Housing Is a Human Right, the housing advocacy division of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, is excited to announce that it has amassed more than 625,000 signatures to qualify the Rental Affordability Act for California’s statewide ballot in November 2020. 623,212 signatures are required for eligibility.
Housing justice activists will continue to collect signatures to ensure that enough signatures are collected to qualify the initiative before the end of the year.
The Rental Affordability Act offers California cities and counties the ability to enact or expand rent control laws on housing that is more than 15 years old. It also allows local communities to implement policies that limit rent increases when a new tenant moves in. The law offers relief and security to California’s 17 million renters, helping curb the state’s out of control housing affordability and homelessness crises.
Besides protecting tenants, the initiative guarantees landlords a fair return on their properties and it exempts single-family homeowners of one or two homes from any rent control law.
Rent control is massively popular in California. According to a poll this summer, 75% of likely and extremely likely voters in California support rent control. That’s probably why our coalition has been able to gather a staggering 5,000 to 7,000 signatures a day in support of the Rental Affordability Act, and why we’ve been able to reach this milestone in less than four months gathering signatures.
Housing Is a Human Right Director René Christian Moya says: “The real estate lobby might have believed that the recent passage of AB 1482 was the end of the story. They’re wrong. The time for real rent control is now.”