As the eviction moratoria in the Los Angeles market end, landlords are preparing for potential fisticuffs with violent tenants being booted for not paying rent.

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles is hosting self-defense classes for landlords and property managers, Capital & Main reported.

The landlord advocacy group hired ex-cops from the Oregon-based Health and Safety Institute to help landlords train for potential attacks from “irate tenants,” “transients” and more.

“In COVID a lot of people lost their jobs, they lost their family, and the last thing they have is their house,” Carrie Rios, a former traffic cop, told a self-defense class this month at the  association’s office in Koreatown. “You’re taking the last thing they have.

“This is their worst day. I’m not trying to scare you, but you need to be prepared for that.”

Until Feb. 1, landlords could not evict tenants in the city of Los Angeles who cited COVID-19 as the reason they couldn’t pay rent. 

The recent conflicts between tenants and landlords inspired the apartment association to host the classes, Dan Yukelson, its executive director, told Capital & Main.

Yukelson himself took the course, known as Active Violence Emergency Response Training, 

County eviction protections expire March 31, while the City of Los Angeles’ ended Jan. 31. The apartment association sued both the city and the county over their eviction protections, and had lobbied to end the eviction moratorium. 

In response, the city of Los Angeles enacted a renters protection package requiring just-cause evictions.

Enter the self-defense classes, which began last year because of concerns about increased violence against landlords. The course teaches property owners and managers how to stanch  life-threatening bleeding, maintain “360 degrees of awareness,” take cover from bullets and disarm shooters.

In one video, a former narcotics officer tells the audience to “strike the nose with an open palm” when fighting an assailant, or “push your fingers into the eyes” and to “consider scratching and biting.”

Much of the course focuses on preventing mass shootings, another reason Yukelson said the apartment association started the class.

“We’re afraid,” agrees a mom-and-pop landlady who declined to give her name because she was worried about anti-landlord bias. She and her husband tell the group they came to learn how to deal with “homeless people and tenants who get a little crazed” and “tenants who come after you with a video camera.”

In Opa-Locka, Fla., a tenant is facing charges after he allegedly shot a spear gun at his landlord last fall. In Vallejo, an 80-year-old landlord was stabbed with a sword when he attempted to evict several tenants who allegedly hadn’t paid rent.

— Dana Bartholomew