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HOUSING - A new study has found that predatory corporate landlords are targeting Black tenants for eviction in the Los Angeles area. The eye-popping report, carried out by a UCLA researcher, also found that Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, and AvalonBay Communities are among the worst offenders. All three corporate landlords have a long history of financing the California Apartment Association’s anti-tenant protections work, including killing the expansion of rent control in California.
The study by UCLA researcher Alexander Ferrer identified “landlords’ surgical and deeply disproportionate eviction of Black tenants from neighborhoods with few Black residents… The largest corporate landlords – national Real Estate Investment Trusts – are central in the enactment of these eviction patterns in L.A.’s post-pandemic housing market.”
Ferrer added, “Innovations in corporate practice in screening and eviction which responded to the risk and regulatory environment of the pandemic further contributed to saddling these Black tenants with disproportionate rent debt, redoubling the extirpative character of Black tenancy.”
Corporate landlords, in other words, have found that using predatory business practices against Black tenants is another way to make quick, outsized profits.
The American Prospect, which first reported about the new study, noted that Ferrer found an “emerging strategy” among corporate landlords in which they relax screening practices and offer low security deposits to “attract precarious Black tenants into desirable neighborhoods.” Then they charge high utility fees, along with high rents, and quickly evict Black tenants when they can’t keep up with payments.
“The most sophisticated landlords in the market have shifted toward a strategy of lower stringency in screening, higher turnover rates, and more frequent evictions in exchange for higher average rents,” Ferrer told The American Prospect. “It’s more profitable.”
The study found that Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, and Essex Property Trust, three of the largest corporate landlords in the United States, stand out for this kind of predatory business practice in the L.A. area. All of them have a long, anti-tenant rights track record.
For years, Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, and Essex Property Trust have delivered millions of dollars to the California Apartment Association’s political action committees to influence politicians through campaign contributions and to kill tenant protections throughout California.
In addition, Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, and Essex Property Trust were among the top contributors to the California Apartment Association’s successful efforts to stop ballot measures, in 2018, 2020, and 2024, that would have ended statewide rent control restrictions. AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, sponsored those initiatives.
That’s not all.
Equity Residential and Essex Property Trust have long been mired in the ongoing RealPage scandal. Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, and other corporate landlords used a RealPage software program that allowed them to collude and wildly inflate rents in cities across the U.S. RealPage and its corporate clients have faced numerous investigations and antitrust lawsuits, including a lawsuit by the Department of Justice and several state attorneys general.
So using predatory business practices to make profits off Black tenants is par for the course for Big Real Estate. It’s just one more example of why state and local politicians need to better regulate corporate landlords, including the implementation of stronger rent regulations. Only rent control or rent stabilization will rein in the real estate industry.
Tellingly, California YIMBY and YIMBY Action are now working closely with the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords to kill pro-tenant legislation.
In 2024, California YIMBY and YIMBY Action backed the CAA’s campaign to kill Proposition 33, which would have ended statewide rent control restrictions. In 2025, the YIMBY groups teamed up with the CAA and corporate landlords again, opposing a bill by Assemblymember Ash Kalra that would have strengthened tenant protections in California.
California YIMBY and YIMBY Action, which constantly push pro-gentrification land-use bills, now appear to be mum when it comes to the UCLA study: their websites and X accounts show no statements about the report’s important findings. In fact, it’s a long, disturbing pattern by California YIMBY and YIMBY Action to say nothing about Big Real Estate’s predatory business practices.
In the end, the newest scandal involving Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, and AvalonBay Communities comes as no surprise to housing justice activists, who, unlike California YIMBY and YIMBY Action, have been battling predatory corporate landlords for years. Now it’s a matter of whether or not politicians will finally do something substantive about it.
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(Patrick Range McDonald, author and journalist, Best Activism Journalism: Los Angeles Press Club, Journalist of the Year: Los Angeles Press Club, Public Service Award: Association of Alternative Newsmedia, advocacy journalist for Housing is a Human Right, and a contributor to CityWatch.)
