It’s no secret that the housing crisis in CA is a humanitarian catastrophe. In CA (as in many other right-wing dictatorships), the law enshrines numerous privileges for landlords and corporate developers.

One of these is the Costa-Hawkins act, a special exemption that forbids any municipality from controlling rents on “new construction”, which includes any housing built after 1995.¹

There is a proposition 33² on the ballot to repeal this privilege. Thankfully, the Council for Affordable Housing is here to protect the poor landlords. They are blasting the airwaves with shameless misinformation, claiming that weakening landlord privileges would imperil rent control as a whole. They join a deep tradition of corporate developers masquerading as pro-housing advocates.³

The anchor point of this is the far-right trickle-down housing narrative, which is sadly very popular in otherwise “progressive” urbanist circles. The basic parts of this corporate developer-backed myth are:

• Increasing the availability of housing is sufficient to make it affordable
• Decommodifying housing will exacerbate the housing crisis by disincentivising corporate developers from increasing availability

More information about the dark money behind the “No on prop 33” campaign. And this is for just one of many landlord privileges like this. Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in action.

Sorry for linking the lib sites.

¹ This date is absolute—it’s the date the law was signed into effect. So “new construction” is never transferred into the “affordable rental housing” market under this law.

² For those unfamiliar, a “proposition” is basically a plebiscite/referendum.

³ See for example the infamous “California YIMBY”.