Battle Joined Over Landlords’ Anti- Rent Control Measure

A coalition of local elected officials, senior groups, tenant rights advocates and mobile home residents held a protest and news conference on Tuesday in front of the Apartment Owners Association of California convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The Apartment Owners Association has contributed nearly $200,000 to the campaign that is attempting to place the so-called California Property Owner and Farmland Protection Act (spearheaded by the Jarvis Association) on the June 2008 ballot.

Enter the angry seniors and tenants. About 50 seniors, local officials and others armed with homemade picket signs crowded the entrance to the Apartment Owner Association meeting on Tuesday, followed by a news conference attended by Los Angeles TV, print and radio outlets.

As the Jarvis folks surely know, seniors worried about losing their homes make for compelling TV and even better politics. And anyone who has looked at polling on the subject knows that abolishing rent control is strongly opposed by a good majority of California voters.

So that leads us to the question: why would apartment and mobile home park owners pay money out of their own pockets to pick a fight that they surely won’t win in the court of public opinion?

Sure, there is a huge potential financial upside for the landlords, but have they thought of the downside?

If this anti-rent control measure goes down to defeat like the last anti-rent control measure, local officials may just take that as a voter mandate to enact their own local rent control ordinances