Rent control expansion appears headed to ballot
State lawmakers fail at attempts to compromise on law
“There are many of us who hoped we would be able to resolve these issues in the Legislature, and it looks like that won’t come to pass.”
Assemblyman David Chiu, D- San Francisco
SACRAMENTO — Proponents of a November ballot measure that would let California cities expand rent control say negotiations for a compromise have collapsed and that the issue will now be decided by voters.
The all- or- nothing effort to repeal the Costa- Hawkins Rental Housing Act is likely to be one of the costliest fights of the fall election. State lawmakers had hoped to reach a deal in the Legislature that tenant and landlord groups could agree to, but that now seems “highly unlikely,” Assemblyman David Chiu, D- San Francisco, said Friday.
“There are many of us who hoped we would be able to resolve these issues in the Legislature, and it looks like that won’t come to pass,” said Chiu, who wrote a bill similar to the ballot measure
that failed in its first hearing in January.
Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for the campaign to oppose the ballot measure, agreed that talks have stopped.
Supporters of the ballot measure, the Coalition for Affordable Housing, accused the California Apartment Association landlord group of “abruptly and without explanation” ending negotiations after two meetings.
The repeal measure has already qualified for the Nov. 6 ballot. Tuesday is the secretary of state’s deadline for removing a measure from the ballot, and that had been serving as a driving force in the negotiations.
“This is why no significant legislation to address California’s rental housing crisis has passed out of the Legislature,” the coalition said in a statement, adding that if the apartment association “won’t negotiate a compromise when faced with a statewide ballot measure to repeal Costa- Hawkins, it is clear they will not compromise on any legislation.”
The initiative, called the Affordable Housing Act, qualified for the ballot last week after backers collected the more than the 365,880 valid signatures needed. The measure would repeal the 1995 state law named for the legislators who wrote it — Democrat Jim Costa, now a Central Valley congressman, and Southern California Republican Paul Hawkins.
The law bars cities from imposing rent control on single- family homes or condos. It also bans cities from capping rent on any building that was built after February 1995. That date is earlier in cities that already had rent control before the law went into effect. For example, rent control is limited in San Francisco to buildings built before 1979. In Oakland, rent can’t be capped on buildings built after 1983.
The act also allows landlords of rent- controlled units to raise monthly payments to whatever they want after a tenant moves out, a provision known as vacancy decontrol. Landlords say that allows them to receive market rates on their investments, while tenant activists say it gives property owners incentive to evict residents under false pretenses.
The repeal would not immediately create new rentcontrol measures, instead allowing individual cities to adopt them.
“Repealing Costa- Hawkins would give us one more significant tool to protect our residents to make sure that the people who work in our city can live in our city,” said Oakland City Councilman Dan Kalb. “Oakland’s rents are some of the most rapidly increasing in the country. ... Just last month, the average rent for an apartment in Oakland was $ 2,998.”
Tenants in single- family homes said they can’t afford the skyrocketing rent and pleaded with state lawmakers for relief at a hearing Thursday in Sacramento. Renters in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento expressed similar frustration, saying the high cost of their apartments is putting them on the brink of homelessness.
“Leaving would be devastating,” said Sheri Eddings, who lives in a single- family home in Los Angeles where she says her rent has been raised twice in the past two years. “I have no idea where else I’d live.”
The tenants were countered by a large contingent of property owners from San Francisco, who said overturning the law would cost them their livelihoods. So many people attended the public hearing — where the ballot measure was discussed but not voted on by lawmakers — that several overflow rooms were opened.
Debra Carlton of the California Apartment Association, who spoke in opposition of the measure, painted a bleak picture of a state without Costa- Hawkins, saying property owners will sell their rental units if they are unfairly capped on what they can charge and that developers won’t build housing if they believe they won’t make a profit.
Some renters will find relief through lower monthly payments, Carlton said, but many others will be locked out of housing because of a dwindling supply.
“The initiative does not address our housing problem,” Carlton said. “It pours gasoline on the housing crisis and we believe makes it worse.”