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HOUSING - In 2025, corporate landlords, many of whom are among the largest in the United States, delivered major cash to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure. That little-known political committee is used by Big Real Estate to buy influence from California politicians, to sway elections, and to help kill the passage of tenant protections on the state and local levels. In 2024, for example, the independent expenditure committee shelled out a whopping $3 million to political candidates and groups.
For years, the California Apartment Association has acted as a kind of go-between for corporate landlords. Such real estate companies as Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, and AvalonBay Communities, among many others, send big-time cash to one of the California Apartment Association’s four political committees, then the CAA moves that landlord money to politicians and groups to buy favors and influence.
So it’s really not the California Apartment Association’s money that California elected officials are taking, but corporate landlords’.
In 2024, for example, corporate landlords shelled out massive amounts of political money to one or more of the California Apartment Association’s four political committees. Then the CAA sent campaign contributions to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, Assemblymember Evan Low, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, among others. The CAA acted as a go-between.
The California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure was particularly busy in 2024. That year, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, sponsored Proposition 33, which aimed to end statewide rent control restrictions. The California Apartment Association led the No on Prop 33 campaign, which was financed overwhelmingly by corporate landlords. Prop 33 was defeated at the polls.
Corporate landlords saw Prop 33 as a serious threat to their ability to charge unfair, outrageous rents and rake in millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue. That greed has helped fuel the housing affordability crisis in California, which has also played a role in the worsening homelessness crisis with people forced into the streets because they can’t pay sky-high rent hikes.
In fact, Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, found that unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. And a UC San Francisco studyrevealed that excessive rents are the main reason that people end up homeless in California.
Corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association didn’t care. They were only worried about Big Real Estate’s profits.
So they used the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee to buy political influence, such as spending $185,000 in support of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who was a No on Prop 33 endorser, and delivering $510,000 to JobsPAC, a political committee operated by the California Chamber of Commerce, which also backed No on Prop 33.
The California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee also sent money to a number of obscure political committees that then delivered campaign cash in support of various political candidates. Such as Housing Providers for Responsible Solutions, which spent $735,534 in support of California State Assembly candidate Colin Parent and $80,464 in support of California State Assemblymember Blanca Rubio.
Both Parent and Rubio endorsed No on Prop 33.
In 2025, according to campaign finance filings, corporate landlords delivered $358,962 directly and indirectly to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditures Committee – the California Apartment Association Political Action Committee, which is financed by landlords, sent cash to the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee.
Equity Residential delivered $75,000 to the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee; Essex Property Trust sent $30,995; Sares Regis forked over $29,874; Prime Administration shelled out $28,733; AvalonBay Communities sent $25,720; UDR handed over $24,720; AIR Communities, owned by Blackstone Group, delivered $16,995; and the California Association Political Action Committee shelled out $105,000 in landlord cash.
Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, and UDR are among the largest corporate landlords in the U.S., according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.
The California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee then delivered corporate landlord cash to Fighting For Our Future ($125,000), JobsPAC ($40,000), and the California Apartment Association Housing Solutions Committee ($25,000).
Fighting for Our Future, an obscure political action committee financed by the California Apartment Association and the California Association of Realtors’ California Real Estate PAC, delivered $216,722 in support of California State Senate candidate Tony Strickland. In 2024, Strickland may have helped corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association play a dirty political trick in an effort to kill Prop 33 (read “Exposé: Big Real Estate’s Money Trails to Kill the Expansion of Rent Control in California”).
JobsPAC, sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, also spent $119,166 in support of Strickland.
Strickland won his 2025 election.
California Apartment Association Housing Solutions Committee, using corporate landlord money from the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee, spent $42,016 in support of John McCann’s 2025 run for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. The housing solutions committee also laid out $18,006 in opposition to McCann’s rival, Paloma Aquirre. Big Real Estate’s money didn’t help: Aquirre won the election by seven percentage points.
These findings show that corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association spend massive amounts of money, often using sneaky shell games, to influence politicians and elections, to kill tenant protections, and to protect their mind-boggling profits. They also show the serious need for a strong, and unified, people-power movement to take on Big Real Estate.
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(Patrick Range McDonald is an award-winning author and journalist, honored by the Los Angeles Press Club as Journalist of the Year and for Best Activism Journalism, and by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for Public Service. He serves as an advocacy journalist for Housing Is a Human Right and is a regular contributor to CityWatch, focusing on housing, homelessness, and social justice issues in Los Angeles and beyond.)
