In 2022, corporate landlords Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, and AvalonBay Communities, three of the largest apartment owners in the United States, quietly carried out a shell game with the California Apartment Association to kill a pro-rent control ballot measure in Pasadena. First, the landlords delivered thousands in campaign cash to a California Apartment Association political committee. That committee then sent $125,000 to an anti-rent control campaign. The companies wanted to avoid public scrutiny while defeating an initiative that would largely stop them from charging outrageous rents. It’s just one example of corporate landlords tapping the California Apartment Association to do their dirty work.
The California Apartment Association, the longtime front group for many of the largest corporate landlords in the country, is one of the state’s the most powerful lobbying groups. For years, the CAA has delivered millions of corporate landlords’ campaign cash to local and state politicians, buying influence and special favors in nearly every county in California. As a result, it’s extremely difficult for activists and residents to pass effective tenant protections — protections that will urgently address the state’s housing affordability crisis.
Make no mistake, corporate landlords are calling the shots at the California Apartment Association, with the CAA’s board of directors packed with Big Real Estate executives. Corporate landlords will go to any length to protect their ability to charge excessive rents, raking in billions in revenue off the backs of middle- and working-class Californians.
In 2021, Housing Is A Human Right exposed the internal workings of the CAA with a special report about how corporate landlords funnel millions to the California Apartment Association’s political committees, which then distributes that cash to city, county, and state politicians.
The special report notes: “We reveal, perhaps for the first time, that the California Apartment Association shells out campaign cash to politicians on the city, county, and state levels and that several of the nation’s largest corporate landlords use the California Apartment Association as a front group to deliver campaign contributions. We also found that the CAA has sent campaign checks to state elected officials and political committees in 51 out of California’s 58 counties.
“With the CAA and Big Real Estate influencing elected officials at every level of government, California’s 17 million renters, who need strong tenant protections against corporate landlords’ predatory practices, are suffering the bad consequences.”
Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential have been especially eager to use the California Apartment Association.
The real estate companies were among the top contributors to political committees sponsored by the California Apartment Association that successfully killed Proposition 10, in 2018; Proposition 21, in 2020; and Proposition 33, in 2024. The measures, sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Housing Is A Human Right, would have repealed or reformed statewide rent control restrictions, allowing local officials to rein in corporate-landlord greed through updated rent control policies.
Big Real Estate spent $175.4 million in campaign cash to defeat Prop 10 and Prop 21, with Essex Property Trust delivering a total of $26.2 million, AvalonBay Communities shelling out $17 million, and Equity Residential contributing $17.9 million. In 2024, the real estate industry shelled $89.4 million to kill Prop 33.
And, of course, Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, and Equity Residential used the California Apartment Association to try to stop the 2022 rent control ballot measure in Pasadena.
Essex Property Trust and AvalonBay Communities delivered $25,000 each to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee in October 2022 and Equity Residential shelled out $30,000 in September, according to state filings. The California Apartment Association Issues Committee then sent three contributions, totaling $125,000, between September 30, 2022, and October 31, 2022, to the anti-rent control campaign in Pasadena, state records reveal.
That campaign, though, failed to kill the rent control initiative — Pasadena voters approved the measure in November 2022.
Given their track records, it’s no surprise that Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential are now major players in the unfolding RealPage scandal.
RealPage, a Big Tech firm based in Texas, created a software program that helps a cartel of corporate landlords to coordinate pricing and wildly inflate rents for obscene profits – no matter who gets hurt. Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential are clients of RealPage.
ProPublica broke the story in October 2022, and Congressional members have since called for federal investigations. More than 20 federal lawsuits have now been filed against RealPage and its corporate clients, including Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential. Four of those federal lawsuits were filed by California tenants.
“By RealPage’s own admission,” ProPublica reported, “its [software] algorithm is helping drive rents higher” in the United States.
In other words, RealPage, Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential are fueling the nationwide housing affordability crisis.
It’s no wonder the corporate landlords use the California Apartment Association to stay out of the limelight.
In the end, Californians are suffering the life-changing consequences of Big Real Estate’s dirty work. Numerous studies, including two by Zillow, found that sky-high rents were fueling California’s homelessness crisis, forcing people into the streets where more and more people are dying. In Los Angeles, homeless deaths increased every year between 2014 and 2021, and The Guardian found that San Diego saw a 78 percent increase in homeless deaths between 2016 and 2020, Sacramento saw a 93 percent jump, and L.A. saw an 89 percent increase.
In addition, Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, found that unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates, and a prominent UC San Francisco study found that homelessness is tied to sky-high rents.
It’s why AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Housing Is A Human Right continue to battle corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association, pushing for a multi-pronged strategy called the “3 Ps: protect tenants through rent control and other tenant rights; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it for luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing. Unlike Big Real Estate’s “trickle-down” housing approach, the 3 Ps directly and urgently help the poor and working- and middle-class people who need it most.
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