If you don't think landlords have a right to unlimited rent increases and to evict tenants for any reason, then you believe in rent control.
Only 37 out of 482 cities in California have meaningful rent control and/or just cause protections. Tenants Together supports strong rent control protections for California tenants. We believe that reasonable limits on rent increases, coupled with just-cause eviction protections, are a matter of basic fairness.
Proposition 98 on the 2008 California ballot would have prohibited rent control and jeopardized "just-cause" protections against unjust evictions. The measure was defeated by a 22-point margin, a stinging defeat for landlords who sought to use this low-turnout election to abolish rent control across the state. Although real estate industry-backed laws like Costa-Hawkins still limit rent control, rent control is a popular and effective policy to prevent displacement and maintain affordable homes for tenants. In 2017, a UC Berkeley poll found that 60% of Californians support rent control.
In 2016, the cities of Richmond and Mountain View won comprehensive rent control and "just-cause" eviction protections through a majority vote at the ballot, the first new rent control ordinances in the U.S. in 30 years. Since then, dozens of California cities have organized for rent control, with Alameda, Antioch, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Culver City, Fairfax, Inglewood, Maywood, Ojai, Oxnard, Pasadena, Pomona, Santa Ana, and unincorporated Los Angeles County successfully passing rent control for the first time. These are unprecedented wins for the tenant movement, showing that renter power is building throughout California in places that seemed unthinkable.
Download our Rent Control toolkit to learn more and get tools to organize and win local rent control in your community. Email us at info@tenantstogether.org if you would like help organizing.
Thank you to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project for their help creating the campaign map below. Click here to see the full story map.