Episode Details

Mike, Rachel, Godfrey, and Olga analyze the significance of last week’s vote by LA’s City Council to limit annual rent increases for 1.5 million tenants — and somehow explain it all using Dodgers metaphors. The LAPD and city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto are bucking civilian oversight in a variety of shocking (or maybe not-so-shocking) ways. Then, how labor power is brewing at your local Starbucks.

LA’s City Council voted to limit rent increases in rent-controlled units to 1 to 4%, based on an annual formula published by the Los Angeles Housing Department — a big change from the current 3 to 10% cap. It is the first time since 1985 that the formula for rent increases has been changed

Some see the council vote through the lens of the Zohran Mamdani victory in the New York City mayoral election. That misses the five-year arc of progressive victories in LA, which we discussed on last week’s show. Those victories have focused heavily on tenant protections, including the pandemic-era eviction moratorium, the passage of a “just cause” eviction ordinance, and the funding of a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction

On the council floor, the legislation was pushed by the progressive renters bloc of Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martínez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Ysabel Jurado. But it is the undeniable result of years of organizing and hard work from the housing justice activists, like the members of the Keep LA Housed coalition

Housing justice activists had pushed for a 0 to 3% formula, while the landlord lobby wanted the old rules to stay in place. In the end, tenants won a huge chunk of what they wanted, but the landlords still tried to claim a partial victory, saying they defeated a more extreme proposal

The council action was based in large part by a study conducted by the Economic Roundtable, an esteemed nonprofit public benefit research organization that has long been a source of analytical foundations for L.A.’s progressive policies. The organization, which issued the report last fall, shut its doors recently after a 34-year run

LAPD has been all over the headlines lately, for all the wrong reasons. The department is refusing to release crime data, warning it could lead to public panic and bad public policy. (Um, what about Citizen?) 

Experts in public records law scoff at the LAPD assertion that withholding data is in the public interest 

Meanwhile, LAPD spends millions of dollars annually shaping public narrative

LAPD and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto are fighting to preserve the department’s right to use force on journalists at recent protests. They’ve been sharply rebuked by the courts and by a

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