Community Investment Department of Los Angeles is a bit like rummaging through the trash bin at a farmers’ market. You’re going to find some bad apples.

“There are good operators and bad operators, those that are exploitative and those that aren’t,” says Daniel Gomez, Director of Code Enforcement at HCIDLA. “To say ‘slumlords’ isn’t right anymore. Bad operators today are those that look only at the potential of the property, not the property itself.” In other words, where bad landlords used to be cheap, now they’re greedy.

He estimates that about 95 percent of the landlords in LA are good, decent, non-predatory. The other five percent are what he refers to as “bad actors.” In response, HCIDLA is beginning to focus its work on identifying and isolating bad actors. But how do you pick out the worst among the city’s tens of thousands of landlords?

Read More: https://la.curbed.com/2017/5/31/15715266/la-worst-landlords-tenant-law