California’s Secretary of State’s Office has assigned a proposition number to the extreme rent control measure slated for the Nov. 3 statewide ballot: Proposition 21.
The measure attacks California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and would welcome back the extreme forms of rent control that proliferated in California in the 1970s and make California’s housing crisis even worse.
Anti-housing activist Michael Weinstein is bankrolling the campaign to pass the measure, using funds from the nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, of which he is president.
Until now, Weinstein’s radical rent control measure has often been referred to as Proposition 10 2.0 for its similarities to his previous statewide rent control measure.
In 2018, the California Apartment Association led the campaign to defeat Prop 10 and is committed to defeating Prop 21.
About Costa-Hawkins
For over 20 years, the Costa-Hawkins Act has prohibited local governments from regulating the price of rents on rental units built after 1995. Costa-Hawkins also prohibits a local government from regulating rents on single-family homes, individually owned condominiums and townhouses. Moreover, the act requires all rent control ordinances to allow a rental property owner to set the rent at market rate once an existing tenant moves out and a new tenant moves in, a policy known as vacancy decontrol.
