SAN DIEGO, CA - In late May, a family trust with rental properties scattered around San Diego County bought a small apartment building on Bermuda Avenue in Ocean Beach, paying $4.23 million. Over the next few weeks, it bought three more properties, also built in the 1960s or 1970s, for a total of 34 units.

When the deal closed, the trust’s property management company, Coast West Properties, got to work, giving move-out notices to rent-paying, rule-abiding tenants in apartments tagged for renovation, scheduling contractors and posting listings for the spiffed-up units.

LOS ANGELES, CA - In the coming weeks, Los Angelenos will vote on a ballot measure to hike taxes on the sale of multimillion dollar properties, with the expected near-billion dollars in annual revenue going towards addressing the housing crisis in the second-largest city in America.

The initiative has been strongly opposed by real estate interests — from huge corporate landlords to realtor lobbying groups and pro-business groups — who have so far poured more than $5 million into efforts to defeat the measure.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Chula Vista has approved a landlord-tenant ordinance aimed at protecting good renters from no-fault evictions by landlords acting in bad faith.

Council members passed the law in a 3-1 vote Tuesday after having delayed the issue in May due to not having a quorum. Councilmember Jill Galvez cast the lone vote in opposition and Councilmember John McCann recused himself because of a conflict of interest as he owns multiple properties.

LOS ANGELES, CA - For the wealthiest state in the nation, California’s social and economic inequality is glaringly stark. More than a fourth of America’s unhoused population lives there, according to a 2020 HUD report, and it’s the only state where more than 70% of that population is unsheltered—that is, living outside the shelter system in tents, informal communities, and camps.

And nowhere in the state is the disparity so affronting as in Los Angeles, among the 10 wealthiest cities in the world and also home to the largest unsheltered population of any U.S. city.

The COVID-19 pandemic made the wealthiest people in the US much richer. While a million Americans died, and we endured the worst health crisis in a generation, the powerful consolidated their financial position. By May 2022, US billionaires’ wealth had grown by $1.7 trillion since the coronavirus crisis began.

A key component of concentrated wealth is real estate, ie, the ownership and management of land and buildings. Controlling real estate has historically been a central piece of gaining and maintaining power. This is no less true today. The richest people in the world use land and buildings as vehicles for hiding their assets and as investments to increase their capital. In doing so, they have weaponized real estate not just to grow their wealth, but to control our communities.

RICHMOND, CA - Richmond voters are being asked on the November ballot to boost rent control measures so that tenants in controlled units would experience no more than a 3% rent hike. 

If Measure P is approved, it would keep those tenants from potentially receiving a much higher rent increase that is based on the consumer price index. In Richmond, landlords can raise the rent to 100% of inflation, which is the percentage increase in the consumer price index — currently, 5.2%. Measure P would decrease that to either 60% of inflation, or a flat 3% increase in monthly rent, whichever is lower. 

LOS ANGELES, CA - Three weeks ago, Los Angeles City Council candidate Danielle Sandoval issued a public apology, saying she was taking full responsibility for her handling of wage theft claims filed by workers at a restaurant she opened in 2014.

Sandoval said she was working to "remediate the harm" caused to the four former employees of Caliente Cantina in San Pedro, which is now closed.

ANTIOCH, CA - Residents, housing advocates and Antioch City Council members gathered at Casa Blanca Apartments to celebrate the passage of the city’s first rent stabilization rules, the strongest such laws in Contra Costa County.

The ordinance caps rent increases at 3% or 60% of the consumer price index, whichever is lower; allows only one rent increase each year; and includes government-funded, low-income housing apartments.