[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]Not only is the historically toxic subject of rent control in Culver City not on Monday evening’s 7 o’clock City Council agenda, if you held your breath until it is, you would be deader than Ariel Castro.
Councilman Jim Clarke checked in on the subject late this afternoon, and after assessing his position, Meghan Sahli-Wells remains the only Councilperson – by miles – who is remotely supportive of the rent control concept. Ms. Sahli-Wells is an enthusiastic flag-bearer for such a policy, but none of her colleagues is within hailing distance of her stance, which means that rent control remains on ice for the foreseeable future.Or until Culver City freezes over.
“You know me,” he said at the outset. “I always try to find a middle way.
“I think it is very tragic what happened to the folks in Culver City,” he said in reference to the two apartment dwellers who died suddenly last month shortly after being informed their rents would be hiked almost 100 percent.
Mr. Clarke said he was “not unsympathetic to their situation.
“But in one of those two apartment building situations, the owners had been there a long time and rents had been low. When new owners came in, they tried to make the rents closer to fair market value.
“My bottom line,” Mr. Clarke said, “is that I don’t support implementing rent control. However, I would put in requirements that any time a landlord either entertains an offer for purchase of the property, or a landlord tries to refinance his property, anything like that, the landlord would have to notify tenants at the outset.”
Mr. Clarke’s view does not ameliorate what rent control advocates assert is the root problem – gargantuan increases on vulnerable tenants, warning or not.
Mr. Clarke indicated he would not favor a cap on the amount rents could be increased “because it creates an artificial situation. I think our rents generally are lower than in surrounding communities.”
