Let’s start with the facts. In California, the expansion of rent control has been on the ballot three times and has failed by a three-to-two margin each time.
Does this mean that rent control is very unpopular? No.
Every poll taken over the last six years has shown that a sizable majority of Californians agree with expanding rent control in the state. In excess of $300 million, cumulatively, was spent by billionaire corporate landlords to defeat these measures.
So, what the three elections proved is that, if you spend obscene amounts of money lying, confusing, and distorting the truth, you will win every time. Despite the tens of millions of dollars spent during these campaigns on aerial ad bombardments online and on TV, 40 percent of voters (about six million people) voted in favor of the simple notion that localities should be able to determine rent control policy, which they did until the state usurped that responsibility in 1995 at the behest of Big Real Estate.
Forty percent of voters is roughly equivalent to the number of renters in California. While every renter didn’t vote “yes” and every homeowner didn’t vote “no,” the vote represents the fact that California renters are disenfranchised. Not only did Big Real Estate outspend rent control supporters three-to-one, but they also put an initiative on the ballot—Proposition 34—to kneecap AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s rent control advocacy, which the Los Angeles Times referred to as “sleazy abuse” and every major newspaper in the state opposed. This revenge initiative siphoned off money that would have gone to the “Yes on Rent Control” campaign.
Even with all of that working against rent control supporters, we still were ahead in the polls by the second week in October. Then came the October surprise: Governor Gavin Newsom, who had told high-ranking Democrats he would stay out of the campaign this time around, started appearing in the “No on Rent Control” ads.
No announcement was made about his position, and his voice wasn’t heard in the ads. Newsom simply slid into the role he had played in the two previous rent control campaigns as the face of the “No on Rent Control” side.
Rent control supporters knew this very likely would be fatal to our campaign. Our polling told us that, despite the fact the governor was underwater in our and other surveys, 43 percent of voters were more likely to vote “no” as a result of his opposition. Knowing this back in 2023, we presented the governor with 732,000 individual letters signed by voters asking for his support.
Where you live is one of the best indicators of where you will end up in life—whether in a rich or poor neighborhood, or whether you will rent or own a home. Home ownership is the most likely road to generational wealth.
But a renter becoming a homeowner is virtually impossible for most renters today. With so much of your income consumed by rent, how can you save for a down payment or afford the sky-high price of a home these days?
With Big Real Estate scooping up private homes, California faces a future where the majority of voters will be renters.
Only five members of the state legislature are renters and 25 percent are landlords. The California Apartment Association contributes tens of millions of dollars to their campaigns. Therefore, Sacramento is where renter protections go to die.
The evidence doesn’t suggest that our elected officials care about renters. Nevertheless, the crisis of housing affordability isn’t going away or getting any better.
The rent control movement is alive and well. Every year, more cities enact or expand renter protections despite the state’s restrictions. Grassroots rent control initiatives continue springing up all over the state. The housing justice movement is here to stay, but struggles for social justice are hard-fought and take a long time.
As Martin Luther King reminded us, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Michael Weinstein is the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global HIV/AIDS organization.
Rent control is housing death
I’ve seen a lot of different studies on rent control.
This one, posted by YIMBY last year was very comprehensive…
“In “Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature,” Konstantin A. Kholodilin sums up the findings of 112 empirical studies on rent control, finding that the theoretical consensus on its effect is largely borne out by empirical research.”
Key Takeaways:
Rent control effectively caps rents within controlled dwellings, but the extent of its impact varies across countries and research methodologies.
Housing shortages, increased rents for uncontrolled dwellings, and reduced residential mobility emerge as unintended consequences of rent control.
Rent control negatively affects housing quality, and its impact on homeownership trends varies, with conflicting results from different studies.
Another key statement: “The most significant effect of rent control is, unsurprisingly, on the rents people pay: the overwhelming majority of studies find that tenants in rent-controlled units pay lower rents than they otherwise would have, while renters in uncontrolled dwellings pay higher rents and spend more time looking for housing.”
Link: https://cayimby.org/blog/a-comprehensive-study-of-rent-control/
Another key statement: “The most significant effect of rent control is, unsurprisingly, on the rents people pay: the overwhelming majority of studies find that tenants in rent-controlled units pay lower rents than they otherwise would have, while renters in uncontrolled dwellings pay higher rents and spend more time looking for housing.”
Uh, huh – you’re using paid YIMBYs as your source? Doesn’t surprise me.
But even THEY admit that (current) residents pay less than they otherwise would have in the absence of rent control. So, is the goal to lower rent for people who don’t live in a given community in the first place?
In general, I think rent control is a bad idea because it’s guaranteed to distort the market. But some local markets are already badly distorted in favor of landlords, and in those cases I believe it’s reasonable to allow the local agency or the local voters to impose rent control as a corrective measure. But the big money thinks otherwise, so rent control in California is barred except in a few grandfathered areas.
This is getting closer to where I stand at this time on rent control. There is one more critical piece – all of the rent control measures would have done is allow local jurisdictions to pass or expand local rent control. In a place like Davis, for example, with a short-term and transitory population of renters, rent control would not have a huge impact. But in places where people are having their existing rents raised more rapidly than their wages increase, it would be an important tool. Right now, the system favors one size fits all rather than allowing for reasonable local variations.