SANTA CRUZ — Many people in the Seabright neighborhood knew about the roiling local debate over rent control even before Zav Hershfield, petition in hand, knocked on their doors.

Canvassers for renter rights have been through parks, neighborhoods and local shopping centers since February in this coastal town, collecting signatures to place a city referendum on the November ballot limiting annual rent increases and make it harder to evict residents.

Want to find more housing coverage and connect with our journalists?

Click here to join our new Facebook group

Hershfield, 25, a recent UC Santa Cruz graduate, approached homeowner Anita Grunwald while she walked her dog.

“Rent control is kind of a difficult issue,” said Grunwald, a long-time Santa Cruz resident, musing about helping the city’s population of students, teachers and emergency workers. She didn’t sign, but agreed with Hershfield on one point: “Something has to be done.”

As housing prices rise and rents soar, the tenants’ rights movement has gained momentum in smaller cities across California. Even typically placid suburbs are now grappling with rent control battles that were fought decades ago in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

In addition to Santa Cruz, housing advocates in Sacramento, Santa Rosa and many Southern California communities are seeking to limit rent increases and gain protections for renters from eviction. Others, like Pacifica, San Mateo and Burlingame, have seen rent control measures fail after battles between renters and landlords.

“The pressure to keep your housing has become so intense,” said Tony Roshan Samara, program director at Urban Habitat in Oakland. “It begins to wear on individuals, families and entire communities.”

Growing financial pressure on tenants is driving a statewide push for a November referendum to lift California’s limits on rent control, a decades-old law backed by landlords and developers and known as Costa Hawkins. The law generally bans rent control on single family homes, condominiums, and units built after February 1, 1995. If the law is lifted, cities could put caps on far more properties.

Typically, local rent control measures allow landlords to annually raise rents with the cost of living index, capped at no more than 5 percent. Advocates also push for protections against evictions, limiting the reasons a landlord can remove a tenant.

But across the state, real estate brokers, property owners and others have financed successful campaigns against rent control. They say the answer to the housing crisis and rising rents is more development, not regulation.

“We have found ourselves in this perfect storm,” said Joshua Howard, spokesman for the California Apartment Association. “Price controls fail to solve the underlying problem.”

Renter groups say the controls allow tenants — a growing population in many Bay Area suburbs — to have stable, predictable housing costs. The caps slow the rate of rent increases, but state law gives landlords the opportunity to raise prices back to market rates when tenants leave.

Samara said rising costs have many poor and working class families spending more than half of their income on housing. Median monthly rents for apartments in the Bay Area are among the highest in the country, with a typical two bedroom leasing for $2,270 in Oakland, $2,570 in San Jose and $3,060 in San Francisco, according to Apartment List.

The housing crisis, Smara said, “is very much a renter crisis.”

A recent study of rent control in San Francisco by Stanford researchers found the local measures led owners to convert more units to condos or redevelop the properties, and reduced their amount of available apartments. Renters tended to stay in rent-controlled apartments longer, the study found, which allowed them to save between $2,300 and $6,600 per person annually from 1995 to 2012.

The reduced supply of apartments drove city-wide monthly prices up by about 7 percent, researchers found. They argued the program would have been more efficient if the city provided subsidies or tax credits to offset large rent increases.

Howard said property owners are willing to compromise with other provisions, such as granting relocation assistance and guaranteeing 12-month leases, but have not found a willing partner in the advocacy groups. “They had the mantra of rent control or bust,” he said.

Pacifica might offer a glimpse of what’s ahead for other suburban communities.

The quiet coastal community tucked between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay has seen its population grow and rents, like elsewhere in the Bay Area, soar. The median cost for apartments rose 51 percent between 2010 and 2015, a city survey found, far outstripping average wage increases.

A local mobile home park, Pacific Skies Estates, was purchased by out-of-state investors. The investors raised rents and renovated the property. Dozens of residents were evicted, sparking a community backlash.

A non-profit group, Fair Rents 4 Pacifica, formed and mustered enough support from the city council to get rent control placed on the November 2017 ballot.

National, state and local Realtor associations, as well as city property managers and landlords, spent about $450,000 to defeat the measure. The campaign included paid signature gatherers, signs and online marketing.

Renter rights advocates told police they were harassed by petitioners hired by landlord groups as the two sides campaigned in Pacifica shopping centers. “It was an extremely unpleasant experience,” said Suzanne Moore, a retired nurse helping lead the rent control campaign.

In March, San Mateo County prosecutors charged two contractors gathering signatures for the property owners groups with felony election fraud. Brad and Jentry Jasperson, of Utah, face 21 counts in San Mateo Superior Court of identity theft, signing fictitious or forged names to a petition, and perjury by declaration. Prosecutors allege the couple forged or made up 10 signatures of San Mateo County residents.

Howard said the CAA supported the investigation and expects lawful behavior from its campaigners.

Tenant advocacy groups say the hardball tactics have been mirrored in communities across the state.

Zav Hershfield expects the resistance to grow in Santa Cruz. Some members of the group are already wary of reprisals from their landlords.

As he went door to door, he said the local group, Movement for Housing Justice, was well on the way to gathering 9,000 signatures, nearly double the necessary amount to put the measure to voters. “There’s a lot of fear in the homeowner and landlord community,” said Hershfield, who rents. “I can sympathize.”

Stephen Snyder, a long-time homeowner, had already studied the issue when Hershfield handed him a clipboard.

“Everybody should have a chance to live here,” Snyder said, scratching his name on the petition.

RENT CONTROL IN THE BAY AREA – MORE TO COME?

Cities with rent control:

Berkeley

East Palo Alto

Hayward

Los Gatos

Mountain View

Oakland

Richmond

San Francisco

San Jose

Cities considering ballot measures for November:

Sacramento

Santa Cruz

Santa Rosa

Source: California Apartment Association