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HOUSING - Five corporate landlords mired in the RealPage scandal are also shelling out millions to stop Proposition 33, the November ballot measure that expands rent control in California. Corporate landlords Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, Greystar, UDR, and Camden Property Trust, the companies involved in the RealPage scandal, want to kill Prop 33 because it would end their ability to charge wildly inflated rents year after year.
The RealPage scandal has been unfolding since 2022, when ProPublica found that a cartel of corporate landlords used a RealPage software program to illegally collude to charge exorbitant rents in California and other states. The ProPublica exposé triggered dozens of federal lawsuits by tenants and numerous investigations by state attorneys general and the Department of Justice. Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, UDR, Greystar, and Camden Property Trust have all been enmeshed in the lawsuits and/or investigations.
Housing Is A Human Right also broke the story that RealPage, a Texas-based Big Tech firm, contributed $500,000 to stop California’s Proposition 21, a 2020 ballot measure that would have ended statewide rent control restrictions. Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, Greystar, UDR, and Camden Property Trust were also major contributors to the No on Prop 21 campaign, shelling out tens of millions of dollars.
Those five corporate landlords, who are among the largest landlords in the United States, are back at it again, contributing even more millions to kill Proposition 33, according to state filings. Housing Is A Human Right and its parent organization, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, are sponsoring the “Yes on 33” campaign.
Corporate landlords are worried that the initiative will expand rent control in California’s cities and stop their ability to charge excessive rents, which have brought in billions in revenue. In the meantime, while Big Real Estate has been raking in staggering profits off the backs of California tenants, the state’s housing affordability and homelessness crises have only worsened.
For activists, rent control is a key tool of a multi-pronged approach to solve the housing affordability and homelessness crises. It’s called the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent control and other protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing. The 3 Ps urgently, and directly, help poor and middle- and working-class tenants, who are hit hardest by the housing affordability and homelessness crises.
To hide their profit-motive to kill Proposition 33, corporate landlords say that California needs to merely build more luxury housing. It’s a bizarre, self-serving prescription for a housing affordability crisis that begs for more affordable housing, not luxury.
In addition, activists say that judging by their actions, corporate landlords have shown no interest in honestly solving the housing affordability crisis. No matter how much California tenants have been hurting, the real estate industry continues to charge higher and higher rents year after year.
A broad, statewide coalition of housing justice groups, labor unions, social justice organizations, and civic leaders are aiming to change that by passing Proposition 33 in November.
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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, and a contributor to CityWatch.)
