Rent control

The Pasadena Tenants Union said on social media that it is behind the filing of papers last Wednesday notifying City officials of the intended public circulation of a petition supporting a new City Charter Amendment which would create rent control in Pasadena.

The “notice of intent to circulate” the petition was signed by three people who did not state their affiliation with any group. On Friday, on Facebook, the Pasadena Tenants Union acknowledged it had “filed for Rent Control and Just Cause in the City of Pasadena for the November 6th, 2018 election.”

The Pasadena Tenants Union will soon begin collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to cap rent increases at 4.5 percent per year and require landlords to pay moving costs if a tenant is evicted without adequate cause.

Union members started the process last week, and they’ll need more than 12,000 signatures to get the charter amendment before voters in Nov. 2018.

The group is pushing for an initiative because they found little support from city leaders, according to Nicole Hodgson, a member of the union and one of the filing parties.

Following steps taken by tenant advocacy groups in Long Beach and Glendale, a Pasadena group has filed preliminary paperwork to place a rent control initiative on an upcoming ballot.

The Pasadena ballot measure would limit rent increases, force the city to adopt just-cause eviction policies — which limit the reasons a landlord can evict a tenant — and establish an independent rental housing board.

The main adversaries over the Measure V rent control law -- the Mountain View Tenants Coalition and the California Apartment Association -- are both facing investigations by the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

The 2018 ballot is shaping up to be a voter referendum on rent control in Los Angeles County. Affordable-housing advocates already have filed a proposed ballot initiative that would allow for the creation of new rent-controlled units in California for the first time in 20 years. And local activists in four cities in Los Angeles County — Inglewood, Long Beach, Glendale and Pasadena — have filed or are preparing to file rent-control ballot initiatives they hope to put before voters in November 2018.

After rent stabilization measures received mixed results around the Bay Area in the last election, voters in Pacifica will have their turn on Tuesday.

Volunteers who have been campaigning since the summer hope to convince homeowners, a group that makes up the majority of the city’s population, to vote for Measure C, which would limit how much landlords could raise rents.

Gloria Stofan, a resident since 1966, volunteers with Fair Rents 4 Pacifica. She said that, after speaking to four people, two said they’d vote no on Measure C, one said yes and one was undecided.

Portland voters decided overwhelmingly Tuesday not to adopt a form of rent control.

With all precincts reporting Tuesday evening, Question 1 on the city ballot was defeated by a nearly two-to-one margin. According to unofficial results, the vote was 13,466 to 7,595, or 64 percent to 36 percent, against the rent stabilization ordinance. Thirty-seven percent of the city’s 56,205 registered voters turned out to cast ballots.

The developers of a 20-story apartment tower planned for near Capitol Records in Hollywood announced today that they would voluntarily make all of their units rent-controlled. Subjecting the approximately 210 new apartments to the city’s rent control stabilization ordinance will cap rent increases at 3 percent per year. The ordinance applies to housing built prior to 1978—not new projects—so the decision is almost totally unheard of.

Housing activists in Inglewood and Pasadena on Friday announced plans to put rent control initiatives before their cities' voters next year as part of a regional groundswell of interest in rental caps.

These campaigns come after a spate of Bay Area cities put rent control on the ballot last year. Rent control supporters in two cities — Mountain View and Richmond — were successful, and those outcomes fueled hopes that Southern California communities could also limit rent increases.

The efforts come as California faces a housing crisis that shows no signs of abating.

Supporters of an initiative which would establish rent control in Pasadena as well as limitations on the termination of rental tenancies officially notified City officials Wednesday afternoon of their intention to publicly circulate a petition supporting a new City Charter Amendment to those ends.

The notice of intent to circulate the petition was signed by Pasadena housing activist Michelle C. White; Nicole Marie Hodgson, who is a leader of the year-old Pasadena Tenants Union; and 85-year-old Pasadena renter Robert Roberts.