Your rent could go up today
Tomo Chien
February 01, 2024
Good morning. It’s Thursday, and I’m stoked to bike to class today in the rain. And then again next week, in worse rain. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.
1.
Your rent could go up starting today, thanks to the end of pandemic-era rent freezes. Bear with me here. If you live in rent-controlled housing — generally anything built before October 1978, which makes up about 75% of the city’s housing stock — your rent can go up by 4% annually. If your landlord pays your gas and electricity bills, that number goes up to 6%. Go to this link, plug in your address, open the “Housing” tab and look at the “Rent Stabilization Ordinance” field to see whether your apartment is rent-controlled. There’s a long list of caveats and exceptions to all of this: Click the article linked below for the details.
2.
Zuck got grilled. Washington lawmakers hauled an impressive roster of California tech executives to a Senate hearing yesterday — ostensibly to question them about their commitment to child safety on social media platforms — and reserved their harshest criticism for Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. One senator accused Zuckerburg of having “blood on his hands” in reference to teen suicides linked to Instagram use, and another said Zuckerberg is “wandering around in the foothills of creepy” by collecting users’ personal data to inform Meta’s algorithms.
3.
California lawmakers unveiled a slate of reparations bills that call for the state to restore property seized in “race-based” cases of eminent domain and a potentially unconstitutional measure to fund programs for specific groups based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Notably, the proposals don’t include calls to directly compensate descendants of Black slaves with cash. The bills will likely face a steep battle in the state Legislature — never mind their potential legal troubles.
4.
Twenty-five California counties sued Tesla, claiming the electric vehicle giant is mishandling hazardous waste at its facilities. The lawsuit, which includes LA County, alleges that Tesla fails to label dangerous waste like brake fluid, used batteries, antifreeze and diesel fuel, then sends it to landfills that can’t accept hazardous material. This isn’t Tesla’s first go. In 2019, the company settled with the Environmental Protection Agency over alleged federal hazardous waste violations at its Fremont factory.
5.
California lawmakers love to introduce bills that probably won’t pass — if you read this newsletter every day, you probably already know that. But sometimes, lawmakers say, passing the bill isn’t the point. “I used to always introduce what I call ‘diarrhea bills,’ to give people a heart attack or to just try to get attention on an issue,” said one former lawmaker. That’s great. Good for them. Here’s the catch: The diarrhea isn’t free. It costs roughly $30,000 in taxpayer money to get a single bill from introduction to passage, because a whole roster of paid staff needs to draft and analyze the legislation.