but referred just 35 cases for prosecution. Now Highland Park tenants have forced the first-ever enforcement through relentless organizing.

This summer, a small group of tenants in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park made history when they successfully forced the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) and the city attorney to enforce the city’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance (TAHO) against their landlord. The campaign, which was conducted alongside the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), lasted a year. In the end, LAHD and the city attorney’s office issued the first ever citations through the Administrative Citation Enforcement Program (ACE), a fine-based noncriminal approach