Over the last 16 months, state prosecutors have filed a handful of criminal rent-gouging charges<\/a>. But the couple\u2019s lawyer, Josh Nuni with the People’s Law Project, said to his knowledge this is the first civil rent gouging case filed by private citizens following the January 2025 fires.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to get back the money that was taken from them, and they also want to make sure to send a message to others that this shouldn’t be done to other families when they’re in times of crisis,\u201d Nuni said.<\/p>\n Learn the ins and outs behind L.A.’s housing crisis.<\/p>\n Sign up for Building Your Block, a seven-issue newsletter course from LAist that explains the obstacles around housing development in L.A. and what you can do to make things better.<\/p>\n How the alleged rent gouging began<\/p>\n Candy Renick\u2019s home in Altadena was left standing after the Eaton Fire, but it was severely smoke damaged. Until it could be professionally cleaned, it would remain uninhabitable.<\/p>\n Renick said when she started looking for temporary housing, she quickly realized thousands of other families were competing for the same listings<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI started feeling pretty desperate, like I needed to move on something fast,\u201d Renick said.<\/p>\n Less than two weeks after the fires, Renick and her daughter spotted a new Zillow listing for a three-bedroom home in Glassell Park. She said the landlords were asking for $12,990 per month on a one-year lease.<\/p>\n When Renick and her husband asked for a shorter, six-month lease, the owners agreed to a higher monthly rent of $14,938.50, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI was telling friends what we were paying and everybody was like, \u2018Are you kidding? That is crazy,\u2019\u201d Renick recalled. \u201cBut we had to do it\u2026 We were just kind of desperate to get settled so that we could move on with our lives and move on with fixing our house.\u201d<\/p>\n Candy Renick stands outside her family’s home in Altadena. <\/p>\n How rent gouging laws worked\u00a0<\/p>\n Once the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, state and local governments quickly passed emergency declarations that triggered price-gouging bans. These laws made it illegal for landlords to increase rents by more than 10% from pre-fire levels.<\/p>\n For properties that were not listed for rent before the fires, a different limit applied: Landlords offering furnished properties could not charge more than 165% of the area\u2019s fair market rent, as determined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n For the ZIP code where the Glassell Park property is located, the legal monthly limit for a furnished three-bedroom unit was $5,032.50. The Renicks paid nearly triple that amount.<\/p>\n A warning letter and a short text exchange<\/p>\n Shortly after moving in, the Renicks got a letter from the L.A. City Attorney\u2019s Office, according to the lawsuit. It alerted the tenants and the landlord that the listing may have violated post-fire rent gouging bans.<\/p>\n The letter said if the landlords were violating the law, they should \u201cimmediately lower the rental rate\u201d and \u201crefund the tenant the overcharged amount plus 10 percent interest.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the lawsuit, the Renicks texted a screenshot of this letter to their landlord, Catalina Chow, and she responded: \u201cWe did not increase rent due to the state of emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n Her text went on to say, \u201cI hope this does not apply to me. Thanks for sending anyway!\u201d<\/p>\n When LAist called Chow to ask about the lawsuit, she picked up but said she was on another call and ended the conversation. LAist was later unable to reach her or Terrence Chow, another defendant named in the complaint.<\/p>\n LAist also contacted the City Attorney\u2019s Office to ask why it did not pursue the case beyond the warning letter. No one from the office responded.<\/p>\n Why tenants are taking cases into their own hands<\/p>\n Tenant advocates have expressed disappointment over what they see as a lack of price gouging prosecution<\/a> in the wake of the Palisades and Eaton fires.<\/p>\n By the one-year anniversary of the fires, a group called The Rent Brigade had found more than 18,000 listings that appeared to have broken the law. The group found that few criminal charges were ever filed, and laws that allowed private citizens to file their own cases and gave county departments the ability to fine landlords directly went largely unused<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779992894_411_.jpeg\")
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