EDITORIAL CONDO COMPLEX L.A. TAKES VERY SLOW APPROACH TO PROTECTING RENTERS.

THE Los Angeles City Council got one small step closer Tuesday to passing a plan to deal with the city's condo-conversion crisis -- now that the crisis is all but over.

When the real-estate market was still soaring, there was a rash of old apartment buildings' converting to condos. Since 2001, tenants from some 12,000 units have been evicted.

This presented a real hardship for many older and disabled tenants who found themselves without a home and unable to afford a new one.

But now the market has cooled. In 2006, condo sales in the San Fernando Valley dropped 23.5 percent, the single biggest fall since 1990. And as condos get harder to sell, the rush to convert apartments will slow to a crawl.

Meanwhile, the reported outline of the council's plan doesn't seem too promising. It would require landlords to pay steep fees to evicted tenants, while making no distinctions as to the tenants' incomes or length of residency. Rich yuppies and retirees living on a fixed income would get the same treatment.

Which means the council's response -- whenever it's complete -- will be too little and too late.