The Real Dirt is a monthly column by award-winning advocacy journalist Patrick Range McDonald that exposes the real estate industry’s lies, scams, and other unscrupulous acts, which impact the lives of millions.
This month, Housing Is A Human Right published an exclusive article about Big Tech executives and venture capitalists funding California YIMBY’s recent work to kill tenant protections. It’s more proof that California YIMBY is anything but a housing justice group, although the organization tries to frame itself that way.
Between 2023 and 2024, Arista Networks founder Kenneth Duda, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, Quizlet founder Andrew Sutherland, venture capitalist John Danner, Pantheon Systems co-founder David T. Strauss, Additive AI CEO Dwight Crow, AirGarage founder Scott Fitsimones, Prisms of Reality founder Anurupa Gangly, and Alloy chief revenue officer Laura Spiekerman, among others, shelled out at least $1,000 each to the California YIMBY Victory Fund. That’s a political action committee used for California YIMBY’s anti-tenant advocacy and to buy political influence by delivering campaign cash to state and local elected leaders.
While Big Tech executives and venture capitalists were throwing major cash at the California YIMBY Victory Fund – Kenneth Duda and his wife contributed a total of $200,000, for example – California YIMBY teamed up with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords to kill a pro-rent control ballot measure in 2024.
This year, California YIMBY partnered with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords again to successfully stop the enhancement of tenant protections, including rent control, through a state bill called AB 1157. The California Apartment Association even publicly thanked California YIMBY for its anti-tenant work.
In the past, California YIMBY had been vague about where it stood on rent regulations, but in 2024 and 2025, it clearly embraced the California Apartment Association and Big Real Estate’s greed-driven, anti-rent control agenda. YIMBY Action, another major YIMBY group in California, also worked with the CAA and corporate landlords to stop the 2024 ballot measure and the 2025 pro-tenant bill.
Speaking of YIMBY Action, it took major cash from corporate landlords to fund a “YIMBY Prom” in the fall of 2024. So while housing justice groups, social justice organizations, and civic leaders such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and labor and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta were fighting the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords to pass the pro-rent control ballot measure, YIMBY Action was partying hard in a swanky venue in San Francisco with Big Real Estate’s money. Housing Is A Human Right published an exclusive article about the scandal.
Not a good look for YIMBY Action: it’s partying with corporate landlord cash while the poor and middle and working class tenants struggle to pay unfair, excessive rents and face the real possibility of homelessness. Same goes for California YIMBY and its uber-wealthy donors in Big Tech and venture capitalism.
Following California YIMBY, the California Apartment Association, and corporate landlords’ money is actually not difficult to do, and Housing Is A Human Right gave some tips earlier this month with an excellent post thread at X. Readers should check it out.
You can find information about contributions to California YIMBY and the California Apartment Association at the California Secretary of State’s website, using a tool called Cal-Access. You’ll see which politicians are taking campaign cash from California YIMBY and the California Apartment Association, and you’ll see who’s contributing to those organizations, which act like a middle-men for their contributors.
For example, a corporate landlord will contribute $55,000 to a California Apartment Association political action committee. Then that CAA committee sends the corporate landlord’s money to a politician. So it’s really corporate landlord cash that a politician is taking, not merely the California Apartment Association. That’s how political influence works in California.
Until next time…
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