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It’s CRUNCH TIME in SACRAMENTO – there’s only THIS COMING WEEK for the legislature to pass whatever bills it’s gonna pass – Friday’s the deadline. And ONE of those bills, which will probably be voted on by the Senate Monday or Tuesday (the 9th or 10th), and by the Assembly after that, is David Chiu’s vitally important Rent Stabilization / Just-Cause Eviction bill AB 1482, which, after a few amendments and compromises, still has enough teeth to make the insatiable California Association of Realtors send out THIS “Red Alert” to its members last week:
RED ALERT!
Urge Your Senator AND Assembly Member to Vote NO on AB 1482 that Establishes Restrictive Rent Caps
C.A.R. OPPOSES UNLESS AMENDED AB 1482 (Chiu), which creates a very restrictive statewide rent cap and burdensome “just cause”eviction standards. C.A.R. had reached an agreement with the sponsors and the bill’s author to make reasonable amendments to remove C.A.R.’s opposition. The consensus language would have promoted tenant protections and protected property ownership. However, because our consensus language was not incorporated into the bill, C.A.R. is opposing AB 1482. The bill could be heard in the Senate as soon as today, Tuesday, September 3rd and in the Assembly within a day of that. YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED NOW – CALL BOTH YOUR SENATOR AND YOUR ASSEMBLY MEMBER TO ASK THEM TO OPPOSE THE BILL.
Take Action NOW!
Your “To Do” List
Call your Senator to OPPOSE AB 1482. Call 1-855-215-0152 and enter your PIN number to be connected to your senator’s office to voice your opposition to AB 1482, AND
Call your Assembly Member to OPPOSE AB 1482 and enter your PIN number to be connected to your Assembly Member’s office to voice your opposition to the bill.
You can use the following script for both calls: “Hi, this is (insert your name). I’m a REALTOR® from your district. Please ask the Assembly Member/Senator to Vote No on AB 1482. It discourages the building of rental housing.
Use Twitter to encourage your legislators to vote NO! You can use this Tweet and attach the graphic below: “As a local REALTOR® I encourage <> to vote NO on #AB1482 because it discourages new rental #housing and won’t help more people find an affordable place to live.”
Of course we completely disagree with the California Association of Realtors on this, and urge all of you to call your reps to vote YES this week. How could we NOT be in favor, as citizens of Anaheim, when our Councilmen Brandman, Sidhu, Faessel, Moreno and Barnes all agree on its necessity, and those people never agree on anything! (Jordan’s resolution in favor, backed by Sidhu and Faessel, WAS a pass-the-buck maneuver for the Sidhu Majority to not have to pass rent control themselves; and of course Moreno and Barnes want rent control period without passing the buck.)
Find out more about AB 1482 here, here, and here. The very reasonable 7% per year limit on properties 15 years old and more has been folded in with a bill outlawing no-cause evictions. This’ll impact us here in the OC bigly, and will HELP a little to stem the ever-burgeoning tide of homelessness. Call your Senator and Assemblyperson right away. Republicans are religiously against any kind of rent control but they should be called anyway; meanwhile OC Democrats tend to be a timid lot fearful of powerful lobbyists like the C.A.R. They’re the ones who really need to know we have their back.
SENATORS:
- SD34 – Tom Umberg (Democrat) allegedly told the realtors he OPPOSES the bill, but he just told me that he hasn’t made up his mind yet because it’s a “work in progress.” Maybe he is just waiting for YOUR CALL! So CALL HIM at (714) 558-3785!
- SD37 – John Moorlach (Republican) my good friend but a true conservative – call him at 714.662.6050 and remind him how rising rents lead to homelessness which is something he really cares about.
- SD36 (south county) Pat Bates (Republican) 949.598.5850
- SD29 (north county) Ling Ling Chang (Republican) 714.671.9474. Yes, this is supposed to be Josh Newman‘s seat, and he tells me he would vote yes although he emphasizes that we have even bigger problems like providing new affordable housing. Tell Ling Ling’s people that you’ll vote for Josh unless she supports AB 1482! And think of the seniors in Rancho La Paz!
ASSEMBLY:
- AD65 – Sharon Quirk-Silva originally voted FOR this bill to get it out of committee (kudos) then was “given permission” to vote against it on the floor because it was gonna pass anyway. Ask her to do the right thing and vote YES again this week – (714) 525-6515. Again, Rancho La Paz.
- AD74 – Cottie Petrie-Norris. Weren’t we Democrats excited when we elected a new Democrat down in HB/Costa Mesa/Irvine? And yet so far Cottie has been voting like a Republican. She voted against this bill last time, let her know you’re watching. (949) 251-0074
- AD69 – and Tom Daly almost always votes like a Republican on economic issues but call him anyway and remind him he’s a Democrat, representing a VERY SAFE Democratic district that REALLY needs rent control. (714) 939-8469
- Then the ACTUAL Republicans: Philip Chen of AD55, 714-529-5502
- Steven Choi of AD68, 714-665-6868
- Tyler Diep of AD72, 714-843-4966
- and the embattled Bill Brough of AD73, 949-347-7301.
Make these calls first thing Monday, and we’ll keep our eyes out for news for you!
What’s better than rent control? A tax on vacant lots and unoccupied buildings. While rent control makes it less attractive to supply accommodation, a vacant-property tax makes it less attractive NOT to! A vacant-property tax of $X/week makes it $X/week more expensive to fail to get a tenant, and thereby REDUCES, by $X/week, the minimum rent that will persuade the owner to accept a tenant.
Such a tax, although sometimes called a “vacancy tax”, is not limited to what real-estate agents call “vacancies” — that is, properties available for rent. It also applies to vacant lots and other properties that are not on the rental market, and is designed to push them onto the market and get them tenanted.
A vacant-property tax is intended to be avoided; if it’s properly designed, nobody actually has to pay it. And the *avoidance* of it would initiate economic activity, which would expand the bases of other taxes, allowing their rates to be reduced, so that the rest of us would pay LESS tax!
*Yeah, whatever happened to vagrancy? You know, you have no visible means of support and you have no place to lay your head and a few intimate friends. You used to wind up as Boxcar Willie or living in a Tin Shack. This is what they called living on the rails…. Well,too many folks for that anymore. Tin Can Beach used to strech from the Santa Ana River Jetty to the Huntington Beach Pier.. They duplicated this concept in Hawaii. The Homeless were run out of Ala Moana Park, across from the 23 story Ala Moana Shopping Center. Those people were run out by the Mayor of Honolulu because it was disrupting tourist consumer buying. Those folks quickly moved from Pearl City above Pearl Harbor all the way up to Makaha, living either in their cars or on the beach.
The bill passed. Sharon was the only OC representative we can thank for her yes vote. Umberg didn’t bother voting. Daly and Cottie PN voted NO, with their fellow Republicans.
Yay! ONE OUT OF FOUR OC Democrats votes like a Democrat.
I wouldn’t call Cottie a Republican. If the bill passed, it’s more likely that as a first term elected she got a pass from party leadership so that she wouldn’t have to take a vote that might be out of step with her district. Daly, of course, is safe from a challenge from the right and so would not need such a pass, so call him what you will.