YES: PROTECT RENTERS AND INCENTIVIZE BUILDING

San Diegans have an opportunity to weigh in on many important issues in the November election, perhaps none more important at the state level than on California’s Proposition 21, the Rental Affordability Act, which would allow cities to enact or expand rent control policies that limit rent increases.

To be clear: Proposition 21 will not mandate rent control anywhere in California. It merely returns the decisionmaking process on whether or not to allow or enact rent control measures to local jurisdictions, communities and local elected officials.

Currently, the Costa-hawkins Rental Housing Act — which passed by just one vote in 1995 — is a one-sizefits-all state law that restricts rent control throughout California, while freezing rent control laws that had already been enacted by the time the law passed.

Proposition 21 actually modernizes rent control by allowing local governments to limit rent increases on buildings older than 15 years, protecting millions of renters while incentivizing new housing construction.

California has 17 million renters — almost 45% of the state’s population — who, according to Zillow, face a state median rent of $2,775 and currently have little or no protection from skyrocketing rents. We are the epicenter of homelessness in America, have the highest poverty rate as measured by the cost of living, and many renters pay half their income or more in monthly rent. But even if you are a homeowner, housing affordability hits you hard, and the affordability crisis makes it difficult for people to get onto that first rung of the home ownership ladder.

And that was before COVID-19.

The medical, humanitarian and economic devastation the coronavirus pandemic has caused is unprecedented. It has also hit housing affordability in the state hard, with as many as 5 million California renters at risk for eviction as soon as early next year. A San Diego Association of Governments’ study released earlier this month found 71 percent of those participating reported not being able to pay for rent, food and utilities, while two-thirds said the pandemic has negatively impacted their employment.

Thankfully, California lawmakers put Covid-related evictions on hold by extending an eviction moratorium until March 2021. Shamefully — and a full six months after the pandemic first upended life here — they punted, waiting until the final hour of the 2020 legislative session to pass a watered-down bill that bans evictions based on unpaid rent between March and August 2020. The hastily enacted law does not address unpaid rent and landlords can, and no doubt will, begin to aggressively pursue that debt in civil court starting March 1, 2021. And the law does little to ensure small mom-and-pop landlords are not wiped out, which would result in the concentration of our housing stock in the hands of corporations.

While it is true that Proposition 21 will allow rent limits on more rental homes than ever before, it specifically exempts small landlords and homeowners — those who own up to two homes or properties — from the law. If you are not in the rental home business, you will not be impacted by Proposition 21.

It is the large corporate landlords, the hedge funds, and billionaire property owners and developers who may face more accountability and restraint when — or if — local cities and jurisdictions choose to enact any forms of rent control.

Proposition 21 will help preserve affordable housing by slowing rent increases across communities by limiting rent hikes on empty units. This will help keep housing costs down for all of us while reducing unjust evictions of seniors, veterans and families.

Over the past few years, a witches’ brew of government officials, state and local regulations and fees, and well-intentioned affordable housing groups, have somehow let the cost per affordable housing unit to skyrocket.

A Calmatters analysis found that one in four members of the Legislature are also landlords, and only one, San Diego Assembly member Todd Gloria, is a renter in his primary residence. Legislators in Sacramento repeatedly fail to pass any meaningful protections for renters and homeowners alike. Why should they have had to struggle so hard to pass the recent basic eviction moratorium despite bearing witness to our historic public health crisis and its devastation over the past six months?

What can citizens do when Sacramento is so bought and paid for that no renter protections or mom and pop landlord protections can overcome the millions of dollars in campaign money showered on legislators?

Bring it to the ballot box, as we are doing with Proposition 21.

Proposition 21 is one way to help to preserve the social and economic fabric of our state by keeping vulnerable families, veterans, the elderly and the disabled in their homes.

Prop. 21 keeps vulnerable families, veterans, the elderly, and the disabled in their homes.