For years, the California Apartment Association, the front group for corporate landlords, has carried out a statewide attack on tenant protections — no matter who gets hurt. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization even fought temporary safeguards for renters. That take-no-prisoners approach is dictated by the CAA’s board of directors, which is jammed with Big Real Estate executives, and carried out by Tom Bannon, the longtime chief executive officer of the CAA.
Whether it’s opposing a city ordinance or supporting controversial state legislation, Bannon (pictured above), the CAA, and corporate landlords are known for spreading misinformation, using strong-arm tactics, and shelling out tens of millions in campaign cash to smackdown housing activists and buy special favors from state and local politicians. Californians’ lives have been upended in the process, with people handing over more than 30 percent of their paychecks to predatory landlords while others face the prospect of homelessness because of unfair, sky-high rents.
The California Apartment Association, headquartered in Sacramento, has at least 14 branch offices throughout the state — from San Diego to Los Angeles to Fresno to San Francisco to Santa Rosa and points in between. Bannon and his small army of vice presidents, lobbyists, and lawyers are bankrolled by many of the largest corporate landlords in country, including Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, and AvalonBay Communities, and attack anywhere in the state to stop tenant protections. The reason is simple: corporate landlords want to keep charging outrageous rents — and rake in billions in revenue off the backs of the poor and middle and working class.
El Cerrito housing activist Karina Ioffee, who’s battled the CAA, told me: “They send people into any locality when they get a whiff of rent control. They’re an organization that has massive resources. They’re a force to be reckoned with.”
Carrying out its marching orders from corporate landlords, the CAA has a shocking track record.
In 2019, the California Apartment Association killed watered-down tenant protections that were initially passed by the El Cerrito City Council. The CAA started up a petition drive to repeal the protections through a local ballot measure. According to Ioffee, CAA’s signature gatherers misleadingly told residents that they should sign the petition if they wanted rent control — a complete lie. Other signature gatherers said that if residents didn’t want criminals to move into El Cerrito, they should sign.
“They engaged in a total misinformation campaign,” Ioffee explained.
El Cerrito residents weren’t experienced in the dishonest ways of the California Apartment Association. The corporate-landlord front group got the signatures it needed, forcing the City Council’s hand. The politicians folded, and repealed renter protections in August 2019.
“It was another example of CAA’s power,” Ioffee said.
A year earlier, in 2018, Tom Bannon and the California Apartment Association tried a similar campaign in Mountain View, where the the front group also tried to repeal renter protections through a ballot measure. The CAA brazenly framed it as a good thing for tenants, but the disingenuous effort failed to get enough signatures. Mayor Lenny Siegel said in a strongly worded statement: “Mountain View voters were not fooled by the apartment owners’ deceptive campaign to place the sneaky repeal on the ballot.”
Also in 2018, the California Apartment Association sponsored a political committee to kill Proposition 10, the California ballot measure that would have repealed statewide restrictions on rent control. That committee, funded by such corporate landlords as Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, and AvalonBay Communities, raised $53 million to trick voters with deceitful campaign ads. Despite the fact that more than 525 housing and social injustice organizations, civic groups, and elected leaders endorsed Prop 10, voters were sufficiently scared and confused — and the initiative, which was largely funded by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, lost at the polls.
Those are just some of the underhanded methods the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords have used over the years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CAA tried to repeal a temporary rent freeze in Santa Ana.
“I call on you to continue standing up for working-class and immigrant residents in the city that have been economically impacted,” Santa Ana resident Carlos Perea told city politicians. “I understand landlords who shamelessly want to continue to raise rents during this global crisis have been putting pressure on you. That is not just disappointing but morally wrong.”
The Santa Ana City Council listened to Perea — and maintained the freeze. But many activists believed that the CAA’s hard push in Santa Ana was another disturbing example of its extremist ways: even during a global pandemic, the corporate-landlord front group was still trying to scrap a temporary measure that allowed people to stay safe and healthy in their homes.
Again playing hard ball, corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association tried to stop AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s crucial work to protect vulnerable Californians, including seniors, families, teachers, the unhoused, and people living with chronic diseases. Around the world, activists and experts agree that stable, affordable housing is essential for maintaining good health.
AHF and its housing advocacy division, Housing Is A Human Right, sponsored Proposition 10, in 2018, and was working to pass Proposition 21, in 2020, to reform statewide rent control restrictions. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, labor and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, among others, endorsed the initiative.
To silence AHF, corporate landlords and the CAA stooped to a new low and led the charge to pass AB 1938, a dangerous state bill that would have stopped the HIV/AIDS organization from using certain monies to carry out its housing advocacy work through litigation and ballot measures.
The CAA-backed bill not only singled out AHF in a way that appeared to be unlawful, but was also a clear threat to the organization’s First Amendment rights. Unsurprisingly, the legalities of AB 1938 didn’t concern corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association. The draconian bill, fortunately, was stopped in a state assembly committee.
With millions of California renters in dire straits, top experts at USC, UCLA, and UC Berkeley agree that rent control is a crucial tool to stabilize California’s housing affordability crisis.
“The housing crisis requires a range of strategies,” explained University of Southern California Professor Manuel Pastor, co-author of the USC Dornsife’s Rent Matters report, “[and] moderate rent regulation is a useful tool to be nested in broader strategy. It has fewer damaging effects than are often imagined, it can address economic pain, and it can promote housing stability. And housing stability matters because it is associated with physical, social, and psychological well-being; higher educational achievement by the young; and benefits for people of color.”
What’s the California Apartment Association’s take on the housing affordability crisis? They just want to keep the status quo, allowing corporate landlords to charge whatever they want while seniors on fixed incomes are forced out of their homes because they can’t afford another steep rent hike. In the end, corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association only care about one thing: astronomical profits.
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