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HOUSING RENTALS - Last week, Housing Is A Human Right and other housing and homeless organizations from across the United States met in New York City for the National Conference on Rent Control and Tenant Rights. Over the course of two days, discussions continually hit upon the fact that landlords, especially corporate landlords, have tremendous amounts of money and political influence to kill rent control and other tenant protections. By the end of the conference, one thing became crystal clear: Americans need to form, and participate in, a unified, people-power movement to successfully fight Big Real Estate, pass pro-tenant policies, and urgently address the housing affordability and homelessness crises.
“The only way we can do this is by working together,” said Mari Lopez Ruiz, of the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance in California, at a town hall at the Bethel Gospel Assembly Church in Harlem. “We recognize we don’t have the money [of Big Real Estate], but we have people power.”
With the housing affordability crisis slamming the middle and working class and fueling homelessness, activists and tenants from Maine to California have been fighting rent control battles against corporate landlords, giving rise to a burgeoning rent control movement in the U.S.
In Maine, cities are looking to implement rent stabilization policies at mobile home parks, where many seniors on fixed incomes live. In Illinois, activists are pushing to end statewide restrictions on rent control. In California, numerous cities are considering rent regulations, and Housing Is A Human Right and a broad coalition of activist groups and labor unions tried to repeal or reform statewide rent control restrictions.
The stakes are high.
Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, found that unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. A wide-ranging UC San Francisco study found that sky-high rent is the primary cause of homelessness. And The Guardian found that homeless deaths shot up by 77 percent between 2016 and 2020 in 20 urban areas in the U.S. – activists don’t believe those numbers have improved very much, if at all, over the past six years, and there is no national review or standardized data collection for homeless mortality.
But when activists try to pass tenant protections in cities across the nation, they run into the deep-pocketed landlord lobby – and politicians who side with Big Real Estate, not tenants.
A major example is California. Many of the largest corporate landlords in the country deliver millions of dollars to political action committees operated by the California Apartment Association, which then shells out millions in campaign cash to state and local politicians. A Housing Is A Human Right special report found that politicians in 51 out of California’s 58 counties received campaign contributions from the California Apartment Association. The result is that tenant protections are watered down or fail to be passed.
Corporate landlords and their lobbying groups not only use their millions to influence politicians, but to also carry out misinformation campaigns.
“The number one thing with these campaigns is that they try to confuse renters,” said Housing Is A Human Right Policy Director Susie Shannon at the town hall in Harlem.
Shannon also hit upon corporate landlords’ ultimate motive to stop rent control and other tenant protections: “They’re trying to get the most money they can.” In other words, despite what they say, corporate landlords are not concerned about lowering rents and solving the housing affordability crisis.
Shannon called for politicians to no longer accept campaign contributions from Big Real Estate. “It must be a third rail issue,” she said.
At the same time, Luana Green, of the Chelsea Public Housing Coalition in New York City, said tenants can’t wait for politicians to do the right thing. “We have to stand up and fight for ourselves,” said Green at the town hall.
Rod Wilson, of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center in Chicago, also emphasized that point: “We live in a representational democracy. So we need to tell [elected officials] what to do.”
Ruiz, Shannon, Green, and Wilson, who have all battled the real estate industry and pro-Big Real Estate politicians, speak from hard-earned experience. For them, a unified rent control and tenant rights movement in the U.S. is essential for overcoming the financial and political strength of corporate landlords.
Larry Gross, of the Coalition for Economic Survival in Los Angeles, may have summed it up best at the town hall.
“Organize, organize, organize,” he said. “Fight, fight, fight – and we will win.”
(Patrick Range McDonald is an award-winning investigative reporter and advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right, and a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.com.)
