Sometime in the past several months, maybe even a year ago, the California Apartment Association, the deep-pocketed lobbying group for corporate landlords, decided to hide the names of its board of directors from the public. The CAA, helmed by CEO Tom Bannon, has never been lauded for its transparency, and now it’s taking things to a new extreme – and Californians should not be happy about it.
For years, in numerous articles, Housing Is A Human Right routinely named the names of the California Apartment Association’s board of directors to show the public who’s calling the shots at the one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the state, which has spent tens of millions of dollars in political money to kill pro-tenant legislation and ballot measures on the state and local levels.
Here’s how the CAA and Big Real Estate work together…
Many of the largest corporate landlords in the United States deliver massive amounts of cash to the California Apartment Association’s four political committees. Then carrying out a kind of shell game, the CAA distributes their money to state and local politicians through campaign contributions – in 2021, a Housing Is A Human Right special report revealed that the CAA shelled out corporate-landlord cash to elected officials in 51 out of California’s 58 counties.
The major contributors to the CAA’s four political committees have included such corporate landlords as Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential – all of whom are among the top 50 apartment owners in the nation, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.
So, unsurprisingly, the CAA’s board of directors has been largely made up of top executives from major real estate companies, including Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential. In 2023, for example, the CAA board included John Eudy of Essex Property Trust, Brian Gagan of AvalonBay Communities, and Barry Altshuler of Equity Residential.
Other board members from that time were Bradley Johnson of Greystar Management Services, Carter Powell of Camden Property Trust, and Christopher Van Ens of UDR. Greystar, Camden, and UDR are all big-time corporate landlords, and they all gave major money to the California Apartment Association.
With their millions, the CAA funnels campaign cash to politicians and goes anywhere in California to kill pro-tenant legislation and ballot measures.
The board of directors, filled with Big Real Estate executives, are obviously setting the agenda at the California Apartment Association – an agenda that impacts the state’s 17 million renters and, in certain cases, the entire population of California.
With so much on the line, the public should be able to know the names of the CAA’s board. Instead, people see a message on the CAA website that states: “2026 Board of Directors. This resource contains member-only content.” Put another way, ‘We don’t want California’s 39 million residents to know who runs our very powerful front group for Big Real Estate.’
There’s something sneaky, shady, and wrong about the CAA’s refusal to be transparent about the board, especially when it’s pushing an agenda that aims to squeeze every last cent out of seniors on fixed incomes, working-class families, students, teachers, and many other renters. And what’s the board of directors afraid of, anyway? What are the executives hiding? Why do they not want to face public scrutiny? Why do they want to hide facts and the truth? It’s like we’ve been saying for years: you can never trust anything that the CAA does or says – never.
Patrick Range McDonald is a veteran investigative reporter and the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.