Byers Speaks on Rent Stabilization Statewide as WeHo’s RSO Unit Count Awaits Update

West Hollywood Councilmember Chelsea Byers was in Sacramento last month speaking on a panel at the annual Housing California conference. She joined officials from Berkeley, Mountain View, Santa Ana, and San Jose for a discussion session titled “Lessons from the Frontlines: What Longstanding Rent Stabilization Jurisdictions Can Teach Us,” part of the three-day statewide gathering at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center.

The Rent Stabilization Ordinance in West Hollywood is famous for being among the most comprehensive in California. The City adopted it in 1985, the year after incorporation, with tenant protections being a central motivation for Cityhood. About 80 percent of West Hollywood residents are renters, a number that has remained pretty stable across the decades.

Byers said the panel’s consensus was that protecting tenants and building new housing are not competing goals.

“We all agree — we can, and must, protect tenants AND build new housing to address the affordability crisis,” Byers said on Instagram after the conference.

But six days after Byers returned from Sacramento, West Hollywood’s own Rent Stabilization Commission spent most of its March 26 meeting asking about RSO unit data the City hasn’t compiled into a public report since 2017.

Leona Rollins, West Hollywood’s Rent Stabilization Manager, came prepared. West Hollywood rents are softening – a bit, she told the commission, but don’t mistake modest relief for affordability. Studios are running $2,200 to $2,300 per month, a slight decrease of under 1 percent. One-bedrooms $3,200 to $3,300, roughly flat. Two-bedrooms have settled around $4,000. Larger units remain a premium with limited supply. Commission Chair Frank Rorie Jr. asked whether the figures reflected only rent-stabilized units or all rentals in the City. Both, Rollins said — the data combines rent-stabilized and market-rate units Citywide.

For context, the median two-bedroom rent across Los Angeles County hit a four-year low of $2,167 in the same period. More than 15,000 new multifamily units came online countywide in 2025. Vacancy rates are up. There’s more supply than demand, and tenants have a little more leverage than they did a year ago. West Hollywood is feeling some of that. Not much, but some.

Rollins said the City isn’t seeing sharp upward pressure on rents the way it did coming out of the pandemic. That’s the good news. At $3,119 for a two-bedroom, West Hollywood still runs nearly $1,000 more per month than the LA County median.

Commissioner Kaitlin McCafferty raised the point many residents bring up. New development gets the credit for softening rents region wide. But that new supply isn’t rent-stabilized. ‘There’s no new rent-stabilized units,’ McCafferty said.

Rollins said new development does nothing for tenants at the extremely low income level — households of one earning $31,000 or less per year. Those tenants depend on existing rent-stabilized stock to stay housed.

“When you’re able to maintain your housing,” Rollins said, “they don’t have to worry about making tough decisions, like, do I have to pay for medication this month, do I have to pay for groceries this month.”

Commissioner Agassi Topchian asked Rollins to pull five years of data on rent-stabilized units that were demolished, how many replacement units were built, and what those replacement units rent for now. Rollins said the City doesn’t currently have that data compiled but could pull it from its database.

“Even if a duplex is demolished, we wouldn’t give two units back,” Rollins said. “And if we usually do get two units back, we’re not getting the same amount of square footage.”

Commissioner Kimberly Copeland asked about Ellis Act properties, buildings where tenants are kicked out under the guise of redevelopment but then the structure sits vacant. She asked how many are currently in that pipeline. Rollins said she envisions bringing back a full picture: units lost through demolition, units lost through the Ellis Act, and whether the City ultimately gained or lost affordable housing through those transactions.

“Is there any sort of benefit to the community for us to lose rent-stabilized units in order to build more units?” Rollins said. “In some situations, it’s not realistic.”

The last time the City counted was in its 2017 Housing Report, which found that 764 rent-stabilized units had been removed from the West Hollywood rental market between 1986 and 2016. No update has been published since. A new one isn’t expected until spring 2027. WEHOonline reached out to Byers to ask whether the City’s decade-long lapse in published housing data concerns her. She had not responded by publication time.

The current allowable annual rent increase under the West Hollywood Rent Stabilization Ordinance is 2.25 percent, in effect through August 2026.

The next Rent Stabilization Commission meeting is Thursday, April 9, at 7 p.m. in the West Hollywood Park Public Meeting Room at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd.