Editor,
I respect Diana Reddy’s views (Aug. 1 guest perspective, “The big lie about California’s housing crisis”) on rental property ownership, and understand that there are crushing economic pressures on tenants. She blames the Costa-Hawkins state law exempting single-family homes from rent control for forcing tenants to leave the state, and for other societal ills.
I disagree.
The Costa-Hawkins exemption for single-family dwellings was enacted in part for the benefit of individual landlords who own such dwellings so they won’t be burdened by excessive government control, such as the San Francisco rent control rules.
I have a simple solution to Ms. Reddy’s issue with Costa-Hawkins: Amend the law so that only individual landlords or their estate planning trusts, but not partnerships or corporations, benefit from the rent control exemption.
Stanley Gross
San Mateo
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(2) comments
Costa-Hawkins is a textbook case of corrupt legislation. It’s apparent that its primary design is to protect the wealthiest real estate interests from democratic efforts to implement the rights of renters. Putting aside the issue of single family homes, which is mixed into Costa-Hawkins precisely to distract people from being able to see who benefits most from the law, neither Reddy (in her otherwise truly stellar piece) nor the letter writer mention the fact that Costa-Hawkins carves out all post-1995-occupancy properties (single family or otherwise) from municipal rental regulations. This advantages larger corporate real estate interests over all others. And then, when citizens make an attempt to redress the exploitation of renters, these same powerful interests cynically point to the very unfairness they built into the law as a reason why any renters' protections would be unfair. No, if we’re going to be serious about addressing our dysfunctional housing system, Costa-Hawkins has got to go.
What about the concept of private property don't people understand. It is not your property, end of story. Stop looking at other peoples assets to fix a problem you deem necessary to fix. Government has taken over healthcare and education with disastrous results, keep them away from real estate owned by other people or organizations.
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