A little more than a week ago, the Daily Mail, in England, reported that billionaire corporate landlord Stephen Schwarzman (pictured in top hat above) was gearing up for a “lavish party” in Scotland that would feature dancers, magicians, puppeteers, an outdoor restaurant, Highland cows, a fancy BBQ area, old-fashioned street lamps, a make-shift stage, and more than 200 security guards. Schwarzman, widely known for his swanky parties, paid for all that with tenants’ hard-earned cash.
Schwarzman is the CEO of Blackstone Group, one of the largest corporate landlords in the world. He’s made his billions by charging excessive rents and carrying out aggressive evictions. The United Nations actually cited Blackstone as playing a major role in fueling the global housing affordability crisis. Yes, global.
United Nations housing experts Leilani Farha and Surya Deva wrote in a 2019 letter to Schwarzman: “Blackstone’s and its subsidiaries’ business model is pushing low-income, and increasingly middle-income, people from their homes. Blackstone’s practices… have abruptly increased rental payments of single-family rentals, making them unaffordable for millions of existing residents, decreased the availability and affordability of social housing, and has undertook aggressive evictions to protect rental income streams to satisfy investors.”
Blackstone has also spent millions in campaign cash to kill three pro-tenant ballot measures in California: Proposition 10 in 2018, Proposition 21 in 2020, and Proposition 33 in 2024. All of them sought to repeal or reform statewide rent control restrictions, which would have impacted Schwarzman’s ability to charge outrageous rents – and to pay for his swanky parties.
Schwarzman, whose good friend is Donald Trump, is known to live the high life through his rental properties. He threw a party for his 70th birthday party in Palm Beach, Florida, that reportedly cost as much as $20 million – “Steve loves parties,” world-famous art dealer Larry Gagosian told Bloomberg. He has multi-million-dollar mansions in the south of France, the United Kingdom, Newport, Jamaica, East Hampton, Palm Beach, and New York City. He owns a $400-million superyacht, called “Destiny.” And, of course, he flies all over the world in a luxurious private jet.
While Schwarzman is living it up, tenants around the world can barely pay for one- and two-bedroom apartments because of the excessive, unfair rents he charges – and if they can’t cough up the cash, his tenants end up on the street.
In California, for example, a wide-ranging University of California San Francisco study found that wildly inflated rents are the main cause of homelessness.
“People are homeless because their rent is too high,” Dr. Margot Kushel, the lead investigator of the study, told the Associate Press.
Schwarzman doesn’t seem too worried about that. After all, with his billions, he could have spent $400 million on building affordable housing across the United States, rather than buy a luxury hotel that floats.
In fact, Schwarzman will never be worried about his company’s harmful impact on tenants around the world – he just wants to squeeze every last penny out of them.
But, he knows that rent control can change all that. He knows that rent control is the only thing that can rein in his predatory business practices. That’s why he spent millions to kill Prop 10, Prop 21, and Prop 33 in California. Schwarzman knows that rent control works.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative reporter and the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.