Everyone in my rent-stabilized building in Los Feliz (Los Angeles) was served Ellis Act eviction notices on January 8, 2015.
The Eliis Act is despicable because, while it "permits landlords to go out of business" (this is the exact wording of the law), landlords (like mine) are able to use it as legal pretext to achieve precisely the opposite outcome. They buy up rent-stabilized buildings on the cheap in neighborhoods to which they have no personal connection, then invoke the Ellis Act to evict everyone and temporarily take the buildings off-market (falsely claiming they're going out of business). Once evictees are out of the picture, they put the buildings back on-market (open for business again!) and either flip them at a hefty profit or retenant at skyrocket rates only trust fund babies and top-salaried professionals can afford. Landlords (like mine) who own multiple rental properties set up corporate aliases for the express purpose of poaching rent-stabilized buildings and "landlording" them into temporary "off-market" status. Meanwhile, they continue collecting rents from market-rate buildings owned under *other* corporate aliases. Clearly, nobody's going "out of business" here. These greedy, unwashed assholes make themselves rich by shitting on rent-stabilized tenants who *depend* on affordable housing to maintain anything resembling a decent quality of life, and they mock the law (and renters' lives) in the process. It's yet another illustration of good ol' American economic tyranny. The Ellis Act catastrophically hobbles L.A.'s Rent Stabilization Ordinance and threatens people--many (like in my building) who are seniors and disabled--with homelessness. Enough of this already.