In San Pablo, California, tenants and activists have placed a rent stabilization measure on the local ballot, aiming to rein in predatory landlords. Located in Northern California, San Pablo joins Salinas and Redwood City that have pro-rent control initiatives coming before voters in November. In all three cities, activists and tenants needed to go to the ballot because local politicians were doing little, if anything, to stop unfair, excessive rents.
“Thousands of San Pablo residents stepped up to protect affordable housing,” Rhea Elina Laughlin, executive director of Rising Juntos, said at a recent city council meeting, “while corporate landlords continued to raise rents, forcing families to choose between rent and putting food on the table. When residents begged for help, this council refused to act.”
It’s an all-too-familiar theme: politicians don’t urgently address the housing affordability crisis, so tenants and activists have to take matters into their own hands – and fight Big Real Estate in the process.
The California Apartment Association, the powerful, deep-pocketed lobbying group for many of the largest landlords in the United States, will go anywhere in California to kill tenant protections, especially rent regulations. The CAA, for example, is already ramping up an effort to stop a pro-rent stabilization measure in Redwood City.
The battles in San Pablo, Redwood City, and Salinas are the ultimate underdog contests: moderate- and lower-income tenants and activists versus multi-billion-dollar real estate companies, including their aggressive enforcer, the California Apartment Association. Big Real Estate will spend any amount necessary to kill the measures.
Between 2018 and 2024, for example, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, and a broad coalition of housing justice groups, labor unions, and social justice organizations placed three measures on the state ballot to repeal or reform statewide rent control restrictions in California. In total, corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association raised nearly $267 million to successfully oppose the initiatives.
And the underdogs will not only deal with heavily funded opponents. They’ll also face relentless misinformation campaigns that aim to trick and confuse voters.
In Mountain View, a few years ago, the California Apartment Association, funded by corporate landlords, tried to repeal renter protections through a ballot measure by actually saying it would be a good thing for tenants. In that case, residents didn’t fall for Big Real Estate’s lies.
“Mountain View voters were not fooled by the apartment owners’ deceptive campaign to place the sneaky repeal on the ballot,” said then-Mayor Lenny Siegel.
During the ballot measure battles between 2018 and 2024 to end statewide rent control restrictions, the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords were constantly rolling out deceptive, high-priced advertisements.
In San Pablo, the California Apartment Association has already been working over the city council, successfully lobbying for the repeal of the city’s rent registry and defanging a pro-tenant eviction ordinance – a rent registry is a vital tool for tenants and local government to know exactly who owns rental properties, to more easily spot multiple violations of tenant protections by a landlord, and, among other things, to understand how many apartments each landlord owns in a municipality.
In a few weeks, the CAA and corporate landlords will ramp up their campaign to kill the pro-tenant ballot measure in San Pablo. The underdogs will need as much help as they can get.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative reporter and the advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.
(Photo from Rising Juntos Facebook page.)