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HOUSING WATCH - A Housing Is A Human Right investigation has found that between 2018 and 2025, Essex Property Trust, one of the largest corporate landlords in the United States, shelled out a whopping $60.1 million in campaign contributions to kill the expansion of rent control, to sway elections, and to influence politicians in California. The huge outlay was done so the multi-billion-dollar real estate company could continue to charge sky-high rents and make outsized profits.
Essex Property Trust, based in San Mateo, California, and run by president and CEO Angela Kleiman, is the thirteenth largest corporate landlord in the U.S., according to the National Multifamily Housing Council. It owns 62,510 apartments in Northern and Southern California and the Seattle Metro area, and its net worth is more than $16 billion.
Essex Property Trust is tightly connected to the California Apartment Association, the powerful lobbying group for corporate landlords. The company’s executives routinely sit on the CAA’s board of directors, and the corporate landlord uses the California Apartment Association as a go-between to quietly distribute political money in an effort to avoid public scrutiny. Essex Property Trust is known for making controversial headlines.
In San Mateo, for example, Essex Property Trust bought one of the city’s largest apartment complexes – the Hillsdale Garden Apartments – and quickly started to rent gouge tenants.
“Since buying the property in 2006,” the East Bay Times reported, “Essex had raised rents aggressively, prompting an exodus that included fixed-income senior citizens who lived there for decades.”
The San Francisco Examiner reported that in many cases the corporate landlord raised rents by $400 per month in a single year – or an annual rent hike of an astounding $4,800.
In Fremont, California, Essex Property Trust was sued by tenants for allegedly increasing rents improperly and allowing poor living conditions. Essex Property Trust agreed to a settlement in 2016.
In San Diego, Essex Property Trust, one of the largest landlords in that city, helped fuel skyrocketing rents there.
“Imagine how much control they have over how fast rents go up, when they go up, and the terms of the agreement,” Rafael Bautista, a member of the San Diego Tenants Union, told The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Essex Property Trust also owns rental properties in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Anaheim, Glendale, Burbank, and other cities in Southern California.
But the most explosive controversy involving Essex Property Trust is the ongoing RealPage scandal. Realpage, a Texas-based Big Tech company, offered a software program that helped corporate landlords to collude and then charge excessive rents – no matter what was happening in the rental housing market.
ProPublica broke the story in 2022, which then brought an avalanche of lawsuits and investigations, including a lawsuit by the Department of Justice. Essex Property Trusthas been named in a number of those suits. Since the RealPage software was used by the corporate landlords in cities across the nation, it helped to worsen the country’s housing affordability crisis.
In addition to that major scandal, Essex Property Trust was one of the leading contributors to stop the repeal or reform of statewide rent control restrictions in California.
At a time when California’s housing affordability crisis was slamming the poor and middle and working class, a broad coalition of social justice groups, housing justice organizations, labor unions, and civic leaders pushed forward ballot measures – Proposition 10 in 2018, Proposition 21 in 2020, and Proposition 33 in 2024 – that would have allowed cities to pass updated rent control policies.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of Housing Is A Human Right, sponsored those initiatives, and all the measures were defeated at the polls due to Big Real Estate’s heavy spending.
In fact, the bulk of the $60.1 million that Essex Property Trust spent to sway elections and to influence politicians in California was used to kill Prop 10, Prop 21, and Prop 33.
In 2018, Essex Property Trust shelled out $6,616,200 to the No on Prop 10 committee sponsored by the California Apartment Association. In 2020, the corporate landlord delivered $17,356,884 to the California Apartment Association’s No on Prop 21 committee. In 2024, Essex Property Trust handed over $32,025,000 to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee, which funded a No on Prop 33 committee and a Yes on Prop 34 committee. The latter committee financed a ballot measure to silence AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s housing advocacy work in California. Voters barely approved Prop 34.
In total, Essex Property Trust spent $55,998,084 to defeat Prop 10, Prop 21, and Prop 33 and to pass Prop 34.
Between 2019 and 2025, the corporate landlord shelled out more millions to other political committees operated by the California Apartment Association.
Acting as a go-between, the CAA takes money from corporate landlords such as Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, and AvalonBay Communities and then delivers their cash to political groups, ballot measure campaigns, and elected officials’ campaign committees.
In 2019 and 2020, Essex Property Trust forked over $465,682 to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee. The CAA then delivered $92,295 in support of Taxpayers Supporting Jim Ridenour for State Senate 2020; $117,500 in support of the Equality California PAC; and, among others, $25,000 in support of Ardy Kassakhian for Glendale City Council 2020.
Equity Residential, Sares Regis Operating Company, AvalonBay Communities, and Camden Property Trust also delivered major cash to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee, but Essex Property Trust was the leading contributor.
In 2021 and 2022, Essex Property Trust sent $1,814,668 to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee. In 2023 and 2024, the corporate landlord delivered another $947,403 to the independent expenditure committee. During both periods, Essex Property Trust was the leading contributor.
And as recently as 2025, the corporate landlord delivered $30,995 to the California Apartment Association Independent Expenditure Committee.
Between 2019 and 2022, Essex Property Trust gave a total of $50,000 to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee. That money was used to support ballot measures in El Cerrito, Sacramento, and San Diego, among other political races.
Essex Property Trust and other corporate landlords deliver their millions in campaign cash to the California Apartment Association’s political committees so they are not directly attached to a politician and ballot measure. It’s a way to influence local and state elected officials and political races under the radar, avoiding scrutiny from voters and reporters.
Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has largely worked since few mainstream media outlets report about Big Real Estate’s campaign contributions in California. Housing Is A Human Right, though, has written a number of reports about the troubling issue, including Selling Off California: The Untold Story.
I also wrote an exclusive exposé about Big Real Estate’s massive campaign contributions during the Prop 33 and Prop 34 races in 2024.
What it all adds up to is that it’s extremely difficult for housing justice activists to pass meaningful tenant protections in California when Essex Property Trust and other corporate landlords are spending tens of millions in campaign cash to kill tenant rights so they can keep charging outrageous rents.
It’s why activists continue to urge elected officials and political candidates to not accept campaign contributions from Big Real Estate. Politicians must serve the poor and middle and working class, the people hit hardest by the housing affordability and homelessness crises, first and foremost.
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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.)
