As Southern California deals with the wildfires that have destroyed more than 12,000 homes and displaced tens of thousands of residents, reports of rent-seeking and housing price-gouging have surfaced, resulting in legal actions.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned landlords on Saturday that state law prohibits rental price increases exceeding 10% during a declared emergency.
“You cannot jack up prices and take advantage of disaster victims, plain and simple,” Bonta stated at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.
Listings across Los Angeles have appeared with rent hikes far beyond the legal maximum.
A modern three-bedroom condo in downtown LA that was listed for $5,500 a month in October recently resurfaced on Zillow for $8,500 before being taken down, per the AP reports. Similar increases have been spotted across the city, with some properties raising rent by thousands overnight.
Tenants’ rights groups and housing advocates have called for enforcement against landlords attempting to exploit the crisis. Social media users have begun compiling reports of excessive rent increases in a shared Google document, highlighting cases such as a four-bedroom house in Encino that jumped from $12,000 a month in December to $14,000 in mid-January.
The Root of the Problem: Rent-Seeking Land Ownership and Rising Rents
The surge in rental prices amid disaster recovery efforts underscores a long-standing economic issue: the tendency of private landlords to charge the highest possible rent the market can bear.
This phenomenon was famously dissected by 19th-century economist Henry George in his book Progress and Poverty, where he argued that land speculation and private ownership of land by the few drive rents higher while preventing access to ownership for the many.
This is particularly evident in high-demand areas like California and Los Angeles, where limited housing supply and speculative investment have contributed to a homelessness and housing affordability crisis.
One proposed solution, championed by Georgist economists, is a shift toward a land value tax (LVT). Unlike traditional property taxes that penalize improvements and construction, an LVT targets the unimproved value of land itself, discouraging speculation and incentivizing the productive use of land.
A properly structured LVT could help mitigate rent gouging by reducing landowners’ ability to passively extract profit from increasing demand without contributing to the new housing stock.
As California struggles to balance emergency relief efforts with long-term economic redevelopment, discussions around alternative tax policies and economic models like land value taxation may gain renewed interest.
In the meantime, state officials continue to urge renters to report violations of price-gouging laws, and they emphasized that those exploiting the crisis for profit will face legal consequences.
The Daily Renter 
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