Proposition 10 pits el pueblo against the state’s urban latifundistas
PHOTO: PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE
Californians go to the polls in November to decide a fundamental property right – who controls the rents of houses and apartments and the conditions for an eviction. They will be going up against one of the state’s – and the nation’s – most wealthy powerful corporate interest groups in doing so.
By voting for Proposition 10, Californians will cast their ballots for the right of their elected local government to control rents and evictions, not the state’s great latifundistas, the urban landlords whose postcards will have clogged their mailboxes by then, crying poor.
A win on Prop. 10 will mean local governments may extend rent control to a great many houses and apartments in cities that already have adopted rent control, such as San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Los Angeles. For others, it will mean that, when passed, local rent control will cover hundreds of thousands of units that otherwise would have been exempt.
At issue is the repeal of the notorious Costa-Hawkins Act, passed in 1995 with the backing of the California Apartment Association. At a time when major California cities were bringing their rent-control ordinances up to date, the CAA used its influence in the state legislature to hamstring those ordinances and all ordinances passed thereafter.
Among other things, the “landlord lobby,” as it is often referred to, got state legislators to limit rent control to the year the local ordinance was passed or before – and in any new locality adopting rent control to 1995 or before.
That meant San Francisco had to cap rent control to apartments built before 1978, when its ordinance was passed, now half a century ago. Everything built afterwards was exempt.
The landlord lobby also got legislators to exempt rented single-family homes and to drop rent control on an apartment whenever the tenant moved out. The CAA ludicrously now points to people’s staying put even when they can afford a higher rent as a reason “rent control doesn’t work.”
Readers elsewhere in the country – and many in California – may not being aware that, when the cost of housing is taken into effect, California has the highest rate of poverty in the nation.
Indeed, the high cost of housing is the reason so many Californians are doubled up, couch surfing, living in their cars, or sleeping in the streets. Some are simply “voting with their feet” by leaving the state entirely. In a recent poll, nearly half the residents in the San Francisco Bay Area said they were planning to move out of state within three years because of the high cost of housing.
All this is why working-class people in California are fueling a statewide movement for rent control and just-cause eviction. Along with defending the state’s immigrant population, that movement is changing California politics from the bottom up.
Grassroots organizations such as Tenants Together, ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), and the Los Angeles Tenants Union – as well as new rent-control groups in city after city – have put rent control on the political agenda.
The Democratic-dominated state legislature couldn’t bring repealing Costa-Hawkins to a vote earlier this year. So a grassroots unity organization, Housing Now, got the signatures of half a million California voters to put it on the November ballot.
Meanwhile, local groups fought to put rent-control and just-cause-eviction initiatives on their local ballots. In 2016, Northern California cities (Richmond, Mountain View, Alameda) won rent control that way, despite millions spent in opposition by the CAA.
This year, it was mostly Southern California cities making the attempt – Pasadena, Glendale, Inglewood, Long Beach, National City and Santa Ana. Not all of them made the ballot. In the north, Sacramento and Santa Rosa did not. But la lucha continua. And a big win repealing Prop. 8 in November will show which way the wind blows.
