Something important is finally happening in California housing policy. For years, pro-housing advocates and urbanists have sounded the alarm about the state’s failure to build enough housing to meet demand, pointing to a maze of exclusionary zoning, lengthy permitting delays, and powerful local veto points that have allowed wealthier cities to block growth.
In 2025, it appears that lawmakers in Sacramento have heard that message. As CalMatters reporter Ben Christopher recently wrote, this year is “shaping up to be a banner year for pro-development legislation.”
That’s a good thing. The only way to bring housing costs under control in the long run is to increase the number of homes — especially in job-rich, high-opportunity areas where housing is still artificially scarce. This year’s crop of bills takes meaningful steps in that direction: eliminating CEQA barriers for apartment construction, streamlining the building permit process, and putting more teeth behind state mandates to allow denser development.
But while the Legislature is finally moving decisively on production, it is largely failing to meet the moment on protection. For renters — particularly low-income tenants, seniors, disabled Californians, and communities of color — the message from Sacramento is less encouraging. As we work to fix the long-term housing shortage, we’re neglecting the people who are suffering most right now.
Many of the strongest tenant protection bills introduced this session have already been shelved, delayed, or gutted.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra’s bill to tighten California’s rent cap — a modest measure that would have made existing protections more meaningful — was killed before it even received a hearing.
Assemblymember Matt Haney’s bill to limit the extra fees landlords can tack on to tenants’ monthly rent was placed on hold until next year, despite support from the state attorney general and the Legislature’s growing renters’ caucus.
Other tenant bills, like protections for tenants waiting on delayed Social Security payments or bans on rent-setting algorithms, have been scaled back to the point of near irrelevance.
State Senator Aisha Wahab, a key member of the Renters’ Caucus and chair of the Senate Housing Committee, has been at the forefront of this battle. Her bill SB 436 originally proposed to give renters up until the day of a scheduled eviction to repay what they owe and avoid losing their homes — a small lifeline for those scrambling to secure last-minute funds. That provision was removed after intense opposition from landlord groups.
Another of Wahab’s bills, SB 262, would have incentivized cities to cap rents by awarding them credit toward a state “prohousing” designation. That proposal, too, was stripped from the final bill.
“Fighting for tenants in this building is not popular and it’s not easy,” Wahab told CalMatters. “It’s always going to be an uphill battle.” She’s not wrong.
At the heart of this imbalance is a troubling political reality. Landlord and real estate interests remain some of the most powerful forces in Sacramento. The California Apartment Association, the main lobbying arm for landlords, has lobbied on more than 25 bills already this year and spent nearly $200,000 on political activity in the first quarter alone.
They even launched a targeted website attacking Wahab as “the biggest threat to California’s housing progress,” painting tenant protections as antithetical to building more homes.
This is a false dichotomy. California doesn’t have to choose between increasing housing supply and protecting renters. In fact, doing both is the only way to make a just and sustainable housing system.
A pure “supply-side” strategy may help cool prices over time, but it doesn’t help the single mom facing eviction this month. It doesn’t protect seniors on fixed incomes from being pushed out of their communities. It doesn’t prevent unjust rent hikes or predatory fees levied against vulnerable tenants today.
The split-screen approach emerging in the Legislature — bold reforms for developers, piecemeal half-measures for renters — reflects not only lobbying influence, but also a deeper structural bias in our politics. Roughly 44% of California households are renters, but they are underrepresented in every meaningful way.
Renters are less likely to vote, less likely to donate to campaigns, and less likely to attend town halls or write letters to lawmakers. That asymmetry is especially stark when compared to homeowners, who are overwhelmingly more politically engaged and financially influential — and who often view tenant protections or affordability mandates as threats to their property values.
This political imbalance creates a policy imbalance.
As CalMatters points out, California already has a statewide rent cap and eviction protections on the books — laws that put it near the top of national rankings for tenant-friendliness.
But the reality on the ground tells a different story: these protections are riddled with loopholes, inconsistently enforced, and too weak to prevent widespread displacement. Meanwhile, homelessness continues to rise, evictions are resuming post-pandemic, and cost burdens remain unbearable for millions of Californians.
Lawmakers are right to focus on production. We desperately need more housing. But that alone won’t address the profound inequality that defines the state’s housing crisis. We need a both/and approach — one that boosts supply and enshrines protections for the people most at risk of being left behind.
This is not just a question of fairness; it’s a question of effectiveness. If we allow the current system to churn through low-income renters, displacing them from cities and communities while we wait years for new market-rate housing to come online, we will entrench the very inequality we claim to solve. If we fail to stabilize renters in the short term, any long-term gains in affordability will be built atop a foundation of displacement and hardship.
Governor Newsom and legislative leaders have positioned themselves as champions of housing reform. But if they want to solve the crisis, not just streamline development, they need to match their ambition on housing production with equal urgency on housing justice.
The good news? These aren’t mutually exclusive goals. We can build faster and build fairer. But only if we recognize that protecting renters today is as important as building homes for tomorrow.
From article: “The only way to bring housing costs under control in the long run is to increase the number of homes — especially in job-rich, high-opportunity areas where housing is still artificially scarce.”
Conversely, one could argue (with far more evidence) that encouraging “job-rich, high-opportunity” areas in excess of what a given, already-developed community actually needs is what creates “artificial scarcity”. Silicon Valley comes to mind – it was already highly developed BEFORE the rise of the technology industry. The existing community likely welcomed/pursued the technology industry (and the resulting increase in home prices), before they realized that it would turn on them by funding YIMBY groups, etc. Though many of the original, middle-class homeowners have cashed in on their properties and moved elsewhere, or are dying off. (Subsequently “replaced” by those with much higher salaries/income.)
Within my lifetime, places like San Francisco and the peninsula have changed from places where “normal” people could afford to live, to one in which only the wealthy (or extremely poor/subsidized) can live. This is NOT due to a “lack of housing” – it’s completely due to pursuit of industries that end up displacing the so-called “missing middle”. I’ve seen this in action regarding my own family, and just about all of those whom I grew up with. Locales such as Davis and the Sacramento region has a high percentage of former Bay Area residents as a result of this displacement. (As far as this being an “equity” issue, I’m primarily referring to “white” people who are being semi-willingly “displaced”.)
Regarding the lack of tenant protections (the primary focus of the Vanguard article), that’s because the YIMBY “housing crisis” NEVER WAS about protection of the vulnerable. It was ALWAYS about appeasing industries and other organizations who aren’t happy when communities and/or the state as a whole aren’t continuing with the Ponzi scheme. (The fact that some are duped by the YIMBY movement shows just how ignorant some people can be.)