California tenants rise up, demand rent caps from city halls

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-california-race-and-ethnicity-san-francisco-529b630af101faf35ff400c674b6e2b1

California tenants rise up, demand rent caps from city halls
By JANIE HAR

ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.

Carlson and other tenants hit with similarly high increases converged on Antioch’s City Hall for marathon hearings, pleading for protection. In September, the City Council on a 3-2 vote approved a 3% cap on annual increases.

Carlson, who is disabled and under treatment for lymphoma cancer, starts to weep imagining what her life could be like.

[jimfields33]

1. I heard rent control can work, but the flipside is

That owners will sell the apartment building to people who make them condos, and then people are really screwed. Do you think that that would be a problem in having rent control?

[HeartachesNhangovers]

2. In San Francisco, where I used to live, there is an annual limit on condo conversions and a lottery

to qualify to do a conversion. I think the lottery and cap were instituted long after condo conversions became a problem in SF, but there's no reason a city couldn't institute rent control and a limit on condo conversions at the same time. When I lived in the Bay Area 6 years ago, there was a state prohibition on cities instituting new rent control ordinances. I don't know if that has changed, since I live in WA now.

[MichMan]

3. Are they capping all property taxes at a maximum 3% annual increase ?