What Happened
Attendance moved through the day. The first grouped roll call recorded 13 ayes, and the official record shows Imelda Padilla absent throughout, with Paul Krekorian, Curren Price Jr. and Nithya Raman absent from individual votes at different points. On Item 30, the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, Krekorian and Price were both recused, leaving 12 members voting.
Items 27 through 29, 31 through 34, and 36 through 38 were adopted together, with Item 27 sent forthwith without objection. Items 18 through 24, 26 and 41 through 44 were adopted in a second group. Item 39 passed without dissent, as did an item called by Council Member Katy Yaroslavsky. Item 15 was continued a month to Friday, October 25, at the clerk's request, because staff were working with the property owner to bring the site into compliance.
Item 30 — Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance (CF 14-0268-S18). The Housing and Homelessness Committee report, initiated by a Raman–Harris-Dawson–Soto-Martinez motion, directs the City Attorney to draft amendments to the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance (Ordinance No. 187109). The amendments narrow the definition of tenant harassment to a landlord's "knowing and willful" bad faith course of conduct — defining bad faith as willful, reckless or grossly negligent conduct — and rewrite the enumerated examples, including reducing or threatening to reduce housing services required by a lease and failing to timely complete necessary repairs. Two competing amending motions were on the floor, and the Council took them in sequence before adopting the item as amended without dissent, to applause from the chamber.
Amending Motion 30B, presented by Council Member Monica Rodriguez and seconded by Traci Park and John Lee, would have struck sections from the package. Rodriguez grounded it in "a confidential report before us today that provided guidance on helping to provide the appropriate amendments," calling it the responsible course "whether popular or unpopular." It failed 4-8, with Hernandez, Heather Hutt, Hugo Soto-Martinez, Yaroslavsky, Kevin de León, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Raman and Tim McOsker opposed. Immediately after the tabulation Bob Blumenfield said "I meant to hit the no," and the clerk restated the result for the record as 3 ayes and 9 noes; the official record retains the 4-8 tally.
The opposition attacked both the substance and the basis for it. Eunisses Hernandez objected to "looking at amendments that strike complete sections out of this ordinance based on a report that has not been public," said the Council had all read the report and "it does not say that," and argued the thousands of filings under the original ordinance showed it "did not cover what it needed to cover and it did not give it the teeth that we need to enforce." Soto-Martinez, identifying himself as "the only renter here in City Council," said he had filed a complaint with the Housing Department the week before and his landlord had entered his apartment to take photographs. "Luckily my landlord knows that I'm a councilmember," he said. "But even as a councilmember that person has power over me. If they wanted to, they could use many legal mechanisms to make my life a living hell." Another member said tenants being pushed into homelessness "is the number one reason why people become homeless," that the undocumented are targeted, and that accepting the amendment "would be a travesty for the city."
Amending Motion 30A, from Hernandez and seconded by Soto-Martinez, then passed 9-3, opposed by Lee, Park and Rodriguez. It restores four protections dropped in committee: an affirmative defense available regardless of an eviction notice, which Hernandez said matters because Rent Stabilization Ordinance units are two-thirds of the city's housing stock and the change makes them "equal protections"; changing "may" to "shall" where a tenant prevails, on the argument that "may" is too ambiguous and suppresses filings; treble compensatory damages, which Hernandez defended by analogy to workplace sexual harassment — "you don't have to be touched to experience emotional stress and damages"; and increased penalties. Blumenfield, who opposed both amendments as unnecessary given the committee process, used his time to put on the record that Section 45.43.16 should not be read to mean "that a landlord cannot raise the rent ever," asking the City Attorney to make clear on redraft that rent is not among the material terms of a tenancy that cannot be unilaterally changed.
Item 35 (CF 24-1041) was called special for a separate vote by Soto-Martinez and adopted 12-1 over his objection. It authorizes the LAPD to retroactively apply for and accept a $998,099 California Highway Patrol Cannabis Tax Fund Grant Program law-enforcement award covering July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025, plus a professional services agreement of up to $30,000 for phlebotomist services. After the roll, Hernandez asked to be recorded as a no as well; the Council President allowed the change on the floor, but the official record still shows her voting yes.
Item 40 (CF 22-1545) was called special by Rodriguez, who declined to comment and asked to proceed straight to the vote. The resolution reaffirms that the local emergency on housing and homelessness the Mayor declared on July 7, 2023 continues to exist under Los Angeles Administrative Code Section 8.33, and renews it for a further 90 days. It was adopted 12-1, with Rodriguez the lone no.
Public comment was open on Items 1 through 26, Item 30 and Items 40 through 45, and Item 30 dominated it by a wide margin. Speaker after speaker signed up for "Item 30 and general public comment," a substantial number of them speaking Spanish through the Council's interpreter, and several identified themselves as members of tenant organizations. The testimony was overwhelmingly in favor of strengthening rather than narrowing the ordinance, and members referred back to it during debate — one noting that the Council had seen "people crying in front of us" and that tenants visibly bear the emotional and mental effects of landlord harassment.