An Altadena couple who fled the Jan. 7, 2025, Eaton Fire is now accusing their former landlords of turning disaster into a payday. In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the couple says Terrence and Catalina Chow charged them nearly three times the legal rent for a temporary home while their fire-damaged house was being remediated.
The complaint seeks restitution, civil penalties, and attorneys’ fees. The couple alleges they were shelling out roughly $15,000 a month for a short-term rental and that, by the time the lease ended, the Chows had collected about $95,758 in unlawful overcharges.
According to the suit, the Chows kept collecting the allegedly inflated rent for nearly 10 months, even after they received written warnings from both the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and Los Angeles County in February 2025. The complaint asks for compensatory damages, civil penalties of up to $30,000 per violation, and attorneys’ fees and costs, according to MyNewsLA.
What the Complaint Says
The couple, identified in the complaint as the Renicks, say they signed a lease for a Glassell Park home on Jan. 26, 2025, after evacuating their Altadena property. The listing was initially advertised at $12,990 a month, the suit says, but the landlords agreed to bump that to $14,938.50 in exchange for a shorter lease term.
That is where disaster law comes in. Emergency price-gouging rules triggered by the fires capped lawful monthly rent for furnished housing in that ZIP code at roughly $5,032, according to the complaint. By that math, the Renicks claim they were paying close to triple what the law allowed. Over the course of the tenancy, the filing calculates about $95,758 in unlawful rent overcharges, per LAist.
Why Tenants Are Filing Their Own Cases
Tenant advocates say this lawsuit is part of a brewing backlash to what they describe as weak follow-through on post-fire price-gouging rules. A report by The Rent Brigade flagged more than 18,000 rental listings as potentially illegal in the months after the Jan. 2025 fires. Separate reporting in the Los Angeles Times found that few of those cases turned into actual prosecutions.
“Our investigations into price gouging across Los Angeles have unearthed thousands of properties that have seen rental prices unlawfully increase more than 10% since the Palisades and Eaton fires,” Rent Brigade co‑founder Chelsea Kirk said in the group’s press materials. With official enforcement lagging, advocates say tenants like the Renicks are increasingly willing to test the courts themselves.
Legal Implications
At the heart of the case is California’s post-disaster price-gouging law, Penal Code §396, along with related local emergency orders. After the fires, those rules limited rent increases and, for units that were not rented before the emergency, imposed a ceiling based on a formula tied to HUD fair-market rates. That formula worked out to about $5,032 a month for the Glassell Park ZIP code, according to reporting by LAist and discussion in a Los Angeles County Board agenda.
The Renicks’ lawsuit leans heavily on those authorities. It alleges the Chows ignored written warning letters from both city and county officials, then asks the court for civil penalties, restitution, and attorneys’ fees tied to the alleged violations.
What’s Next
The tenancy ended in mid-November, and the suit says the Renicks have since moved back into their repaired Altadena home. A representative for the Chows could not be immediately reached for comment, according to MyNewsLA.
The case will now wind its way through the Los Angeles Superior Court. Tenant organizers say it could become an early test of how far private civil suits can go in enforcing California’s post-disaster rent protections when government enforcement only goes so far.
