"SACRAMENTO, CA – In what sponsors are calling “sweeping legislation to combat California’s spiraling housing emergency,” legislation was introduced here Wednesday to “provide immediate relief to millions of renters, protecting many from displacement, preventing worsening homelessness,” according to a coalition of lawmakers, labor labors, tenant, youth activists and the unhoused.
The so-called “Affordable Rent Act,” introduced as AB 1157 by Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), will, said the author and the coalition behind it, “permanently strengthen tenant protections statewide by updating the Tenant Protection Act of 2019.”
The bill would limit annual rent increases to the Consumer Price Index plus two percent or five percent, whichever is lower; includes single-family home renter and makes TPA permanent by removing a 2030 sunset.
Sponsors maintained in a statement that “California’s 17 million renters face aggressive rent increases that outpace wages; this bill would provide immediate relief from a system where current law allows landlords to nearly double rents over a decade even as wages don’t keep up.”
Noting that median rent in California has ballooned about 37 percent since 2000, when the TPA went into effect, “median renter household income has only increased seven percent,” adjusted for inflation, the coalition said.
The coalition added, “Under current law, renters could see their rent nearly double over 10 years. With half of California renters already spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, excessive increases are driving the homelessness crisis."
