Southern California's expensive housing market is going to get a lot more competitive after deadly firestorms torched more than 12,000 homes and other structures in the Los Angeles area, leaving tens of thousands of people without a place to stay.

Some social media users have reported seeing rent increases of $2,000 after fires devastated the Los Angeles area. Here's what we know abou the rent-gouging.

“just a quick scan of zillow reveals a few egregious instances of price gouging by landlords and agents. this is illegal,” someone else noted, highlighting one listing that was originally priced at $7,500 per month in late October and as of Jan. 11, went up to $11,000.

Sites that host rental listings in the Los Angeles County area are scrambling to address rent gouging amid the destructive, deadly wildfires ravaging the region.

Within the week since Los Angeles’s worst-ever disaster began, rent gouging has become a crisis on top of the crisis. It’s against the law to increase a rental price by more than 10 percent once a state of emergency has been declared;

Angelenos lambast agents and landlords, but some change rates to fix tech glitches or adjust terms, others to profiteer.

Fires in Los Angeles have destroyed thousands of homes, leaving families scrambling for long-term shelter in the face of uncertainty. Real estate listing websites such as Zillow have shown many properties taken off the market during the fires, only to be put back on the market for thousands more than they were originally listed for.