Everyone agrees California is in the midst of an existential housing crisis. Whether it is sprawling homeless encampments, an exodus of people moving to other states, or millions being rent-burdened, the magnitude of the problem is inescapable.
The California dream has been replaced by an unprecedented nightmare. Democrats and Republicans agree.
Yet, year after year, we see no one take meaningful action to address the problem. Yes, politicians give speeches and enact rafts of bills, but the affordable housing crisis only gets more critical. One would think a serious analysis of why things have gone so wrong would ensue, but it never seems to happen.
Here’s the truth: Addressing the housing crisis requires dealing with the systemic roots of the problem. Corporate landlords are extracting so much from the population that they are impoverishing millions and rendering California the poorest state in the union. Big Real Estate is adding billionaires to their ranks while everyday Californians suffer.
How can it be that the home of America’s richest people also is the poorest? How can the state that is the most progressive in many respects allow this to happen?
The answer is simple: Corporate landlords control every lever of power in California. Our own governor is so close to Big Real Estate that he shares a joint spokesperson with the California Apartment Association (CAA), the lead landlord group. Every meaningful pro-renter bill dies early in the legislative process, or the California State Legislature passes a bill that allows 10 percent yearly increases in rents, pretending that it is rent control.
In 1995, California enacted the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act that stripped localities of the ability to expand rent control. Every year, someone introduces a bill to repeal it, and just like clockwork, Big Real Estate pounces and it dies.
Why? Corruption. Sacramento is bought and paid for by Big Real Estate. CAA has bottomless deep pockets. Their corporate vultures have coughed up hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to fight rent control in the legislature and at the ballot box.
Where does this money come from? Exorbitant rents.
How can it be that such a tiny number of billionaires are allowed to cause so much suffering and paralyze policymaking for their own benefit? Because the 17 million renters in California have little influence. Renters are misinformed by splashy ads and politicians who betray them. They get frightened into voting against their own interests.
A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that voters favor rent control by a 55 to 43 percent margin. However, this is before the onslaught of attacks and lies and disinformation that CAA will unleash before voters once again have the opportunity to vote to affirm rent control next November.
Politically speaking, Governor Newsom has played the most crucial role in preventing the adoption of rent control. California’s supposedly progressive governor has been the face of the anti-rent control campaigns in 2018 and 2020, appearing in relentless TV ads and mailers at the expense of the people.
Justice for Renters, the sponsor of a 2024 rent control proposition to eliminate the Costa-Hawkins ban on rent control, recently delivered 732,000 letters to Newsom’s office in support of a solution to the affordable housing problem.
What did the governor do? He referred the media to the CAA press flack who repeats the lies that Big Real Estate and anti-renter corporate landlords have been dishing out for so long. The people deserve better.
High rent is the root cause of the housing crisis, and there is only one way Californians can address it. We can vote. Vote for rent control next year and end the stranglehold that Big Real Estate has on California politics.
Michael Weinstein is the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest global HIV/AIDS organization.
