California tenants receive rent-hike threats that will only be rescinded if rent-control initiative fails

Tenants in California have received threatening letters from their landlords promising massive rent hikes if Proposition 10 (previously), which restores rent control, passes.

It's part of a national, lavishly financed attack on pro-tenancy measures, which has coincided with the entry of large private equity firms into the rental property market, skyrocketing rents and evictions, and a calamitous decline in the safety and quality of rental housing.

In Boston, landlord lobbyists killed a modest measure that would produce public statistics on evictions and educate tenants about their rights in law. Oregon has a new super PAC that is pre-emptively campaigning against any future rent control measures; New York City's bid to freeze rent on rent-stabilized apartments was killed by a seven-figure lobbying campaign.

Paid California signature-gatherers have been caught lying to people they approach, telling them that a pro-rent-control measure was anti-rent-control.

Opponents of rent control often cite a Stanford business-school study that purported to show that rent control has the opposite of the intended effect, but that study has deep flaws, and also shows that rent control prevents evictions of existing tenants, especially people on fixed incomes and families struggling to get by.

These efforts are part of a massive attack corporate landlords have been waging on rent control across the state. And though they claim to be speaking for the mom-and-pop landlords of California, the leaders of this campaign are some of the largest property owners in the country. Blackstone, the worlds largest real estate management firm, has spent nearly $7 million to defeat Prop 10.