Three Big Things: A Presidential Rent Control Promise, Tenant Unions Grow Stronger, Corporate Landlords Spending a Half-Billion Dollars to Resist Tenant Rights

Image courtesy of Bargaining for the Common Good

This piece posted originally on Fran Quigley’s blog Housing Is A Human Right

With a few articles in the pipeline but not quite ready to emerge, it seems a good time for a new issue of our feature, Three Big Things:

Biden Proposes Rent Caps

This week, President Biden clarified his recent vague debate and press conference promises to put limits on corporate landlords. Leveraging the enormous power connected to tax breaks the U.S. government gives to landlords Biden proposed that landlords with 50-plus units must limit their annual rent increases to 5%. If they refuse, the landlords will lose their access to depreciation write offs. (We discussed depreciation and the wide array of other corporate landlord tax breaks in detail here last January),   

The Biden proposal can be read here. For a very good review of it, I encourage you to read Rebecca Burns’ article, “What Biden’s ‘Rent Cap’ Is, and Isn’t” in In These Times. Burns quotes Rutgers economist Mark Paul on the value of rent control. Paul also points out that the federal government has long been willing to take dramatic action on housing affordability—but most of that effort has only been for the benefit of homeowners.

Burns also quotes Tara Raghuveer of the National Tenant Union Federation. Here is what Raghuveer said on X, formerly Twitter: “Rent caps are sound economic policy, and the only solution to the urgent crisis that millions of tenants endure every month. For now, rent caps are a talking point— a good one, leaps and bounds beyond federal housing policy discourse in recent memory—but now tenants need action.”

As Raghuveer said, this week’s rent cap announcement is an important step. But it comes from a flailing Biden administration and the rent cap can only happen through Congressional action. Instead, Biden should take executive action to cap rents on the millions of rental units backed by federal financing—a demand by tenant unions and housing advocates that we discussed last July.  That would be the real action tenants want and deserve.

Powerful Tenant Union Video  

The roots of the Biden proposal, and any tangible result that may come from it, can be found in the robust and growing tenant union movement. Now there is a powerful 11-minute video showing tenants organizing across the country. Called, “’But I Have Hope As I’m Organizing’: A Movement for Tenant Power”, the video is produced by HouseUS and available on YouTube here.

A few highlights from the video that shows tenants from the cities and trailer parks:

·         “We all had different stories, but it boiled down to pretty much the same thing: one on one, we can’t fight the big money. So the more people we can get involved in the tenant unions, the more powerful we are.” –Curtis, tenant leader and 37-year resident of his mobile home, Louisville Tenant Union

·         “The city inspectors have been coming out because of us . . . We got the power, because they know we really will take it that far.” --Megan, tenant leader, Not Me We (Chicago)

·         “The property management company has one job from the owner’s standpoint, and that is to keep costs low. Those low costs translate to mold, maintenance issues, retaliation against tenants, and evictions.“—Josh Poe, organizer, Louisville Tenants Union

·         “The federal government’s inaction hurts us here in Chicago, it hurts us in Kansas City, it hurts folks in Buffalo, it hurts folks in Montana, it hurts folks in Texas. For us to combat that, we have to be coordinated and work nationally as well.”—Dixon Romeo, organizer, Not Me We

Not Me We, one of the tenant unions featured in the video, is fighting against gentrification in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, gentrification fueled in part by the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center. The struggle was featured in the Chicago Tribune this week.  The article discussed how rents are increasing as much as 60% in anticipation of higher-income residents moving into the area. I recently had the chance to visit Chicago and observe the Not Me We movement in action, so look for an article soon.

Who is “Behind the Curtain” Opposing Tenant Rights?

A new report follows the money trail to tell the story of a half-billion dollar campaign against rent control, tenants’ rights, and government guarantees of true housing affordability. The report,  “Who is Behind the Curtain: Breaking Down Trade Associations that Fight Tenants and Hurt Housing Affordability” can be viewed here. 

The report was prepared by Capital Strategies for the Common Good, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Bargaining for the Common Good, and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “Corporate landlords do not merely profit off of the housing crisis to the tune of billions of dollars,” said Dustin Duong, research associate at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “They then plow that money into lobbying efforts that stall or bury efforts to relieve the crisis. It is a vicious circle of money, politics, and industry influence.“

Duong’s and team’s research shows corporate landlords spent a whopping $569 million in lobbying ($402 million) and political contributions ($167 million) at the state and federal level from 2019 to 2022.

Corporate landlords have good reason to desperately throw their cash toward the resistance of tenants’ rights proposals: the growing tenant union and housing advocates movement is already powerful and only growing more so. Look for more coverage of the movement here soon!