Voters in the Golden State have ten ballot measures they will decide on in November. Some seem to be slam dunks: such as the measure to outlaw prison slave labor and the proposition to protect gay marriage. 

But big business is also busy taking back rights gained by workers and marginalized groups in the last decade. The 2014 decriminalization of non-violent crimes under $950 is being challenged by a proposition where any defendant with two prior drug convictions faces felony charges on their third conviction. 

However, big business is spending the majority of their money to kill a proposition that would allow California cities to enact new rent control laws: Proposition 33. In 2018 and 2020, similar state-wide renters’ measures were hugely, financially outgunned by developers and landlords, with each measure failing. Like those previous failed measures, Prop 33 seeks to undo the statewide law that prevents cities enacting new rent control laws. 

Being allowed to pass rent control laws would mean local governments could cap rent inflation at the same level as other prices. Rents have risen astronomically in recent decades. According to US Census statistics, since 1970 the number of California tenants paying more than half of their income on rent has increased fourfold.

Big Money Stomps on the Truth

The big money behind the “No” campaign is the misnamed California for Responsible Housing. Their top three donors are Essex Properties, Equity Residential and Avalon Bay. These developers and landlords own over $60 billion in assets and have so far donated $31 million to the “No on Prop 33” campaign. Their simple argument is that rent regulations discourage private businesses from building new homes.

Shamefully, many building trades unions have joined ranks with the developers to reject Prop 33. The leader of the State Council of Laborers argued that “Californians are suffering from a shortage of safe, affordable housing. Prop 33 would freeze new housing construction projects across the state.” 

This is based on the implication that more rent control would drive private developers away from building homes. Even if this were true, the takeaway isn’t that we should just leave things as they are, where wealthy private developers and corporate landlords have all the control—it means that the private housing market doesn’t work for working people. If making rents affordable means private developers won’t build housing (because it won’t be as obscenely profitable), we need to build high-quality affordable housing that is publicly owned.

The “No” campaign has not played a fair game. Many of their fliers argue that the proposition would actually undo renters’ protections, deliberately attempting to confuse voters. One flier endorsed by the NAACP’s California president argued that Prop 33 is funded by an unnamed slumlord. Opposed by millions of dollars worth of ads and mailers filled with lies, Prop 33, like similar attempts in recent years, is unlikely to pass. 

California has 180,000 people currently officially homeless; the size of a small city. Most of those people were simply priced out of their housing. Rent control represents a small regulation to protect renters, yet for capitalist landlords, even this restraint on the ability to inflate their fat bank accounts is too much for them.

California needs affordable housing. The capitalist market economy has absolutely failed working class families on this, as it has on so many other levels such as healthcare and education. We need good quality, genuinely affordable, publicly-funded city and state owned housing paid for by super-taxing the billionaires. 

The two party system is owned and controlled by the billionaires and the big developers. Our state is run almost exclusively by the Democratic Party. California desperately needs an independent, mass, workers party to fight and win what working people need, not parties that continue to oil the cogs of the mindless profit machine.