A major test of rent control as a way to solve the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis met mixed results at the polls last week.
Initiatives to establish formal rent-control programs appear to be on track to pass in Mountain View and Richmond but failed in San Mateo, Burlingame and Alameda. All were placed on the ballot by citizens who collected enough signatures.
However, voters in Alameda approved Measure L1, a renter protection ordinance placed on the ballot by its City Council, but it falls far short of rent control. Voters in Mountain View rejected a similar council-sponsored proposal in favor of the more stringent rent-control measure.
In Berkeley, Oakland and East Palo Alto, voters approved measures to stiffen existing rent-control measures in favor of tenants.
All these measures were a response to skyrocketing rents and tenant evictions throughout the Bay Area, which in turn were caused by job growth far outstripping housing growth over the past five or six years.
The results gave people on both sides of the rent-control debate — which bitterly divided some communities — enough to claim victory.
Rent control did not win “across the board, but more than anyone ever dreamed possible,” said Juliet Brodie, a Stanford Law School professor who helped draft Measure V, the citizen initiative in Mountain View.
She said the results will encourage more cities to adopt modern rent control, which limits annual rent increases for existing tenants. “I think that as these measures are implemented, people will see that rent stabilization is a balanced response to a market that is out of control.”
But executives with the California Apartment Association, which represents landlords, think the results could discourage other cities from attempting rent control.
“If you look at the defeats in Alameda, Burlingame and San Mateo, they didn’t even get 40 percent of the yes vote. That is a clear rejection of strong rent control,” said Joshua Howard, a lobbyist with the association. The Mountain View initiative was ahead with a 53 percent majority as of Friday, but that represents a margin of only about 1,200 votes, he added.
The association spent about $1.1 million trying to defeat the initiatives in Mountain View, San Mateo, Burlingame, Richmond and Alameda. Almost one-third of that was spent on the Mountain View measure. The California Association of Realtors kicked in a total of $372,000 to defeat the five initiatives. Opponents far outspent proponents.
The Coalition for Housing Equality spent about $1 million combined to defeat Measure R in Burlingame and Measure Q in San Mateo, said Laura Teutschel, a spokeswoman for the coalition. The money came from individual donors, the apartment association and the national, state and county Realtors associations.
By comparison, proponents spent an estimated $80,000 on those two measures combined, said Jennifer Martinez, executive Director of Faith in Action Bay Area, which sponsored Measure Q.
In Mountain View, “We were totally grassroots,” Brodie said. “We didn’t run a TV ad. As far as talking points, they were only as good as the volunteer at the door.”
Although the five ballot measures differed in some ways, they all sought to limit annual rent increases for existing tenants to some amount above or below the change in the Consumer Price Index. As required by state law, the measures exempted multifamily apartments built after Feb. 1, 1995 — and all single-family homes and condos, whenever built — from limits on annual rent increases. The same law allows landlords to charge new tenants whatever they want when the old tenant voluntarily vacates a rent-controlled unit, but then the new tenant is rent controlled.
All five measures also sought to limit evictions to certain so-called just causes, such as failure to pay rent, and to reasons allowed by law, such as owner move-ins. Some of the measures exempted single-family homes and condos from eviction controls, some did not.
If spending alone can’t explain why some measures won and some lost, what can? The percentage of renter households in each city could have made a difference.
In Mountain View and Richmond, which approved rent control, they make up an estimated 60 and 55 percent of households, respectively, according to 2014 census data. The percentage of renter households is 45 percent in San Mateo, 52 percent in Burlingame and 53 percent in Alameda.
In Mountain View and Richmond, there are well-organized grassroots organizations that have been in discussions with their city councils about housing and rent control for more than two years, Howard said.
Mountain View is also the “epicenter of the high-tech boom,” he said. “The demand for housing has just been extremely high” in the headquarters city of Google, LinkedIn and other tech companies with well-paid workers.
Richmond is miles apart from Mountain View, both geographically and socioeconomically. The median household income in Mountain View is about $100,000; in Richmond, it’s about $55,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Yet it’s still being impacted by the tech boom. People who are getting priced out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco because they can’t compete with high-tech workers are moving to Oakland. As landlords in Oakland raise rents, people are moving to Richmond, which is pushing up rents and displacing tenants there. But Richmond is the end of the BART line, and people who can’t afford Richmond can’t move farther and still commute on BART.
“We fought to get Measure L on the ballot, so there may be one stop left on the BART line that working Bay Area people could afford,” said Gary Jimenez, a regional vice president with SEIU Local 1021.
Marilyn Langlois went door to door supporting Measure L, even though she owns her own home and another one she rents out. “I lived in other cities and counties that had rent control. I always just thought it’s the way to go,” she said.
Although the single-family home she rents out in Richmond will not be covered by Measure L, “The family that’s living there is very hard-working. I can’t imagine raising the rent on them beyond the cost of living. To me that seems unfair,” Langlois said.
Richmond’s Measure L, which has 64.4 percent of votes counted, got a boost from the Richmond Progressive Alliance, Howard said. The alliance supported rent control as well as three City Council candidates who supported rent control (they were all elected or re-elected).
In San Mateo and Burlingame, Howard said voters “seemed very concerned not only about rent control, but about the unintended consequences.” Those include the cost to the city (even though landlords would pay a fee to run the program), the fact that it would protect all existing tenants regardless of their income and the increased difficulty of evicting problem tenants.
“The messages from (opponents) were distorted and constantly repeated untrue statements,” Cindy Cornell, founder of Burlingame Advocates for Renter Protections, said in an email. “Renters were portrayed as criminals and untrustworthy. It pitted neighbors against neighbors. The negativity succeeded in defeating what would have been two very good tools to end some of the massive displacement we are seeing.”
As for the future, “Our steering committee will be meeting soon to discuss individual and group plans, and strategy going forward. Among our local and state legislators, there is no plan. There is no leadership. So there is no alternative.”
Noelia Corzo, a community organizer for Faith in Action who supported Measure Q, said, “I feel really disappointed and ready to continue to fight for renters protections.” However, “a lot of our core volunteers are devastated by the presidential election results. We are just allowing time to process that” before planning next steps.
Tom Bannon, the apartment association's chief executive, said, “I’m optimistic you are not going to see a lot more efforts” at rent control. “You are seeing rents stabilize and actually come down in certain parts of the bay. And I think people are getting it that increasing supply” is the best way to solve the housing crisis.