An excerpt from the article:

Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.

The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot. Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.

“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”

And now, totally unrelated to this, the definition of “parasitism”:

Association between two different organisms wherein one benefits at the expense of the other.