California’s strategy for tackling its housing affordability crisis is having a split screen moment.
On the one hand, state lawmakers have gone big on legislation aimed at boosting housing construction. They’ve passed bills to densify wide swaths of urbanized California, to rewrite the state’s signature environmental protection law to exempt most apartment buildings from review and to speed up the building permit process. In the past, such efforts have fizzled or been too politically radioactive to attempt. Now, fresh off last week’s deadline for the state Senate to hand its own bills off to the Assembly and vice versa, 2025 is shaping up to be a banner year for pro-development legislation.
Then there are the bills aimed at providing immediate help to renters.
In short, there aren’t that many. Of all the tenant-focused legislation introduced at the beginning of the session, the most ambitious have been shelved for the year.
A bill that would have reduced allowable rent increases across the state was quietly extinguished in late April before it received a hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee. That’s despite the fact that the committee’s chair, San Jose Assemblymember Ash Kalra, was the bill’s author.
Another bill to limit the types of fees that a landlord can charge tenants on top of monthly rent was put on ice until at least next year, even though the bill was introduced by San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney, chair of the Assembly Housing Committee, its main backer is the state’s attorney general, and it was deemed priority legislation by the Legislature’s growing renters’ caucus.
As legislative leaders focus on finding solutions to California’s affordability problems, some solutions are getting a warmer reception than others.
“Fighting for tenants in this building is not popular and it's not easy and it's always going to be an uphill battle,” said Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat, a member of the Renters’ Caucus and chair of the Senate Housing Committee.
Wahab has introduced her own share of tenant-minded bills this year. They include:
- Senate Bill 436, which would require landlords to give tenants 14 days to pay any late rent they owe before facing eviction (the current notice period is three days);
- Senate Bill 681, a housing policy grab-bag which includes restrictions on certain rental fees and an expansion of state tax credits for renters;
- Senate Bill 262, which would change the way that the state awards its “prohousing designation” to cities — a bureaucratic imprimatur that comes with prioritized access to state funds.
So far these bills have survived the Legislative gauntlet, but often significantly watered down. An earlier version of SB 436 would have given tenants up until the day of their physical eviction to make good on the rent they owe and “redeem” their tenancy, addressing situations in which renters scrounge up the money they owe but too late and are evicted anyway. An earlier version of SB 262 would have rewarded cities with credits toward a prohousing designation if they have local caps on rent in place.
In both cases, the bills were amended in the face of fierce opposition from landlords.
Debra Carlton, a lobbyist with the California Apartment Association, the premier trade group representing the state’s rental property owners, said that this year’s crop of tenant-related legislation doesn’t go nearly as far as the construction-related bills, but instead “nibble around the edges.”
Still, she argued, landlords are frustrated at having to constantly push back against legislation written to constrain the way they do business. She noted that in 2019, the association acceded to a statewide cap on rents — “that was huge for the industry.” Then came Kalra’s effort this year to lower the cap.
“Every time we sit at the table then the following year there’s something else,” she said. “It gets frustrating when we feel we’re negotiating in good faith… It’s like, why do we even negotiate?”
Other bills that would stick landlords with additional regulations: Senate Bill 52, authored by Pasadena Democratic Sen. Sasha Perez, would restrict landlords from consulting certain software to set their rents and Assembly Bill 246 by Culver City Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat, would shield tenants from eviction if they are due delayed Social Security payments. The current version of Bryan’s bill is significantly more modest than the initial proposal introduced back in January: An across-the-board, yearlong rent freeze across Los Angeles County.
Modest appears to be the only kind of renter protection bill that has a chance in the current political climate, said Wahab.
“I want to make sure that the policies cross the finish line and get signed by the governor,” she said. “That is extremely difficult when you are dealing with special interest money, millions of dollars going in to people's races that are afraid to make the right choice out of fear of losing their seat, millions of dollars being put into campaigns to ensure that they select the person that would vote with them instead of doing the right thing by millions of Californians.”
The apartment association is a major presence both in the Capitol and on the campaign trail. This year alone, the organization has lobbied on at least 25 bills, according to a tabulation by Digital Democracy. In just the first quarter of this year, a committee affiliated with the association has spent nearly $200,000 on campaign activity. Late last month it produced a website directed specifically at Wahab, which refers to the senator as “the biggest threat to California’s housing progress” and someone who “has sided with NIMBY obstructionists.”
“Every member of the Legislature and anyone who runs for office in the state of California understands the power of the apartment association and the association of Realtors,” said Michelle Pariset, director of legislative affairs with the nonprofit Public Advocates.
But there are other reasons that may explain why tenant bills often have a tough time in Sacramento. Roughly 44% of California homes were occupied by a renter, making tenants a minority. Homeowners are also much more likely to vote than tenants — and far more likely to contribute financially to a campaign, attend a town hall meeting or otherwise engage with the political system. When lawmakers listen to their constituents, homeowners have a much louder voice.
For lawmakers looking to protect tenants, there are also just fewer low hanging fruit to pick. The state already places a cap on allowable rents. Advocates say the cap is too high and includes too many loopholes, but the fact remains that California is just one of two states to have something akin to statewide rent control. California also has strict limits on when and how tenants can be evicted. A recent report by Consumer Affairs found that while California is the worst state in which to rent thanks to the sheer cost, its laws are among the most tenant-friendly.
Such tenant-friendly laws also come with the possibility of side effects — another reason that many lawmakers are reluctant to embrace them. Making it more difficult for landlords to raise rents or evict tenants can make it less profitable for developers to build new homes and discourage landlords from renting out their vacant units. That is, such policies could undercut the Legislature’s preferred method of addressing the state’s affordability woes: Boosting the housing supply.
Some California lawmakers, especially Democrats, do support both enhanced renter protections and policies that seek to turbo-charge supply. But the two goals can find themselves in tension in Sacramento. Anti-gentrification activists often look upon bills that promote market-rate development with skepticism, if not outright scorn.
Pariset, with Public Advocates, called voting for legislation to boost more private housing production “a way to essentially do nothing and pretend like you’re helping.”
That ideological rift has been a recurring theme in the California Senate this year, with members openly disagreeing over whether promoting more development is the best way to address the state’s high housing costs. Wahab has been a central figure in that debate, opposing Senate Bill 79, legislation that would allow denser development around major transit routes with modest requirements that some units be set aside for lower-income renters.
That bill, authored by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, narrowly passed out of the Senate last week. Before voting no, Wahab called it a “complete handout to developers.”
Much of the academic research on the subject has found that new market rate housing, even if priced at rates unaffordable to many surrounding residents, still tends to reduce neighborhood and city-wide rents.
In an interview, Wahab disputed the characterization that she is anti-development, as many supporters of that bill have painted her. “I do believe in build, build, build,” she said, but stressed current renters won’t feel the effect of legislation aimed at boosting construction for years.
“It's not all just about development and streamlining and permitting. It is also: What are we doing to ensure that renters can stay housed longer?” she said.
Beyond saddling landlords with additional regulations, another way the state helps keep renters in their homes is through funding for designated affordable housing and homelessness services. But those causes are also having a hard year. Grappling with a $12 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed no additional spending for the state’s signature homelessness grant program and its main affordable housing subsidy.
On Monday, the Legislature countered with its own budget proposal, which would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the affordable housing program, but no additional homelessness grant funds for the coming year.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
