Seventeen million people, almost half of California’s population, are renters. Many of them spend more than half their income on rent, plunging many full-time workers into poverty.
The consequences of California’s skyrocketing rents are dire and unsustainable. People jam freeways, commuting long distances into cities they can no longer afford.
Many Californians, including children, live in overcrowded and substandard apartments. Each year, thousands of individuals, including people who work full-time, move into their vehicles or onto the streets.
Evictions in California are rising, driving up displacement and homelessness. Los Angeles has more than 30,000 homeless residents. These aren’t people who moved to L.A. for the weather. They are local residents who lost their housing due to landlords’ rent-gouging and harassment.
The eviction crisis also grips Sacramento, San Francisco and other cities as landlords evict families, often to cash in on gentrification. On any given block, the appearance of new luxury housing means that your affordable street is about to become unaffordable.
The fact that people earning $15 an hour cannot afford an apartment in any major California city makes clear that a solution is needed now, not years down the road.
That solution is Proposition 10 on the November statewide ballot.
Until 1995, cities could limit rent increases without state restrictions. But the Legislature limited local decision-making, and today’s housing mess is one result. Prop. 10 would return power to cities by allowing them to set their own rent control rules.
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Communities best understand how to urgently address the twin crises of housing affordability and homelessness. Prop. 10 is the only way to provide communities a tool to temper unreasonable rent increases so that nurses, teachers, seniors and working families can thrive in their communities.
Prop. 10 would repeal the outdated 1995 state law called the Costa-Hawkins Act, signed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. We’re in a radically different era, where rent-gouging is common among the new wave of corporate investors. It’s time to let cities and counties decide what rental laws work for them. Prop. 10 would do that.
The landlord lobby and developers who seek to protect soaring real estate profits perpetuate the myth that local rent control would halt construction. There’s no evidence from cities around the country with rent control that it slows down new housing construction.
Today’s skyrocketing rents hurt the economy by driving workers far from cities, creating urban labor shortages and massive traffic congestion. Cities that adopt rent controls save tenants from paying outrageously high rents.
Building owners who bought at inflated prices, assuming that rents would keep spiraling up, should not drive housing policy. Parents shouldn’t worry if their adult children can afford rent. Grandparents shouldn’t fear being displaced. People of color, low-wage earners and young children are even more severely harmed.
Our dysfunctional housing market places profits over people’s lives. People deserve a decent place to live without paying half or more of their income to put a roof over their heads. We can right this ship and get California back on track by passing Prop.10.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and founding chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. He wrote this commentary for CALmatters.
