Meet Ysabel Jurado, tenant advocate running for LA City Council

On a November afternoon last year, people filled a Los Angeles City Council chamber to capacity. Most were there to ask council members to restart rent hikes on rent-stabilized apartments and end a nearly four-year freeze on raising rents. 

Ysabel Jurado was not. She was there to ask council members for the opposite — a six-month extension of the rent freeze on rent-stabilized units, which account for about 75 percent of the city’s rental stock.

“Every year with rent-controlled units, the rents go up 3 percent, but the wages each year don’t,” Jurado, an attorney, said during the Nov. 1 hearing, speaking during public comment. 

Jurado is currently running for L.A.’s 14th District City Council seat, which represents Downtown Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, part of Highland Park and other parts of northeast L.A. 

In November, Jurado will face a runoff election against Kevin de León, the incumbent who has faced widespread criticism since an audio recording of him and other council members making racist and discriminatory comments rocked City Hall. 

As of March 29, when Los Angeles County certified results from the March 5 primary election, Jurado garnered 24.5 percent of the vote. De León trailed with 23.4 percent. Eight candidates appeared on the ballot.

Most of Jurado’s talking points involve housing. If elected to the L.A. City Council in November,  Jurado wants to tie rent control increases to wages, expand public housing and support a vacancy tax on empty properties, all of which would affect multifamily owners and developers. 

On paper

Jurado was born in Highland Park, a neighborhood of Northeast L.A.. 

“I’ve watched as my neighbors and historic, legacy businesses have been priced out because of luxury real estate developers who build fancy condominiums only the very rich can afford,” she said in a candidate statement. 

Jurado, who also speaks the Filipino dialect of Tagalog, studied political science and government, and subsequently law, at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

After graduating law school in 2019, Jurado was a legal fellow at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a legal nonprofit based in Koreatown, representing “tenants in housing matters and transactional assistance to local small businesses and nonprofits,” according to her LinkedIn profile. Jurado passed the bar in 2020, California State Bar records show. 

At the time, Jurado supported a commercial eviction moratorium, which blocked landlords from evicting commercial tenants that failed to pay rent during the pandemic. 

Jurado is listed on the ballot as a tenants rights attorney, though her most recent work experience was unrelated. 

In 2021, she joined private law firm Gundzik Gundzik Heeger working in transactional law — court records show Jurado has worked with trademark cases and local businesses. She worked at Gundzik for two years before announcing her campaign for District 14. 

Industry funding

The real estate industry has largely favored De León, according to a TRD analysis of L.A. city campaign contributions. 

Aron Harkham, the son of hotelier Efrem Harkham, who bought two mixed-use properties totaling 41,000-square-foot in Highland Park in 2022, donated $900 to De León’s campaign. 

Many donors have real estate stakes in the 14th District. Steve Needleman, who runs Anjac Properties, a major Downtown L.A. landlord, also donated to De León. 

Another De León donor was Shep Wainwright, who runs studio developer East End Capital, which bought a 15-acre site on the edge of Downtown L.A.’s Arts District for $240 million.

No prominent developer backed Jurado’s campaign with cash — only four individuals affiliated with real estate donated to her campaign. 

Jurado lost her bid to extend the rent freeze. 

In a 3-2 vote, the L.A. City Council committee authorized owners of rent-stabilized properties to hike rents by 4 percent — the full City Council approved the measure a few weeks later. 

But if Jurado was a City Council member, and held a seat on the Housing and Homelessness Committee, the vote would have ended differently.