Rent control could be headed back to California voters

Rent control advocates on Thursday submitted signatures to get the issue back on the ballot — tweaking the soundly defeated Proposition 10 from 2018 and hoping to return it to California voters next year.

A coalition led by Michael Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation submitted more than 1 million signatures for an initiative with new exemptions for home owners and developers.

The coalition is bringing back the measure because the state’s affordable housing crisis is deepening, Weinstein said at a news conference in Los Angeles. “The situation has gotten so much worse,” he said.

The real estate industry and some housing advocates again are lining up against the measure. Industry groups say the initiative will chill development of new homes and apartments. By some estimates, California has a housing deficit of 3.5 million units.

It also has the highest housing costs in the nation. San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los

Angeles and San Diego are among the 10 most expensive cities for renters in the country, according to listing site Zumper.

The powerful California Apartment Association quickly dismissed the initiative as a rehash of Prop. 10, which lost by a margin of 20 percentage points.

“Voters overwhelming rejected the measure the last time it was on the ballot,” said California Apartment Association CEO Tom Bannon. “Once we educate voters about Weinstein’s latest housing-freeze measure, it’s bound to fail just as miserably as Prop. 10.”

Supporters say the new proposal would strengthen rent control measures passed by the Legislature this year and would protect homeowners.

The new rent control proposal would allow cities to place price caps on properties more than 15 years old, making many more units eligible. Most Bay Area apartments built after the early 1980s now are exempt from price controls.

The proposal also would limit increases when a new tenant moves in to 15% in the first three years. Existing state law allows units to go back to market rate prices.

Proponents say the measures are needed given the state’s housing crisis. About one-third of state renters spend more than half of their paycheck on housing, according to the coalition.

A minimum wage worker in California would have to clock 92 hours a week to afford the average one-bedroom rent in the state, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

Advocates also point to a growing homeless population and the disruptions high housing costs have on the working poor and middle class. “If we continue to allow double-digit increases in rents, the homelessness crisis is going to get much, much worse,” Weinstein said.

But opponents say the measure will hurt homeowners and reduce incentives to build new affordable housing. “This extreme form of rent control would lead to a mass exodus from the rental housing market and exacerbate California’s housing shortage,” Bannon said.

Another new rent control measure will become law in January. The measure, AB1482, caps annual rent increases at 5% plus the cost of living and offers more tenant protections from eviction.

The measure has stirred concern about landlords seeking to boot tenants before the caps are enforced. Several Bay Area cities have passed temporary protections against hasty evictions that could be related to the new law.

The region’s largest cities — San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco — have long- established local rent control laws. San Jose and San Francisco ban rent controls on most units built after 1979, and Oakland prohibits controls on most apartments built after 1983.