Rent Control: Los Angeles

From the end of year letter of Peter Dreier

   Among my activities in 2022, I'm particularly proud of the ballot measure campaign I worked on called United to House LA. In November, 58% of LA voters voted "yes" on the measure. It will tax all property sales over $5 million, including office buildings, apartment complexes, and single-family homes and condos. This accounts for less than 4% of all property sales (and only 2% of home sales), but it will generate close to $1 billion a year to address the city's housing and homelessness crisis. The money will be used to build affordable low-income housing, provide rent relief to tenants threatened with eviction, provide lawyers to tenants facing eviction as part of the right-to-counsel, and 2% ($18-20 million a year) for tenant organizing.  I co-authored a report that explained why the measure was needed and would be effective.
             Two years ago, when we started this campaign, most political experts would have considered it an impossible task , but we forged an unprecedented coalition that included tenant groups, community organization groups, the building trades unions, the service sector unions, homeless service provides, nonprofit developers of affordable housing, faith groups, and even the United Way. The LA Times endorsed the campaign and the measure, which was extremely helpful. We were significantly outspent by the real estate industry but we won anyway.
        The campaign got some media attention but, understandably, it was overshadowed by many important races for mayor, city council, and other offices. The most important was Karen Bass's victory to be LA's next mayor. Karen was a longtime community organizer before she became a state legislator and Congresswoman. In 2008, I wrote a profile of Karen for The Nation as an example of the growing number of organizers running for public office.  This year I interviewed Karen again for an article  for The Nation about the mayoral race, published a few weeks before Election Day. 
          Her opponent for mayor, billionaire developer Rick Caruso, spent an unprecedented $100+ million in the campaign, outspending Karen by more than 11 to 1. Despite that, Karen won with 55% of the vote. In addition, progressives won races for several City Council races and city controller. The election results in LA were part of a wider trend of progressives winning local races and ballot measures across the country, including a remarkable victory for rent control in Pasadena, where I live.  
       In January 2022, Dan Flaming and I released a report for the Economic Roundtable about the working and living conditions of grocery workers called "Hungry at the Table."  It based on a survey of over 10,000 workers for Kroger (the nation's largest grocery chain) and done in cooperation with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. Among other findings, we discovered that 3/4 of the workers were food insecure, 2/3 couldn't make ends meet and 14% had been homeless. The report got a lot of media attention in the NY Times, LA Times, Seattle Times, Denver Post, UPI, and dozens of other news outlets. It played a role in the great contract that the Colorado workers and UFCW, negotiated with the company after a 10-day strike, as well as better contracts for UFCW workers in California and Washington state. Kroger is a microcosm of corporate America - with its rising profits, skyrocketing pay for top executives, declining wages for most employees, and heavy reliance on part-time workers. The result is widening inequality and a declining standard of living for most Americans.  I wrote an article for American Prospect summarizing the report's key findings and wider implications.

  

        In addition to working on local campaigns, teaching and coordinating Oxy's Campaign Semester program, and writing (I’ve posted some of my articles below), I spent considerable time in 2022 promoting my two new books, published in April,  through talks at bookstores, colleges, on-line webinars, and the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I hope you'll consider reading one or both books and giving them as gifts.  (YOU MAY HAVE TO RIGHT-CLICK TO SEE THE BOOK COVERS]