In LA neighborhoods with relatively modest Black populations — like Hollywood, Woodland Hills, and Koreatown — some Black tenants are disproportionately being evicted by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), a new UCLA study finds. REITs are publicly traded companies that own commercial and residential property, including about 1.5 million housing units nationwide. Investors include the largest hedge funds on Wall Street, asset management companies like Vanguard and Blackstone, and individuals in the stock market.
Alexander Ferrer, author of the study and researcher at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, says during the COVID pandemic, landlords dealt with rental market disruptions by lowering security deposits and relaxing credit/income screenings. They started tolerating a lower occupancy rate and higher turnover rate in exchange for residents paying more rent each month.
Ferrer clarifies that these practices are colorblind, “race neutral,” and done purely for profit.
“The issue is that when … inequality is really severe and inequality is really severely racialized, that means the people who are going to be facing the impacts of this strategy are going to be disproportionately Black,” he explains.
Two sisters who’ve directly experienced this are Tai’Leah and Tay’Laur Paige. They were recently evicted from a 300+ unit property owned by Equity Residential in North Hollywood. Their two-bedroom monthly rent was $3,404, and the security deposit was $600. The space was split among three people.
Then, when the Hollywood writers and actors went on strike, they lost 50% of their income, says Tai’Leah Paige.
The city approved them for a rent relief program, which would’ve covered six months of payments. When telling Equity Residential of the available funds, Tai’Leah Paige recalls, “They refused. They would not negotiate with us. … They just would not talk to us like we were humans.”
Tay’Laur Paige adds, “The first time in court during the eviction process, they asked us if we had rent relief, and we had applied, but we were not approved. And once we were approved by the next court, we came into court with that information, and they said no.”
The process lasted nine to 10 months. The sisters didn’t pay rent the entire time because the company “closed off the payment portal, they weren't accepting any payments from us after that point.”
The Paiges then left the property. “In our court stipulation, it was still noted that they were supposed to take our rent relief, and they still have not. … $50K is now on our credit because that's what it eventually grew to,” says Tay’Laur Paige.
The sisters ended up living in hotels and their car for a few months. Now they’re residing with siblings in Orange County.
“But it just broke our hearts in general because we tried so hard to stay,” Tay’Laur Paige says.
The sisters’ credit took a hit, and Tai’Leah Paige says they have slim chances of securing another apartment, and “we're affected permanently from this situation.”
Tay’Laur Paige adds, “It just feels like a wall you can't get over because … you cannot find a job, you can't get your own apartment. It just created a whole domino effect that just keeps tumbling down. … You can't find your way to get back up,”
Tai’Leah Paige (left) appears with Tay’Laur Paige (right). Courtesy of the Paige sisters.
These stories are incredibly common in Ferrer’s research, he points out.
“Most of the folks that I talked to report … they fell behind during a moment of economic disruption, whether that was the pandemic at first or something later, like the writers strike. And then they tried to go deal with these landlords, and they were extremely unwilling to let folks get on a payment plan, let folks get current on rent, let folks make partial payments. This practice of locking folks out of the payment portal was also super common. And these really extended eviction trial processes are what really racked up really massive debts for folks. And so all the folks that I talked to had more than $10,000 of rent debt, which is historically pretty uncommon,” he explains.
For renters who’ve experienced this, their debts need to be canceled and evictions removed from their records, Ferrer proposes.
When KCRW contacted Equity Residential for comment, they said the Paige sisters never told them they were granted rent relief, though we reviewed a notice from the City of LA saying Equity had been told about the rent relief. Equity also questioned the data used in the study, and stayed adamant that their policies are race neutral.