Billionaire landlord Sam Zell is the personification of corporate greed.

The Co-Founder and Chairman of Equity Residential, a Chicago-based real estate investment trust (REIT), Sam owns 303 properties totaling 78,280 apartments in San Francisco, Southern California, New York, and other cities.

Ask any of your friends and neighbors to check their rent statement: Sam and Equity Residential are most likely their landlords.

Despite owing his vast wealth to millions of tenants across the country, Sam takes great pride in using the money gained from his rental properties to stop tenants’ protections dead in their tracks.

In fact, Sam is one of the powerful forces behind Big Real Estate’s multi-million-dollar push to stop the Rental Affordability Act, the November ballot measure that expands rent control in California.

• In 2018, Sam and Equity Residential was the fourth largest political contributor to stop Proposition 10, which also attempted to expand rent control in California.
• Aptly nicknamed the “Grave Dancer,” as he relished in buying distressed properties and getting rich off the bad fortunes of others, Sam isn’t just your run of the mill dirty landlord--- he is diabolical and predatory.
• Sam’s Equity Residential aggressively pushes tenants out of rent-controlled apartments and mobile homes in order to dramatically raise rents once they move out.
• Sam and his buddy Tom Bannon, CEO of California Apartment Association, have been fueling California’s housing affordability and gentrification crises, which have been especially slamming people of color.
• Read the full exposé on Sam Zell here.

Join our fight against greedy corporate landlords, like Sam, and learn how you can help enact responsible rent control in California.