tenant

WASHINGTON — With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a property-rights claim from Los Angeles landlords who say they lost millions from unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Without comment, the justices said they would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who said they rent “over 4,800 units” in “luxury apartment communities” to “predominantly high-income tenants.”

They sued the city seeking $20 million in damages from tenants who did not pay their rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They contended the city’s strict limits on evictions during that time had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.

In the past, the court has repeatedly turned down claims that rent control laws are unconstitutional, even though they limit how much landlords can collect in rent.

But the L.A. landlords said their claim was different because the city had effectively taken use of their property, at least for a time. They cited the 5th Amendment’s clause that says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”

“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the most onerous eviction moratoria in the country, stripping property owners … of their right to exclude nonpaying tenants,” they told the court in GHP Management Corporation vs. Los Angeles. “The city pressed private property into public service, foisting the cost of its coronavirus response onto housing providers.”

“By August 2021, when [they] sued the City seeking just compensation for that physical taking, back rents owed by their unremovable tenants had ballooned to over $20 million,” they wrote.

A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision dismissed the landlords’ suit. Those judges cited the decades of precedent that allowed regulation of property.

The court had considered the appeal since February, but only Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case of GHP Management Corp. vs. City of Los Angeles.

“I would grant review of the question whether a policy barring landlords from evicting tenants for the nonpayment of rent effects a physical taking under the Taking Clause,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual criteria. … The Court nevertheless denies certiorari, leaving in place confusion on a significant issue, and leaving petitioners without a chance to obtain the relief to which they are likely entitled.”

The Los Angeles landlords asked the court to decide “whether an eviction moratorium depriving property owners of the fundamental right to exclude nonpaying tenants effects a physical taking.”

In February, the city attorney’s office urged the court to turn down the appeal.

“As a once-in-a-century pandemic shuttered its businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles employed temporary, emergency measures to protect residential renters against eviction,” they wrote. The measure protected only those who could “prove COVID-19 related economic hardship,” and it “did not excuse any rent debt that an affected tenant accrued.”

The city argued the landlords are seeking a “radical departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.

“If a government takes property, it must pay for it,” the city attorneys said. “For more than a century, though, this court has recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights solely by virtue of regulating them.”

The city said the COVID emergency and the restriction on evictions ended in January 2023.

In reply, lawyers for the landlords said bans on evictions are becoming the “new normal.” They cited a Los Angeles County measure they said would “preclude evictions for non-paying tenants purportedly affected by the recent wildfires.”

Alleging widespread and egregious violations of housing and tenant laws, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued Southern California real estate tycoon Mike Nijjar in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday.

In the lawsuit, Bonta accused Nijjar, family members and their companies of subjecting tenants to vermin infestations and overflowing sewage, overcharging them and violating anti-discrimination laws.

The suit says that Nijjar is one of California’s largest landlords, operating multibillion dollars in holdings. Nijjar family companies, commonly known as PAMA Management, own 22,000 rental units, primarily in low-income neighborhoods in Southern California.

The suit follows a more than two-year California Department of Justice investigation into Nijjar’s holdings, Bonta said.

“PAMA and the companies owned by Mike Nijjar and his family are notorious for their rampant, slum-like conditions — some so bad that residents have suffered tragic results,” Bonta said in a statement. “Our investigation into Nijjar’s properties revealed PAMA exploited vulnerable families, refusing to invest the resources needed to eradicate pest infestations, fix outdated roofs and install functioning plumbing systems, all while deceiving tenants about their rights to sue their landlord and demand repairs.”

Bonta is seeking penalties against Nijjar and his family business entities, restitution for tenants, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and injunctive relief barring Nijjar and PAMA from continuing unlawful business practices.

A representative for Nijjar said he forcefully rejects the claims in the lawsuit.

“The allegations in the complaint are false and misleading, and its claims are legally erroneous,” Nijjar attorney Stephen Larson said in a statement. “We look forward to demonstrating in court that Mr. Nijjar and his companies are not only compliant with the law, but they provide an extraordinary service to housing those disadvantaged and underserved by California’s public and private housing markets.”

Nijjar’s real estate empire has long been on authorities’ radar.

In 2020, LAist detailed wide-ranging dangerous conditions at Nijjar’s properties dating back years, including a fire at a PAMA-owned mobile home in Kern County that resulted in the death of an infant. The mobile home was not permitted for human occupancy, according to the report and Bonta’s lawsuit. Two years later, The Times wrote a series of stories about Chesapeake Apartments, a sprawling 425-unit apartment complex in South L.A., where Nijjar’s tenants complained of sewage discharges, regular mold and vermin infestations and shoddy repairs. Chesapeake had the most public health violations of any residential property in L.A. County over the previous five years, according to a Times analysis at the time.

Prior attempts at accountability for Nijjar and his companies have been spotty and ineffective. After the 2016 mobile home fire that killed the infant in Kern County, the California Department of Real Estate revoked the licenses associated with Nijjar’s company at the time. In response, Nijjar and family members reorganized their business structure, the suit said.

The L.A. city attorney’s office resolved a nuisance abatement complaint against PAMA at Chesapeake in 2018, only for the widespread habitability problems to emerge. A similar case filed by the city attorney’s office against a PAMA property in Hollywood remains in litigation more than three years after it was filed. In the meantime, Nijjar’s companies have settled multiple habitability lawsuits filed by residents.

Bonta said that PAMA has taken advantage of lax and piecemeal accountability efforts and its low-income tenants’ vulnerability. Most residents, he said, have low or fixed incomes with few alternatives other than to endure the shoddy conditions in their rentals.

The lawsuit alleges that the habitability problems at PAMA properties are “ongoing business practices” — the result of decisions to make cheap repairs rather than necessary investments in maintenance, the use of unskilled handymen, lack of staff training and failure to track tenant requests.

“Nijjar and his associates have treated lawsuit after lawsuit and code violation after code violation as the cost of doing business and have been allowed to operate and collect hundreds of millions of dollars each year from families who sleep, shower, and feed their children in unhealthy and deplorable conditions,” Bonta said. “Enough is enough.”

Besides tenants’ living conditions, the suit alleges Nijjar and PAMA have induced residents into deceptive leases, discriminated against tenants on public assistance programs and issued unlawful rent increases.

The suit contends PAMA’s leases attempt to invalidate rights guaranteed under law, including the opportunity to sue and make repairs the landlord neglected and deduct these costs from the rent. The company has told Section 8 voucher holders that there are no units available when others are being rented to applicants without vouchers, the complaint said.

The case alleges that PAMA has violated California’s rent cap law on more than 2,000 occasions. The law limits rent increases to 5% plus inflation annually at most apartments. PAMA, the suit says, shifted mandatory shared utility costs, which used to be paid by the landlord, onto tenants’ bills in an attempt to evade the cap. The combination of the new utility costs and rent hikes resulted in total increases of up to 20%, more than double the allowable amount, according to the suit.