Major Landlords Sue L.A. for $100 Million over Eviction Moratorium

GHP Management Corp. and several other companies owned by developer Geoffrey Palmer are suing the City of Los Angeles for $100 million over its eviction moratorium, saying the policy has resulted in massive losses to the firm.

The suit further alleges that the plaintiffs cannot find help from banks, who will not refinance mortgages on properties that fall under the city’s eviction moratorium.

The Biden administration and Democrats in state and local governments have cast such moratoria as measures to protect the poor, but they could hurt the poor in the long run by making it less likely that developers will build housing in Democrat-run cities, or that they will invest in low-income housing at all.

Los Angeles Times — which took care to note that Palmer is a Republican donor and Trump supporter — reports:

Palmer’s companies also contend that they will have little success in recouping losses from their tenants after the one-year grace period that follows the end of the city’s COVID-19 emergency.

“The city orchestrated a regulatory regime designed to provide a compulsory and de facto rent forgiveness to be foisted on landlords throughout the city,” the lawsuit states.

Palmer has tangled with the city before, persuading a three-judge panel in 2009 to strike down rules requiring developers near downtown to provide a specific percentage of affordable housing in their residential projects.

The case is being closely watched, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a new federal eviction moratorium, despite being told in June by the Supreme Court that it lacked constitutional authority to do so. President Donald Trump issued an initial, temporary moratorium when the pandemic first struck in early 2020.

In his recent “State of the City” address, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was recently nominated as ambassador to India, boasted that the city had passed “one of the first eviction moratoriums in the United States” in 2020.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.