Rent control

Sacramento’s escalating rents could result in the City Council enacting a rent control ordinance, possibly to head off a rent control ballot measure that could appear before voters in November.

The California Apartment Association posted an item on its website this week saying Mayor Darrell Steinberg would introduce such an ordinance for a vote as soon as next Tuesday’s City Council meeting, or at the meeting on June 19.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg came out Thursday against an effort to put rent control on the ballot in Sacramento this November.

“Their initiative is a threat,” Steinberg said. “If it got on the ballot and it passed, I think that would be a problem.”

Housing advocates and labor groups have been gathering signatures to put a renter protections measure in front of voters this fall.

Movements for renter power are gaining strength. Even just a few years ago discussion of any type of rent regulation was a non-starter. Now, new rent control laws are passing and a measure is headed to the ballot to repeal Costa Hawkins, the industry created state law that severely limits local rent control.

Rent control campaigns are surging powerfully throughout the United States as rents rise and housing crises become more extreme. At the same time, mainstream economists and pro-landlord groups are recirculating anti-rent control rhetoric and misleading studies to discredit rent control and the real struggles that tenants face every day.

A coalition of activist groups gathered on the steps of Santa Ana city hall to kick off a campaign to bring rent control to the city. Frustrated by a lack of support from council members, Tenants United Santa Ana (Tú Santa Ana) filed an ordinance with the city clerk yesterday afternoon following a rally. If successful, the campaign aimed at the November ballot would make Santa Ana the first city in Orange County to establish broad rent control regulations.

For Fernando Nadal, the fight to bring rent control to Sacramento is personal. The retired nurse says he and his wife were evicted from their retirement community by a property manager who, among other things, claimed that a small gathering of acquaintances and journalists to discuss his son’s fatal drug overdose constituted having “a party” inside his rental unit. When Nadal received a 60-day eviction notice last year, he filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which sided with the property manager.

The city of Half Moon Bay is in the early stages of considering some form of rent control that could ease a growing crisis felt by area residents who are forced to double up in homes or move out of the area just to make ends meet.

At the March 20 City Council meeting, Half Moon Bay resident Joaquin Jimenez spoke about the issue and how it has hit the Latino community on the Coastside particularly hard. Jimenez said he had collected 300 signatures from residents interested in seeing a rent control ordinance appear an upcoming ballot.

On March 20, voters in nine Chicago wards were faced with a simple question at the end of their ballot: “Should the state repeal the ban on rent control?”

Such a simple query belies the intense amount of organizing that has galvanized housing activists and changed the debate around Chicago’s housing problems. After more than a year of fighting to get the measure on the ballot, the outcome of the vote speaks to the frustration many people feel about rising housing costs in Chicago: 75 percent of voters supported the measure.

As tenant advocacy groups gather signatures to put rent-control reform on the November ballot, Santa Monica’s Rent Control Board is looking at the local possibilities if it succeeds. At their March meeting, the RCB expressed doubt it would be able to build consensus fast enough to draft a tandem measure to immediately expand its authority to either limit rents or expand rent control to more units if the Affordable Housing Act passes.

The city is suing a landlord who authorities say tried to bypass Oakland’s rent control ordinances and nearly triple his tenants’ rent by pretending to move into the duplex.

The city attorney’s office, alongside tenant rights legal firm Centro Legal de la Raza, filed a lawsuit March 20 against landlord Rong Fu Lee alleging that he claimed to be living in the downstairs unit of the duplex in 2016 and attempted to drastically increase the rent for Salvador Sotelo — who had lived at the West Oakland duplex with his family since 2003.