Eviction protections in Los Angeles were designed to help tenants. They are hurting them, too. And most of the politicians who championed these policies have no idea.

As someone who works in real estate, I have watched the eviction process in Los Angeles become increasingly complicated, costly and drawn out – and the consequences fall not just on landlords, but on the tenants these policies were meant to protect. The reality is more nuanced than tenant rights advocates or left-leaning city council members are willing to acknowledge.

A process designed to delay

In L.A., the eviction process has become a prolonged ordeal. Extended notification requirements, a backlog of unlawful detainer cases in the courts, and a chronic shortage of sheriffs available to execute lawful eviction orders mean that the average eviction can stretch for many months – sometimes over a year – from the initial notice of nonpayment to the moment a unit is actually recovered.

During that entire period, a landlord receives no rent, cannot re-lease the unit, and must continue covering mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes, and maintenance. Meanwhile, the tenant remains in legal limbo: behind on rent, facing eventual judgment and accumulating a record that will follow them long after they leave.

What an eviction record really costs a tenant

Tenant advocates rightly focus on keeping people housed. What they rarely discuss is what happens after. An eviction judgment on a tenant’s record does not just affect their ability to rent another apartment – it can follow them into the job market, auto lending and other areas of financial life. For lower-income renters with limited credit history or savings, an eviction record can be effectively disqualifying.

The cruel irony is that by extending the process and deepening the legal hole a tenant falls into, these “protective” policies often worsen the long-term financial damage to the very people they are meant to protect. A faster, simpler process might result in an earlier judgment, but also an earlier resolution – and more time for a tenant to get back on their feet.

The small landlord who cannot absorb the loss

Consider the owner of a four-unit building in East L.A. who has put retirement savings into that property. When one tenant stops paying rent, that’s a 25% revenue loss. After several months of nonpayment, legal fees and the cost of repairing a unit that has not been maintained, that landlord may be looking at a five-figure loss on one tenancy gone wrong.

Large corporate landlords and institutional real estate owners can absorb this. They write losses off against income from other properties or businesses, spreading the pain across dozens or hundreds of units. For the small landlord – who according to census data represents the majority of rental housing in L.A. – there is no such buffer. The consequence is predictable: small landlords become significantly more risk-averse in tenant selection. When screening applicants, they raise their income thresholds, tighten their credit requirements and become less willing to give the benefit of the doubt to marginal applicants – often the exact lower-income renters most in need of stable housing.

The policies meant to protect vulnerable tenants are, in practice, narrowing the pool of landlords willing to rent to them.

Who actually benefits

If both small landlords and tenants are losing, who is winning? Two groups stand out.

First, attorneys. The more complicated and drawn out the eviction process becomes, the more indispensable legal representation becomes on both sides. Landlords pay eviction attorneys. Tenants are represented by legal aid organizations funded in part by the City of Los Angeles – a process the city has made increasingly necessary through its own policy choices. The legal industry profits from a dysfunction largely created by local government.

Second, large institutional landlords. As noted above, major property owners – large family offices, private equity-backed real estate funds and syndicated portfolios – have both the accounting sophistication to write off losses and the scale to treat individual evictions as a manageable operating cost.

Tenant protections that crush a small landlord are merely a line item in a large one’s annual report. In this sense, the regulatory environment inadvertently advantages the large over the small.

A better path forward

None of this is an argument against tenant protections. Renters in L.A. deserve stability, and eviction can be genuinely catastrophic for families. But good intentions are not enough. A policy that delays and complicates the eviction process without addressing the underlying causes of nonpayment – stagnant wages, insufficient rental assistance, a shortage of affordable units – does not solve the problem.

What L.A. actually needs is a faster, more transparent eviction process paired with meaningful upstream intervention: emergency rental assistance that reaches tenants before nonpayment becomes chronic, mediation resources that allow landlords and tenants to resolve disputes without the courts, and housing production policies that increase supply so that a damaged rental record is not a life sentence.

Until then, the city will continue to generate winners and losers in ways its leaders did not intend. And the losers will continue to be the people both sides claim they are trying to protect.

David Evans is a principal with Investment Property Advisers and a commercial real estate broker.