LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Controlling the price of rents and laws protecting tenants would reduce the growing number of homeless people in California’s Los Angeles County, according to a study released today.
The report, “Price Out, Pushed Out, Locked Out,” from the Law School of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the non-profit legal organization Public Counsel, ensures that the implementation of an ordinance to control rents in the county would protect more than 403,000 people.
The report is known at a time when the authorities are looking for measures to stop the increase of people living in the open.
The census of homeless people in the county of Los Angeles in 2019 revealed that almost 59,000 people currently live on the street, an increase of 12% over last year, when they were 52,765.
The report highlights that only between 2010 and 2018, owners of rental housing filed 505,924 eviction proceedings before the county courts, a number that does not include expulsions that are not reported.
Public Councel and the UCLA Law School define the figure as “shocking” and “astounding.”
The report warns that evictions can cause loss of work and other property of tenants, as well as consequences for physical and mental health, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse and even suicide.
It also emphasizes that 53% of the people who were forced to live on the streets for the first time said that the “economic difficulties” pushed them to those conditions.
The main conclusion of the authors of the report is that the legal protection of the tenants would prevent more people from losing the housing in which they live. (EFEUSA)
