By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde | CalMatters
When State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo introduced a bill in March to strengthen the California Tenant Protection Act, she he asked to lower the lid rent increases of up to 5%, while closing the loopholes that landlords use to evict tenants when there is no “just cause”.
By the time his “homelessness prevention” bill moved to the Senate floor on May 31, negotiations and compromise had watered it down. The rent cap provision disappeared and several other provisions were significantly reduced.
That the bill lost some of its steam disappointed tenants’ rights groups that had made the proposal their top priority. But the measure still passed the Senate. And other tenant-friendly legislation, such as an MP’s bill Matt Haney a limit security depositsthis session is also still alive.
Those victories are evidence, advocates say, that tenants are gaining influence in the Capitol. While groups representing landlords and real estate continue to spend millions lobbying and supporting candidates, renters’ rights groups are beginning to reduce their influence.
“It’s still an uphill battle for tenants in Sacramento,” said Shanti Singh, legislative director of the Tenants Together coalition. “But at the same time, you see the tide turning.”
The change comes as housing and homelessness crises touch every corner of California, injecting a sense of urgency into potential state legislation.
Does this urgency counteract the influence of the rental sector?
Publication of housing rights groups and tenants a joint report in May quantifying the lobbying footprint of the California Apartment Association, one of the largest groups representing landlords.
big spenders
The report used data from the California Secretary of State to show that since 2017, the apartment association has spent:
Nearly $7 million directly lobbying state legislators; More than $140 million in political committees it controls, to affect state and local candidate races and ballot measures; Another $86 million in “mixed” political committees he doesn’t necessarily control.
Advocacy groups and tenants don’t come close to matching that kind of political cash. Some prominent tenant organizations in California survive on as much as several million dollars in revenue a year, according to tax filings.
“You’re talking about a fight between an American battlecruiser against a light ship,” said one member of the Assembly. Alex Leea Democrat from Milpitas.
In other ways, homeowners have been well represented at the state Capitol. Only in 2020, a quarter of California’s legislators were landowners.
Tenants, on the other hand, they don’t have much the same presence. At least five state legislators currently rent their homes. They makeup a new tenant caucus that includes Assemblymembers Haney, Lee, Isaac Bryan i Tasha Boernerplus the sen Aisha Wahaball democrats
“Renters have almost no influence in the state legislature, based on how much money is spent on … elected officials,” said Wahab, who represents Fremont.. “We can’t compete.”
Unbalanced influence in the Capitol
Tenant advocates say unbalanced political representation and the financial power of landlord and real estate lobbies are leading to slow progress in protecting tenants and weakened efforts to solve homelessness.
For example, the California Apartment Association recently told Durazo lawmakers that the proposal for stronger tenant protections and lower rent caps was unnecessary because it would amend the California Tenant Protection Act, which was also the result of many debates and compromises. before 2019 rolls around.
This tenant protection law requires landlords to have “just cause” before most evictions, and caps rent increases for tenants at 5% per year plus inflation, up to 10%. Durazo’s bill would have strengthened it.
Aisha Wahab, a Democrat running for state Senate, speaks at the 2019 San Jose Women’s March. Photo by Jim Gensheimer, special to Bay Area News Group
Debra Carlton, spokeswoman for the California Apartment Association, said in a statement that the Legislature has increased regulations on the rental industry, which restricts housing production and hurts landlords.
“I don’t know if we’ve seen anything in the last decade or so that we could count, if you will, as a complete win for the rental housing industry,” he said. “That just doesn’t happen in this Legislature.”
The apartment association also noted in its statement that the state has already expanded pandemic-era tenant protections several times in recent years, further hurting landlords.
“There is no justification for SB 567,” the association said of Durazo’s bill, “especially when hundreds of rental property owners have tenants who haven’t applied — or who haven’t qualified — for rental assistance and that three years have passed without paying the rent.”
Checks of the reality of the tenants
Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, responded that a looming recession and the pandemic justify her bill, because many tenants were pushed to the brink of eviction and homelessness and therefore need more protections.
His proposal was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Sen. Tom Umbergits president, added a condition that Durazo negotiate certain changes before the Senate votes on it.
said duration the changes to his proposal are not strange.
“That said, of course, there are huge financial interests in the opposition of the apartment association and the real estate agents,” he said. “I’m not going to deny that reality.”
Umberg, a Democrat from Santa Ana, said there wasn’t enough support in the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass Durazo’s bill with its lower rent cap, but there was support to create better mechanisms for application of the original tenant protection law.
“Even though I didn’t support the original (Tenant Protection Act), I thought that once we had a law on the books, we needed to have a mechanism to enforce that law,” he said.
Carlton defended the apartment association’s lobbying and spending.
“Like all politically active groups and individuals, we have historically supported lawmakers who understand and support the rental industry,” he said. “Lawmakers understand that over-regulating the market will not encourage housing production or encourage small owners to stay in business.”
In recent years they have bought large corporations and equity investors rising shares of rental housing throughout the country. The defenders’ study notes that some of these large investors are represented on the apartment association’s board of directors.
Carlton added that the association has spent more time defending existing protections for landlords and the rental industry than sponsoring new legislation.
Is the tide turning?
Tenant-friendly legislation has been gaining momentum.
After California passed the Ellis Act in 1985, which allowed landlords to evict tenants if the landlord no longer wanted to rent units, lawmakers added amendments requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance to displaced tenants.
Lawmakers also tried several times to amend its eviction provisions. More recently, Lee proposed adding a holding period, so landlords must own a property five years before they can invoke the law to evict tenants.
Lee said he withdrew his bill because it did not have enough votes to pass the Assembly.
Real estate groups still spent $1.1 million in 2022 to try to topple it, Lee said. During his first re-election campaign, real estate groups sent post calling Lee a “socialist democrat who lives with his mother”.
In 1995, lawmakers passed Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act to Stop the Spread of Rent Control Laws in California Cities. The law prevents communities from imposing rent controls on units built after 1995 and allows landlords to reset rent rates for rent-controlled units once they become vacant.
Lawmakers tried, but failed, several times to change the law. Recently, a measure by Wahab, a Democrat from Fremont, failed in the Senate 15-16, with nine abstentions.
Wahab noted that lawmakers did not debate the bill.
“Not a single word of opposition was mentioned in the room,” he said. “Doesn’t housing deserve a full and robust conversation?”
Although the bill failed, advocates saw a silver lining: It’s one of the few times lawmakers have had to publicly record votes on a bill related to the Costa-Hawkins Act.
“They haven’t been put in this uncomfortable position for a long time,” Singh said. “Obviously we would have preferred it to have passed, but it’s still a sign of progress.”
Political discussion points
The debate may not be over. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has tried before the Costa-Hawkins rent control exemptions were repealed, is collection of signatures for another attempt to put it on the ballot.
State Sen. MaríaElena Durazo announces her tenant protection bill at a press conference in March along with tenant advocates and residents in Los Angeles.
In 2019, when lawmakers passed the California Tenant Protection Act, it was considered the biggest expansion of tenant protections in decades.
Amy Schur, campaign director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute, said voters are now prioritizing homelessness and housing rights groups have become better organized.
“Politicians are as concerned about the issue as they are about their chances of re-election if they don’t address it,” Schur said.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu agreed, saying that when he drafted the 2019 tenant protection law, the housing crisis had not yet spread statewide. . Chiu, a Democrat, represented San Francisco in the state Assembly from 2014 to 2021.
“I asked people, ‘What are we going to do about the housing crisis?’ and I got a lot of stares,” she said.
California now has more than 170,000 homeless residents and housing prices and rents have skyrocketed. The pandemic also revealed greater needs for tenant protection, Chiu said.
Schur described increased efforts to organize tenants and build coalitions among housing justice groups in recent years. Last fall, about 30 tenant rights organizations held their first Zoom retreat to discuss plans and strategy. Durazo’s proposal emerged as one of his highest priorities.
Before the legislative committee hearings, tenant groups mounted a “herculean” on-the-ground effort, Schur said, to inform communities about the bill and when their representatives would vote on it. At least 800 tenants gathered at the state Capitol to support the bill a day before the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on it.
CalMatters data reporter Jeremia Kimelman contributed to this report.
