The Real Dirt is a regular 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.
Big news came out of New Jersey this month: State Attorney General Matthew Platkin sued AvalonBay Communities, among other corporate landlords, for using a RealPage software program to illegally collude and charge wildly inflated rents. This is just the latest lawsuit in the ongoing RealPage scandal, which was first exposed by ProPublica in 2022.
RealPage, a Big Tech firm based in Texas, offers a software program to landlords that allows them to share information and illegally work together to set sky-high rents, fueling the housing affordability crisis. The Department of Justice has been investigating RealPage and numerous corporate landlords, and state attorneys general across the country have been filing lawsuits. Now New Jersey can be added to the list.
The RealPage scandal makes a great argument for the need to pass stronger rent regulations. Because only rent control or rent stabilization will stop corporate landlords from dramatically raising rents year after year. Nothing else will do it.
In response to the RealPage scandal, cities and states are now considering a ban on price-fixing software like RealPage’s. Housing Is A Human Right is pushing such a bill in California, and there have been similar efforts in Portland, Minneapolis, Colorado, and many other cities and states. San Francisco already has a ban in place.
Something that the mainstream media hardly ever writes about is the fact that the California Apartment Association is connected to RealPage, AvalonBay Communities, and other scandal-plagued corporate landlords. Not just connected, but actually lobbies for them and carries out their dirty work, such as running campaigns to stop pro-rent control ballot measures.
Reporters and YIMBY groups (California YIMBY and YIMBY Action, for example) routinely ignore the CAA’s anti-tenant advocacy, which includes sending millions in campaign cash to state and local politicians – and that cash comes from corporate landlords – to kill tenant protections. Why do journalists and YIMBYs stay mum? One can only guess, but there’s no valid reason for the silence.
One recent exception, though, is The Mercury News. The newspaper revealed that the California Apartment Association paid “gig workers” to show up at a City Council meeting in Concord, California, to advocate for the repeal of a rent stabilization ordinance there. The CAA tried to make it appear as if those gig workers were actually small landlords.
“Dozens of the supposed activists who turned up in ‘Repeal Rent Control’ shirts had been paid $250 to attend the council meeting and speak in support of rolling back tenant protections,” The Mercury News reported.
The CAA is always pulling such underhanded moves.
One thing that keeps popping up in the news is the concern about billionaire oligarchs using their vast wealth and power to dictate policies that will hurt the poor and middle and working class. Those oligarchs include corporate landlords. It’s a point Housing Is A Human Right made at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally on April 12 in Downtown Los Angeles. It’s yet another reason why politicians must pass solid rent regulations: it’s the most effective way to protect tenants against the oligarchs’ predatory, greed-driven business practices.
Until next time…
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