The Failure of California's Proposition 21 and Its Implications for Housing Instability During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Photo: Daniel Arauz. Source
Rent control is a contentious issue in the state of California, where housing insecurity and homelessness have grown more rampant in recent years. The fight for stronger rent control policies has spanned decades for tenants’ rights activists, who have worked tirelessly to procure rent control legislation in cities since the 1970s. Today, fourteen municipalities have some form of rent regulation in place, and twelve of those municipalities enacted these laws beginning in the 70s, a period of heightened tenant activism. However, throughout its history, tenant activism has been met with equally persistent landlord opposition: in response to pushes for protections, landlords and other private housing entities have organized to defeat rent control measures, or at least limit their scope. Perhaps the most successful victory of the opposition movement was the passage of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which threw a wrench into the popular statewide rent control movement. Costa-Hawkins not only barred rent control from being applied to single-family homes or units constructed after 1995, but also allowed landlords to increase rent prices for new tenants indefinitely, fueling housing precarity across the state. Since then, housing instability has grown to be a more pressing issue, and now it presents an urgent need for action from both policymakers and activists.
The housing crisis was a key issue during the 2020 election cycle, which saw many contentious races at the local, state, and national levels. In California, some of the most aggressively fought electoral battles were a series of ballot measures, which presented opportunities to expand the rights of economically disadvantaged and historically underrepresented communities. One of these measures, Proposition 21, aimed to expand rent control in local municipalities. If passed, the proposition would have established a cap on rent increases for certain properties up to fifteen percent over the first three years of a tenancy. Additionally, it would have allowed local governments to establish rent control on rental properties over fifteen years old. Proposition 21 would have replaced much of the Costa-Hawkins Act with the elimination of fixed-date registration, which prohibited cities from enacting rent control on any properties occupied after 1995 and on housing units with distinct titles such as condos, townhouses, and single-family homes. However, the proposition was ultimately unsuccessful, as 60% of voters decided against the initiative.
This is not the first time a rent control ballot measure has failed in California. While the state harbors a liberal-leaning reputation, it is worth noting that outcomes of ballot initiatives illustrate that the state’s voters are not a liberal monolith, and that factors such as campaign finance weigh more heavily on campaign outcomes. In 2018, Californians voted on Proposition 10, a measure that would have permitted local governments to adopt rent control on any type of rental housing. Proposition 10 also failed to pass: 59% of voters rejected the measure, reflecting nearly the same margin as Proposition 21. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (A.H.F.), which co-sponsored both propositions, speculated in 2018 that that year’s measure failed in part because voters were not interested in a wholesale repeal of Costa-Hawkins, despite constituents also expressing openness to meaningful housing reform.
For a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 21 has gained significant national attention. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, emphasized the importance of passing “sensible limits” on rent increases to “protect families, seniors, and veterans from skyrocketing rents.” These limits would impact the lives of over 17 million California renters, more than ever before, who have faced escalating rent prices in recent years. Sanders’ position is in line with the supporters of Proposition 21, who consider rent control vital to protecting working-class Californians. California has the highest median rental cost and the fourth-highest rate of rent increases in the U.S. Further, a majority of tenants spend more than 30% of their income on rent, and a third of all renters use half of their paycheck on rent—and this has contributed to an increase in housing insecurity in recent years.
While supporters of Proposition 21 find that sensible limits are imperative in the fight for housing equity, opponents of the ballot measure argue that it would worsen the already severe housing crisis. No to 21, a bipartisan coalition championed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, the Republican Party of California, and several group residential development corporations, bankrolled a fear-inducing campaign. The coalition launched an $82.6 million campaign asserting that Proposition 21 would make affordable housing obsolete by disincentivizing property owners and developers from renting their units instead of selling them. The coalition also raised concerns about the proposition’s lack of protections for homeowners, seniors, and veterans.
If anything, the failed proposition gives us a glimpse into the oppositional forces that fight against achieving secure housing for millions of Californians. The opposition’s ability to expend millions of more dollars than the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s PAC demonstrates the extent to which disparities in campaign finance oftentimes determine the outcome of an election: well-to-do campaigns can spend more on advertisements, strongly impacting public opinion on the matter. Proposition 22, another 2020 ballot measure, which proposed that app-based workers for companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash remain as independent contractors instead of employees, fell to a similar fate. App-based companies rallied together to invest more than $202 million—the highest for any ballot initiative in California—in a campaign to stifle the rights of their workers, many of whom rely on gig labor for income. The proposition succeeded, and did so by running misleading advertisements featuring people of color. The outcomes of both of these elections allude to a move by corporations to buy legislation that pads their interests, at the expense of poor and low-income people.
The defeat of Proposition 21 made an already defective housing crisis more volatile, as the COVID-19 pandemic loomed over and devastated the people’s financial futures. With livelihoods destroyed by layoffs, job cuts, and the closure of workspaces that are impossible to translate into virtual work, the onset of COVID-19 presented millions of Americans with the very real threat of eviction by the end of March. The pandemic arrived at a time where the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard estimates nearly half of all Americans are cost-burdened by housing, with many renters living from paycheck to paycheck. For many Black and Latino households, the pandemic has created a particularly grim reality. According to JCHS, these households were more likely to be cost-burdened prior to the pandemic and to rely on income from at-risk jobs, where the possibility of layoff or termination is far greater, and where they must balance personal safety with financial security.
Governor Newsom passed a moratorium on evictions last March, preventing what could have been a massive eviction crisis, potentially to large-scale housing insecurity during a pandemic and undoubtedly hastening the virus’ spread. Newsom amended the moratorium in January, extending it through June but also making it harder to obtain protection: tenants need to specify and prove that their financial hardship is a direct result of COVID-19. While tenants are still expected to reimburse payments to their property owners, unpaid payments are not a legitimate reason for eviction, even after the moratorium period is lifted.
Though Newsom’s relief measures were crucial in keeping people housed and quarantined, it should not take a public health crisis to ensure people have safe and secure housing. The current moratorium offers a temporary solution to a larger problem that forces millions of Californians to live in fear of homelessness. Additionally, the coronavirus will still be an issue once the ban on evictions is lifted, and we need to remain diligent about keeping one another safe—a practice that inevitably includes housing rights protections. We need a permanent policy that supports tenants wholeheartedly and provides fewer opportunities for landlords to unlawfully push tenants out.
We are living in desperate times that require extraordinary measures to be taken to guarantee the livelihoods of the poorest among us. On the housing front, while an extended eviction moratorium is certainly a very welcome prospect, it is merely a provisional measure designed to keep a mass homelessness crisis at bay. Even eviction moratoriums do not provide lasting support for tenants. They merely prevent the forced removal of renters from their homes, as many are still expected to retroactively make rent payments.
Clearly, the lack of sensible housing protections leaves vulnerable people subject to bad policies, loopholes, and unforgiving landlords. Even under the current moratorium, landlords are still finding ways to evict tenants with haphazard reasoning. For example, one landlord evicted Mary Martinez, 87, from her apartment after deeming her epileptic nephew “too violent,” claiming that this violated their lease. With almost no savings to her name, Martinez had no choice but to move in with her younger sister in Colorado, possibly compromising her and her sister’s health as both are high-risk to COVID.
It is important to remember that situations like this probably happen more than we realize: despite the pandemic, there are people who will continue to put profit over the need to provide secure housing. In light of this, tenant groups have organized together to demand a “real” moratorium on evictions for the rest of the state of emergency. Yet, it is important to recognize that fighting for more sensible housing protections is not simply captured in extending a moratorium on evictions or putting a cap on rent increase, though these two policies do have the potential to generate solid defense against private predatory housing institutions. Rather, we should approach the issue of housing injustice as one that requires a much more comprehensive approach, because the issue is really about working people versus corporate interests, and those interests are grounded in perpetuating inequality.
While the passage of statewide rent control would have been a lifeline for millions of Californians who have been pushed out of affordable housing, it is only one policy that attempts to combat this issue of housing inequality in a long-lasting and permanent way. We need to remember that housing markets are still invested in creating profit, not keeping people housed. Ballot measures like Prop 21 can be the first step to achieving this larger goal, at least in the sense that a ballot measure brings the issue of unaffordable housing to popular attention, which raises consciousness about the dire nature of this moment. But, propositions can fail, so it remains imperative that we show solidarity with organizers and activists who do necessary work like mutual aid and protecting tenants from eviction—work that exceeds the limits of electoral politics. It still is necessary to situate the fight for statewide rent control as merely one aspect of a greater effort to achieve housing equality and justice for vulnerable populations, and that means organizing against private housing corporations and unrelenting landlords. We might need to broaden the frameworks we look to for solutions and be open to things such as considering additional protections for renters, including financial assistance from the federal government in the form of stimulus packages and providing hazard pay for essential workers.
This effort must prioritize the interests of tenants and their health and safety. It is through building unions and coalitions, learning and understanding your rights, showing solidarity with one another, and performing strikes that tenants can work to combat the forces that produce housing crises. Not doing so, and only advocating for minor reforms of the system, risks reproducing inequality, and this fails millions of working people, exemplified in how the eviction moratorium is going to leave people housing insecure once it expires later this year. We must remember that while pandemic conditions may bring to light the magnitude of social issues such as housing precarity, direct political action demanding safe and secure housing for all, in tandem with struggles for more equal wealth distribution in society, is absolutely necessary to ensure that all people are protected, regardless of there being a pandemic.
Kayla Leong is a staff writer at CPR and a junior at Barnard College studying history and American studies. Hailing all the way from Brooklyn, NY, she knows how to get anywhere using public transportation and enjoys baking sourdough in her free time.