Take San Diego Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer. Add San Francisco Board President Aaron Peskin. The progressive duo have introduced legislation to regulate price-rigging and the power and influence of corporate landlords in their jurisdictions.
California renters are struggling to make ends meet. They are the popular majority and would benefit from the growth of such rental-friendly progressive politics.
The legislative efforts to regulate rent price rigging and corporate landlords follow over 30 lawsuits and a federal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into alleged collusion among some of the major property management firms to inflate rents above competitive levels in a cartel-like fashion. That is, a business model that restricts competition to inflate prices for rental housing.
We turn to Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action, which is a grassroots, member-led, statewide community organization working with more than 16,000 members across California. According to ACCE, “these cartel-like firms are using software provided by the company Real Page to set rent levels, and its use is believed to have contributed to double-digit rent increases, higher vacancy rates, higher rates of eviction, and staggering increases in homelessness across the state.”
Want a name of the biggest corporate landlords that hire these very management firms? Try Blackstone, which contracts with the property management firm FPI. As of 2021, according to ACCE, corporate entities owned as much as 45% of all rental housing units in America.
The California State Library has released data on the institutional investors’ ownership of residential properties in the Golden State.
Blackstone, the world’s biggest landlord, just purchased about 6,000 naturally occurring affordable housing units in San Diego. That’s not all. Blackstone has increased prices on some rental units between 43-64% in just two years being introduced seeks to ban use of RealPage’s price-rigging software in the city outright.
In San Diego, the direction from Supervisor Lawson Remer follows:
• Exploring litigation options against corporate bad actors.
• Doing an analysis to determine how pervasive commercial ownership of single-family residential properties is in San Diego County neighborhoods.
• Exploring local ordinances and legislation to protect renters and homeowners.
• Supporting state legislation to rebalance the housing market and limit institutional investors’ influence.
Will more California cities and counties join this fledgling trend in the coming months? Or will the moneyed interests successfully lobby lawmakers to maintain the rental status quo?
Limiting investors’ influence in politics is a big struggle in and out of California. We know that much to be true.
Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2024
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us