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The clumsy, lumbering Goliath that is the corporate real estate cartel is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. It is always a question whether being arrogant makes you dumb or being dumb makes you arrogant.
The California Apartment Association (CAA) is controlled by billionaire oligarch landlords. This cartel has extracted hundreds of billions of dollars out of poor and middle-income people for way too long. Unfortunately, no one has been able to muster the clout to take them on. The sheer magnitude of their fortunes has frozen the status quo in place despite the grave pain they have inflicted on so many.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has the ability and the will to fight them. AHF’s audacity is beyond the comprehension of these corporate vultures. Having challenged them twice at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020—and facing another rent control initiative in 2024—the empire decided to strike back.
The political stooges who feed off the billionaire landlords hatched what they thought was a brilliant scheme: Let’s squelch AHF for good by putting an initiative on the ballot that would choke their advocacy air supply. Let’s punish them for sticking up for the 17 million defenseless California renters. And so, Proposition 34 was hatched. Proposition 34 would strip AHF of its tax-exemption and licenses, and prevent its leadership from working in the healthcare sector for 10 years.
Never mind that the U.S. and California constitutions have specific Bill of Attainder provisions that render such punitive laws against a single organization illegal. Might makes right. The CAA thought they could ram it through or, at a minimum, scare off AHF and divide its focus.
And so, Proposition 34 was written in a deceptive way. On the surface, it claimed to be about protecting patients, but it hasn’t passed the smell test. The CAA thought that the media and the voters were so stupid that they would fall for this obvious ruse.
It hasn’t worked. The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Diego Union Tribune, and many other publications have condemned Proposition 34. The Times called it a “new low.” The Mercury News referred to it as “revenge of the landlords.” And the Chronicle described it as “cheap political gamesmanship that doesn’t belong on the ballot.”
Far from harming AHF, Proposition 34 has boomeranged against CAA. Instead of distracting AHF from its mission of giving relief to struggling renters, it has exposed CAA for what it is: a collection of greedy billionaire corporate landlords.
It is much harder to confuse the voters about rent control when your true selfish motives are so exposed. The stink of CAA attempting to kneecap the largest AIDS organization in the world that also leads the fight for renters’ rights cannot so easily be eliminated. They have gone too far: Everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes and desperately needs a shower.
The billionaire landlords are on the road to spending $200 million on Propositions 33 and 34. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is a small fraction of the money that they bleed from their tenants.
However, money doesn’t always win in California politics. The landscape is littered with the carcasses of the super-rich that thought they could buy high office. Proposition 34 will go to that same graveyard on November 5th.
As craven as California politics can be, Proposition 34 is a bridge too far. It will be soundly repudiated.
Michael Weinstein is the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global HIV/AIDS organization, and AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation.
