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Landlords, Your Lease Is Up: A New Movement for Rent Control Is Spreading Across the U.S. [1]

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Date: 2024-07

Nancy Buttanda, 68, has watched in horror as her rent check eats up more and more of her fixed income. The rent on her apartment in Federal Way, Wash., has increased annually at least $100 a month for three or four years, she says, and her landlord rarely makes repairs. She now pays $1,245 a month for rent, water and trash, while living on pension, Social Security and disability payments that amount to around $3,300. A recent auto accident stuck her with $400 car payments, and after paying for Medicare, electricity and everything else, she’s often left with less than $300 each month for necessities.

“Pushing to repeal the ban on rent regulation will allow us to have a broader conversation about housing affordability throughout the country."

Because she struggles with mobility due to multiple knee replacements, Buttanda dreads the idea of moving and doubts she’d be able to find another apartment in her price range with an elevator. She applied last year to county-subsidized affordable housing developments that cater to seniors, but was told she was over the income limit — by $80 a year.

“I feel like I’m out of options,” she says. ​“I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Federal standards set the threshold for ​“affordable housing” at 30 percent of a family’s income, a threshold that Buttanda’s rent exceeds. One in four U.S. households spends more than half of its income on rent. In 1985, the median U.S. family spent just 19 percent of its income on housing.

Nancy Buttanda is part of a revived movement for rent regulation in Washington state. (Photo by Chloe Collyer)

In the 40 years preceding the Great Recession, rents grew twice as fast as incomes. Then came the 2008 housing crash, in which more than 10 million families lost their homes to foreclosure. Less than one-third are likely to buy again, thanks to wrecked finances and credit scores. As a result, more U.S. households are renting now than at any point in at least the past 50 years. Due in large part to predatory lending, Black and Latino households were more than 70 percent more likely than white ones to lose their homes in 2012, and they’re now nearly twice as likely to be renters. Rent affordability is also worse in communities of color: Median renters in predominantly Black neighborhoods spend 44 percent of their income on rent, and renters in predominantly Latino communities spend 48 percent.

As this nationwide housing affordability crisis becomes harder to ignore, Washington state is one of several places where advocates are launching a renewed push for rent regulation, thanks in large part to activism by tenants like Buttanda. While a scattering of cities and towns in four states — California, Maryland, New Jersey and New York — and Washington, D.C., have rent control laws in place, 35 states, including Washington, prohibit or limit local governments from regulating rent hikes. But legislation introduced by Democrats in Washington in January would repeal the state’s ban, in effect since 1981. As a member of the progressive advocacy group Washington Community Action Network (WCAN), Buttanda hopes to convince a newly Democratic-controlled state legislature that curbing skyrocketing housing costs should be a top priority.

Progressive legislators in Illinois also have pending legislation that would repeal restrictions on rent control. And in California, a first-of-its-kind ​“national renters day of action” in September 2016 helped propel rent control to victory at the ballot box in two cities and launch new campaigns in at least seven others. While rent control remains a controversial measure among mainstream Democrats (many of whom receive hefty donations from real estate lobbies), these campaigns are attracting support from a broad swath of local unions and community organizations, as well as socialists who see rent control as the first step toward weakening the market’s grip on a basic human need.

“Rising rents aren’t an act of God; they’re an act of price gouging,” said Kshama Sawant, socialist Seattle City Council member, to a cheering crowd during a July 2015 debate with local developers.

On Dec. 5, 2017, hundreds of members of WCAN, tenants’ rights groups and local unions gathered at the annual meeting of several state real estate organizations in Seattle. The renters were there to crash the landlords’ party.

Inside the Washington State Convention Center, a series of demonstrators stood up, one by one, and interrupted the meeting to speak about rising homelessness and the dire need for affordable housing. Event staff quickly escorted the demonstrators out.

Outside, State Rep. Nicole Macri (D) announced her plans to introduce a bill to overturn the ban on rent regulation, to cheers from the crowd. ​“We cannot waste this opportunity,” Macri said of Democrats’ newly won control of the state house. ​“Up until this point, the legislature has been nibbling around the edges.” In recent years, Washington state and the city of Seattle have both passed a series of tenant protections that fall short of rent control. In 2016, for example, the city unanimously passed legislation proposed by Sawant that caps the move-in fees for a new apartment at the equivalent of one month’s rent.

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[1] Url: https://inthesetimes.com/article/landlords-rent-control-housing-real-estate

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