The Real Dirt is a regular column by award-winning advocacy journalist Patrick Range McDonald that exposes the real estate industry’s lies, scams, and other unscrupulous acts, which, one way or another, impact the lives of millions.
It’s the inaugural column of The Real Dirt, and if there was ever a month that underlines the dire need for rent control, February is it… although most months make that point for anyone who regularly follows the real estate industry, which we do.
In Los Angeles County, there were numerous reports about landlords rent gouging tenants who were looking for a place to live after the L.A. wildfires destroyed their homes. In other words, those cold-hearted landlords were looking to profit off other people’s misery. Very ugly stuff.
In addition to that, landlords were evicting current tenants so they could rent gouge new tenants. And it wasn’t just a few bad apples trying to cash in on the wildfires, which is how the California Apartment Association, the front group for corporate landlords, has tried to spin things.
LAist reported that a group called The Rent Brigade had studied rental housing data and found that nearly 1,400 listings on Zillow appeared to have violated the state’s price-gouging ban. That’s around 17 bushels of apples — and there are probably many more. It’s why housing justice activists have called for a temporary rent freeze in L.A. County.
But if effective rent regulations were in place before the wildfires, there wouldn’t be a need for a rent freeze: tenants would already be protected.
In Washington D.C., U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego called for the Department of Defense to investigate whether landlords using RealPage software have been rent gouging military families. The RealPage scandal has been unfolding for years, and this is another nasty twist.
It started, in 2022, when ProPublica found that many of the nation’s largest corporate landlords used RealPage software to collude and wildly inflate rents in cities across the country. The exposé triggered numerous antitrust lawsuits against RealPage and its corporate clients.
Shamelessly, corporate landlords using RealPage software may have also targeted military families, who are making huge sacrifices to serve our country.
“The Department of Defense has a responsibility to protect military families from predatory private housing companies and ensure that taxpayer dollars meant for military families are not being pocketed by unscrupulous landlords,” the senators wrote in a letter to the D of D.
Once again, if strong rent regulations, such as rent stabilization, existed, corporate landlords couldn’t wildly inflate rents for military families or anyone else. It’s something that two housing experts recently explained in the Harvard Business Review.
Back in California, the California Apartment Association and a corporate landlord are now being investigated by the Fair Political Practices Commission for shady campaign contributions that were used to stop Prop 33, a 2024 pro-rent control measure, and pass Prop 34, a 2024 measure that aims to silence AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s housing advocacy work.
Housing Is A Human Right, which is a division of AHF, found the shady contributions and filed a complaint with the FPPC, and the watchdog commission recently informed us that it would look into the matter.
This month, we reported:
“Between 2023 and 2024, Housing Is A Human Right found that 13 separate contributions were made to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee by corporate entities that were controlled by the same company, Rafanelli & Nahas, a corporate landlord based in Lafayette, California. Those contributions added up to a significant total: $177,150.
“By delivering campaign cash that way, Rafanelli & Nahas were essentially trying to pull a fast one over the public – rather than have Rafanelli & Nahas’ name attached to the 13 contributions, the names of its corporate entities were linked. For example, Amador Lakes III, LP, operated by Rafanelli & Nahas, sent three contributions totaling $50,250 to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee. State law says the corporate landlord can’t do that – the public should know exactly who’s delivering campaign cash and how much is coming from that single contributor.
“In addition, Housing Is A Human Right and AIDS Healthcare Foundation made the case that the California Apartment Association should have been aware that Rafanelli & Nahas was trying to pull a fast one and not allowed the corporate landlord to file its campaign contributions in such an underhanded way.”
Then there’s YIMBY Action.
First, YIMBY Action teamed up with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords to kill Prop 33, which would have helped expand rent control in California and protect middle- and working-class tenants. Read “Special Report: California Apartment Association’s Big-Money Schemes to Kill Prop 33 and Pass Prop 34” for more details about that.
Now it’s been reported that Yes in My Backyard Law, a division of YIMBY Action, is suing the city of Los Angeles to force upzoning.
For numerous reasons, unbridled upzoning benefits, first and foremost, the real estate industry. Developers, for example, can buy up properties in a working-class neighborhood, tear down existing affordable housing, and then build new luxury housing so they can charge outrageous rents and make billions in revenue. From there, gentrification and displacement soon follow, which isn’t good for middle- and working-class tenants who are forced out of their longtime communities.
As a side note, YIMBY Action and other YIMBY groups seem intent on making America a nation of renters with corporate landlords owning and renting everything — even single-family homes! But more on that later. Just know that YIMBY leaders don’t care too much about intergenerational wealth for working folks via homeownership.
So housing justice activists have sounded the alarm about pro-gentrification upzoning for years. But YIMBY Action and California YIMBY, which also teamed up with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords to kill Prop 33 (see the pattern here?), always deny that hard fact or just ignore it. YIMBY Action is doing it again by suing the city of Los Angeles. It’s why activists call YIMBY Action, California YIMBY, and other YIMBY groups “Corporate YIMBYs.”
And until next time…
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