After Wildfires, Local Prosecutors Crack Down on Price Gouging in Housing Market
Local prosecutors say they’re cracking down on the price gouging that’s been widely reported in the media in the days after a pair of deadly wildfires swept through Altadena, the Pacific Palisades and Malibu. The blazes have destroyed, damaged or otherwise rendered uninhabitable thousands of houses — and have turned their grief-stricken, now-homeless residents into often-desperate bidders in the already superheated local housing market.
“The City Attorney’s office is evaluating approximately 650 price gouging complaints, most related to rent,” a spokesperson for Hydee Feldstein Soto tells The Hollywood Reporter.
In a statement, the newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who noted that his own office had yet to be presented by its law enforcement counterparts with price gouging cases, nevertheless explained that it would seek maximum punishment for such offensives, noting “these predatory actions are not just crimes – they are a direct assault on our community during a time of unparalleled loss and hardship.” He added he believes the illegal inflating of prices is a problem beyond the housing market, spanning an array of “essential goods and services” amid this crisis, from hotels and medical devices to veterinary care.
On Jan. 15 Soto announced her office had filed criminal charges against two men for violating the wildfire curfew established in the Palisades to prevent looting. Two days earlier, Hochman publicized a series of charges in connection to residential burglaries in the Palisades and Altadena since the onset of the fires, which combined have so far burned more than 37,000 acres and resulted in at least two dozen deaths.
The price gouging has been one of the bleak story lines to emerge even as firefighters continue to tend to hot spots. Luxury real estate agent and Netflix’s Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim — citing a state law which forbids property owners from charging more than 10 percent of the market rate in areas named in emergency proclamations — explained to BBC News that he’d encountered the issue himself on a property that had previously been asking $13,000 per month in rent. “[My client] offered $20,000 a month and he offered to pay six months upfront and the landlord said, ‘I want $23,000,’” Oppenheim said, adding: “We’re having landlords taking advantage of this situation.”
