We must help California’s largest minority: renters

OPINION – The largest minority in California is not an ethnic group or an age range: It is renters. Renters make up 45 percent of the population of California, and are arguably the most underrepresented.

The California legislature only has five renters in its ranks. They are far outnumbered by the 25 percent of lawmakers who are landlords.

However, these numbers only tell a small part of the story. While having so few renters in the halls of power who understand the burdens and hardships that tenants experience is a problem, the much larger issue is that billionaire corporate landlords have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into squashing renter-friendly legislation.

It is not a fair fight. Tenant organizations must scrape together nickels and dimes to advocate for renters—a giant, underrepresented constituency—while billionaire landlords write checks to buy off legislators and fund anti-tenant campaigns.

An historic wealth transfer from poor and middle-class people to billionaire real estate interests has taken place over the last generation in California. That is money taken directly out of the pockets of lower-income tenants and delivered into the bank account of notorious robber barons such as Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, who is worth more than $43 billion (and counting).

Today, more than 50 percent of renters pay more than half their income in rent. People have never been more “rent-burdened.” The only way that such a drastic imbalance can be maintained is when the corporate real estate cartel controls all the levers of power in California.

There are multiple factors that have led to the housing affordability crisis in California, but one stands out above all the others: Corruption. Corruption is dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. Corruption at its simplest is money stuffed in a garbage bag, and we have had plenty of that in cities like Los Angeles. Recent New York Times reporting confirmed it once again.

Then there is the campaign money buying our politicians’ votes. It goes like this: You give to my campaign, and I will give you lucrative zoning and permit exemptions. If that doesn’t work, billionaire corporate real estate interests then threaten to end your career by spending money against you in the next campaign, if you don’t toe the line against renters. And renters lose—again.

Politicians and their Big Real Estate patrons will go to extremes to cover up their corruption. They will come up with cockamamie explanations of how their exorbitant rents actually help renters, or they will try to peddle their shopworn theory that building luxury housing will trickle down to those on limited incomes. If that fails, they will resort to outright lies that homeowners’ property values will crater. And, if even that lie isn’t enough, billionaire landlords and their political allies will threaten to leave their buildings in disrepair if they cannot extract a king’s ransom.

California’s “liberal” politicians are indifferent to the suffering of 17 million renters, as long as the money keeps rolling in. And, if the renters have no money to organize, the die is cast for more suffering and a worsening crisis.

Fortunately, this November offers voters a rare respite from California’s corruption. Renters can jump over the politicians. Renter voters and their supporters have the chance to enact rent control by voting “Yes” on Proposition 33, the Justice for Renters Act that would remove California’s ban on rent control and expand it community by community.

We cannot allow our beloved California to turn into a third-world state, where only the super-rich and the poor on government support can survive, while the rest have to leave. We can do better.

Michael Weinstein is the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global HIV/AIDS organization, and AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation.