California ballot measure to reintroduce rent control met with millions in opposition from Wall Street landlords

California is one of the hot-zones in the world's urban housing crisis, driven by a combination of opposition to highrise/high-density living and the mass purchase of foreclosed properties following the 2008 crisis by giant Wall Street landlords who have steadily ratcheted up rents and evictions in a big to safeguard the flow of payments to bondholders who get a share of the rents extracted from struggling tenants living in dangerous, substanding housing.

California's cities have different policy levers they can yank on to address this: zoning changes, commuter rail, school spending. But one lever that cities have relied upon since the beginning of modern urban government is missing: rent control. California state law forbids rent control on single-family homes; and apartments build after 1995.

A ballot measure, Prop 10, will allow cities to impose rent controls on all rental stock, allowing voters a say in the way that their cities are developed. But the giant hedge funds that own hundreds of thousands of California rental properties are pumping millions more into scare-campaigns intended to convince voters to oppose Prop 10.

Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world, is California's biggest corporate landlord, with 127,000 single-family homes in its "portfolio." They're responsible for $6,859,747 in anti-Prop-10 spending, part of the $45m attack on the proposition.

Landlords across California have sent eviction notices to their tenants giving them 60 days to leave; other have announced massive rent increases -- and tenants have been notified that these will be cancelled only if Prop 10 fails. Read the rest