Protecting the Vulnerable in California Housing
We're all more vulnerable than we think
California Housing 4: Where We Go From Here 4
In my first newsletter, I listed 11 ideas which I think are important for California housing in 2022. These are areas where we can make the housing economy work better, make housing policy function better, and make housing politics less toxic and self-defeating. Over the next 22 weeks, I will write longer pieces about each idea. If you have a 12th idea and want me to consider it, leave a comment or contact me - perhaps we can even write it together.
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A few weeks ago, California Assembly Bill 854 died without a vote.
The bill would have made it harder for newer owners of rent-controlled buildings to evict tenants in the name of getting out of the rental business.1 The Ellis Act has long been a major loophole in rent protections. Tenant groups have been documenting its impact for years, and have tried to amend the act many times before. What makes the Ellis Act troubling is that it can lead to mass displacement - owners can and do use it to empty entire buildings, not just individual units.
The defeat of AB854 is just one moment out of many in the constant struggle to protect California’s most vulnerable. It can be read in a number of different ways, and there are a number of lessons those of us in the housing community can take from this moment. The central thread in all of this is just how important it is for all of us in California housing to double down on protecting people - not only is this the right thing to do morally, it is the only path forward for everyone who cares about California housing - including homeowners and landlords like me.2
Remember this coalition, and keep it holy. One of the most remarkable things about AB854 is that it had the backing of three groups with a history of mutual dislike and distrust - tenant advocates and social equity groups, YIMBY organizations, and Liveable California, the leading opponent of state action on housing. The Equity-YIMBY coalition is the most important piece of this, for it can become more than AB854 if both sides are willing. A focus of this newsletter, and my professional practice, is helping support Equity-YIMBY coalition efforts (plural!), and we can’t forget the importance of seeing all those groups and all those logos on the same set of letters. Even if it did not work, let’s make sure this is just the beginning, and support brave leaders in both sets of organizations who would prioritize growing and strengthening coalition efforts. More and more YIMBY leaders are recognizing they need to be pro-tenant and pro-protection, and more and more equity leaders recognize the need for more aggressive and creative approaches to production and land use reform. An Equity-YIMBY coalition is essential to any hope for a better California housing politics.
Focus on corporate landlords - and find ways to replace them. I would argue that the reason why this coalition was possible - including Liveable California - was that the target was corporate landlords and speculators. This is critical, and we need to double down on this strategy. I will spend more and more time in coming newsletters talking about changes that are needed in the real estate industry. One point I hope I can convince people inside and outside of the industry to accept is that the terrifying growth of financial actors bent on extreme and unethical returns cannot be part of any sustainable or ethical real estate future. They aren’t needed, aren’t helpful, and we need all of the core actors in housing and real estate to find pathways to push them out of the business. Buying and vacating building cannot be acceptable as a business practice in a more just housing system. We have plenty of places where you can invest and seek high returns and not make people homeless while doing so.
We need new voices for ethical landlords, builders and folks who want a better real estate industry. Over the course of the negotiations, the bill’s author worked to create exceptions to protect smaller landlords. This is challenging on a technical level, but it is even more challenging on a political level. The established and powerful voices who represent landlords and related interests are hesitant to change their tune, but until we can grow the protection coalition to include at least some in the industry, the results will stay the same. Fortunately, many in the real estate industry are waking up to the industry’s role in creating a racially unequal and environmentally unsustainable housing system. What would it look like if those in the real estate industry who dream of a more ethical and green future organized to support reasonable protections for everyone who was vulnerable - renters, builders, and owners alike?
Vulnerability cuts across tenure. One of the challenges in protecting vulnerable Californians is that vulnerability and renter aren’t synonymous. The 2008 foreclosure crisis, exploitation in the PACE program and many other moments showed how low-income homeowners, especially homeowners of color, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and even displacement. Moreover, tenure isn’t just renting and owning - in a study of Oakland, we identified 56 different housing tenures in the city, each with their own sets of rules and degrees of vulnerability. One particular lesson of that study - and of the entire eviction moratorium/rental assistance experience of the past two years - is that protecting the vulnerable is as much about having political protection as legal protection. We all need someone to advocate with and for us, and to assist people in understanding and enforcing their rights. We need to double-down on the infrastructure which supports the all vulnerable households - the people you can call when you have a problem - and build better information systems so that people can understand the rights, assistance and support they have.
We can push for more multi-family homeownership and protect the vulnerable. The supposed conflict between Ellis Act reform and pushes for more Tenancies-in-Common (TICs) and other forms of multi-family homeownership is a canard. There is no reason why we can’t have just condo conversation rules, and programs that specifically support tenants becoming owners, often in mixed-tenure arrangements - some people stay as renters (perhaps to a non-profit landlord), while others become owners. Tenant becoming owners and tenant protections aren’t incompatible on a technical or political level.
We’re all a lot more vulnerable than we think - and this can be the basis for a larger coalition. The Oakland study developed what we call Housing Vulnerability Analysis, a way of thinking about housing that identifies different types of vulnerability - legal, political, environmental - by tenure.3 It’s 2022 in California, and the ongoing climate crisis is poised to displace tens of thousands of us every year - homeowners, renters, the unhoused - even landlords. Most of us are also vulnerable to forms of exploitation, not just displacement. If you can’t see your own vulnerability in this moment, you’re not paying attention. The only way we protect ourselves - which sometimes includes rebuilding and/or relocating - is if we find ways to work together. So long as we associate vulnerability only with one way of living, we won’t be able to overcome the political inertia - and very powerful actors - who would fight to maintain vulnerability as a business practice.
In her recent article on AB854, Manuela Tobias quotes the attorney for a developer in Southern California who wants to use the Ellis Act to clear the building and build a luxury highrise. He acknowledges the displacement, but states that at the same time, this is the “definition of progress - making things better.”
I know that I am one of many Californians - and many on Housing Twitter - who don’t believe the definition of progress includes displacing people. We can and must build more homes, but not on the backs of the vulnerable. We can’t keep displacing people at the rate we are and somehow expect homelessness to stop, or the housing crisis to go away.
New section coming soon - Bigger Ideas!
Part of protecting the vulnerable in California is imagining a housing system that isn’t built on eviction. It also means rethinking the relationship between mobility and stability, between equity ownership and control, and some many other issues that go beyond California or beyond housing - the importance of temporary housing, and or why it’s a good thing that Darrell Owens is a housing realist and transportation radical. I want to keep this section focused on California Housing, so the newsletter will soon split into two sections. Subscribers will be able to choose one section or the other, or get the full package.
AB 854 and Ellis Act Info
Recent articles by Manuela Tobias and Alexei Koseff on AB854
Tenants Together research
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s legendary Ellis Act eviction map for San Francisco
Academic research on the subject
Article that need reading
An important LA Times article on Tenancies-in-Common and the renewed push for an old form of multi-family homeownership. Really nice depth of coverage, and a wonderfully wonky piece for an under-appreciated issue. More on this from me in the future. On a related note, here’s a good primer on some of the larger issues in condo development - we need to be building more, and we’re not.
Deep dive into private equity and housing, the way only ProPublica can. I am hoping Washington is listening, as Fannie and Freddie are way too deep into a growing problem in American housing.
In related news, the US real estate market is too expensive. Even if a doubling in value was somehow economically sustainable, it is socially disastrous. We need to start talking about how it is too big - and what the release valve can be (more on this soon).
I just discovered Ned Resnikoff’s blog post on the “Asset economy’ and housing. Worth a read. What I would add is that we need to think about how housing is a different kind of asset - the challenge for us in housing is recognizing that housing is a very unique asset caught up in larger global flows.
Former Stockton Mayor and basic income pioneer Michael Tubbs, whom I have long admired, has launched a new organization dedicated to ending poverty in California. You can poke around the website, or read the framing paper. The upstream/downstream framing is very smart, and there is a lot of potential in what they are talking about.
Under our current rent laws, one of the pathways landlords can evict people is by invoking the Ellis Act, a law that allows them to evict people so that they can sell out. AB854 would have required owners to have owned buildings for 5 years to be able to use the Ellis Act. It had exemptions for owner-occupied units and small scale landlords with only 4 units or two properties. See Manuela Tobias’ recent article in Cal Matters, or other resources below.
Some disclosure: I have been the co-owner of a house (not in California) in which I used to live, which was rented at below market rent to a friend and which is now being sold. I am the co-owner of a home in which I currently live, which will hopefully become more units in the future - and which may make me a landlord again. Until recently I was a tenant and a landlord, which is not unheard of, but is a blank spot in our imagination. I spent 25 years as a tenant in 4 countries in regulated and unregulated units, and grew up in a home owned by my family.
Vulnerability Analysis is a corollary to Needs Assessment, which is the dominant way we approach social problems in housing. Other examples of more vulnerability focused work comes from the Urban Displacement Project.