click to enlarge Photo by Darwin BondGraham

California's landlords have already raised more than $70 million to campaign against Proposition 10, an initiative on the Nov. 6 ballot that would repeal the state Costa-Hawkins Act and thereby restore cities' authority to enact stronger rent control laws. But the stakes aren't equally high for all landlords. Some are contributing much more money against Prop. 10 than others.



In fact, a few Wall Street-backed real estate corporations are the biggest opponents of Prop. 10, campaign finance records show. These same companies also happen to own hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of real estate in Berkeley and Oakland — two cities where strengthened rent control would immediately take effect if Prop. 10 passes.

One example is the Gaia building, just a few blocks from the UC Berkeley campus. Because it was built in the year 2000, the Gaia isn't subject to Berkeley's rent stabilization ordinance, one of the strongest in the state. Only buildings constructed before 1980 are rent controlled in Berkeley because the Costa-Hawkins Act locked in that date as the cutoff for "new construction." (For most of the rest of the state, rent control can't be applied to "new" housing built after 1995; in Oakland, it's 1983.)

In 2007, Equity Residential, one of the largest landlords in the United States, purchased the Gaia. The building is a moneymaker in a very tight real estate market, and Equity can charge as much rent as the market will bear. Right now, that means a one-bedroom apartment in the Gaia goes for $2,161 per month.

But if Prop. 10 passes, along with Berkeley's Measure Q, the Gaia will end up being covered by rent control, starting in 2021. That's because Measure Q would update Berkeley's rent control law to define new construction as anything built in the past 20 years. On the 21st year, the building comes under rent control.

According to Equity Residential, the Gaia is currently worth $33 million. It's part of the company's vast portfolio of housing that includes another seven buildings in Berkeley that contain 414 apartments.

Some of these other Berkeley properties owned by Equity Residential would become immediately subject to rent control if Prop. 10 and Measure Q pass. This includes the 56-unit Berkeleyan on Oxford Street and the Renaissance Villas on University Avenue, both built in 1998. Two-bedroom apartments in each rent for roughly $2,600 right now.

As of last Friday, Equity Residential had already given $3.725 million to the main committee opposing Prop. 10, making the company the third largest contributor.

Equity Residential officials didn't respond to a request for comment for this report, but the company obviously has a big stake in the East Bay's housing market and the current laws that prevent its buildings from being regulated by rent control. In fact, Equity Residential described rent control in its annual report to shareholders as one of the major "risks" that could reduce its profits.

"[R]ent control or rent stabilization laws and other regulatory restrictions may limit our ability to increase rents and pass through new or increased operating costs to our tenants," the company told shareholders in its 2017 annual report. It specifically cited two Bay Area cities, Richmond and Mountain View, which approved rent stabilization laws in 2016 as causes for concern. "Such laws and regulations limit our ability to charge market rents, increase rents, evict tenants or recover increases in our operating expenses and could make it more difficult for us to dispose of properties in certain circumstances," the company's executives explained in the report.

Paola Laverde, vice-chair of Berkeley's Rent Stabilization Board, said the millions of dollars that companies like Equity Residential are spending to defeat Prop. 10 represent a tiny fraction of the profits they've made in cities like Berkeley thanks to Costa-Hawkins. "Right now if you're living in that Gaia building and your lease is up, the law says they can increase your rent by whatever amount," said Laverde. "They don't want that golden-egg-laying goose going on a diet."

The other top contributors to the "No on 10" campaign also own East Bay real estate that would be immediately impacted if Costa-Hawkins were repealed.

Invitation Homes, for example, is one of the newer breed of corporate landlords that owns thousands of single-family homes as rental properties. Many were purchased during the foreclosure crisis at a fraction of their current value, said Carroll Fife, executive director of Oakland's ACCE chapter, a tenants' rights group.

"They bought up a bunch of homes in East Oakland," Fife said. "They're all painted the same color. You know the properties when you see them."

Some ACCE members actually live in properties owned by Invitation Homes, said Fife, and they've become volunteers in the campaign for Prop. 10 after receiving large rent increases.

Invitation Homes, which is owned by the Wall Street private equity firm Blackstone, can increase rents on its portfolio of rental homes by whatever amount it wants because Costa-Hawkins bans rent control on single-family homes. But if Prop. 10 passes, it's possible that many single-family homes in Oakland being rented out right now would suddenly be covered by rent control. That's because the city's rent adjustment ordinance doesn't specifically exempt single-family homes from Oakland's law. Instead, it states that any housing exempted by Costa-Hawkins is also exempted from Oakland's local rent control law.