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SPECIAL REPORT - For nearly 18 years, I’ve covered Big Real Estate as an award-winning investigative reporter at L.A. Weekly and then as an advocacy journalist for a housing justice organization. After working on the Yes on Prop 33 and No on Prop 34 campaigns, in 2024, I decided to take a deep dive into the campaign contributions of our uber-wealthy opponents: corporate landlords and their front group, the California Apartment Association. What I found surprised even me.
This past fall, Proposition 33 and Proposition 34 were two of the most closely watched races in California. Prop 33, backed by a coalition of activists, labor unions, and civic leaders, aimed to end statewide rent control restrictions. Proposition 34, funded by the real estate industry, sought to stop AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s work on rent control and other tenant protections. Prop 33 was defeated while Prop 34 was barely approved.
Since 2017, I’ve been the advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right, the housing advocacy division of AHF. In 2020, I won the “Best Activism Journalism”award from the Los Angeles Press Club. I’ve often written about the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords, and I’ve come to deeply understand how they operate. A key way to get a handle on what they’re up to is by looking at the CAA’s campaign finance filings, and that’s what I did for this months-long investigation, examining state documents for 2023 and 2024.
The California Apartment Association’s filings told an incredible story: the CAA and many of the largest corporate landlords in the United States carried out an elaborate, multi-million-dollar operation, under the radar, to stop Prop 33 so they could keep charging sky-high rents and to pass Prop 34 so they could kill AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s ability to protect tenants from predatory landlords.
The filings reveal money trails that connect corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association to numerous elected officials, candidates, and political groups — many of whom endorsed the CAA’s No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34 campaigns. And the documents show that back-room deals started well in advance of Election Day on November 5, 2024, with a number of politicians accepting tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, in campaign contributions from the CAA.
This investigation underscores my previous findings, in a 2021 special report, that the California Apartment Association and corporate landlords’ big-money influence reaches into nearly every county in California and buys favors from state, county, and city elected officials that impact housing policies.
The key discoveries in this report include:
1. As the Prop 33 and Prop 34 campaigns unfolded, Big Real Estate carried out sneaky shell games to avoid scrutiny from the public and reporters. Corporate landlords first contributed millions in campaign cash to a California Apartment Association political committee or committees. Then to buy political favors, such as securing endorsements for No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34, the CAA distributed that money to elected officials, candidates, and political groups either directly or through obscure, CAA-connected political committees. It was all done to protect corporate landlords’ profits and to allow them to keep charging excessive rents.
2. In 2023 and 2024, many of the country’s largest corporate landlords — Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Essex Property Trust, Camden Property Trust, GID, UDR, MG Properties, Greystar, AIR Communities, and The Related Companies — quietly delivered millions in campaign cash to one or more of three California Apartment Association political committees to kill the expansion of rent control in California and silence AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s housing advocacy work.
3. In 2023 and 2024, a group of 355 corporate landlords and smaller landlords shelled out an astonishing total of $135,875,365 to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee, which financed the CAA’s No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34 campaigns. Out of those 355 contributors, a core group of only 68 corporate landlords, who contributed at least $100,000 to the CAA Issues Committee, delivered $131,765,298 — or 97 percent of all campaign cash sent to the CAA Issues Committee.
4. Those millions bought a small army of at least 21 consultants to work on either the CAA’s No on Prop 33 campaign or the CAA’s Yes on Prop 34 or both.
5. Corporate landlords who contributed at least $100,000 to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee, in 2023 and 2024, also delivered $2,457,720 to the CAA’s Independent Expenditure Committee and $263,265 to the CAA’s Political Action Committee, which was then discreetly spent to win political favors.
6. Democrats Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Sen. Toni Atkins, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, Assemblymember Evan Low, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, among others, received campaign cash from the CAA and corporate landlords. Those same politicians endorsed No on Prop 33 or Yes on Prop 34 and actively campaigned for No on Prop 33 or Yes on Prop 34.
7. The California Apartment Association’s political committees also funded state politicians’ ballot measure committees — a kind of slush fund that elected officials use for travel, meals, entertainment, and other expenses.
8. The CAA and corporate landlords’ money trails strongly suggest that they financed a dirty political trick to stop Prop 33 that involved Huntington Beach City Councilman Tony Strickland, a conservative Republican who urged his colleagues to support Prop 33 as a way to get around state-mandated housing production policies. Trying to change the minds of Democratic voters who supported Prop 33, a group of Democratic politicians, who received corporate-landlord money and opposed Prop 33, seized upon Strickland’s comments to frame the pro-rent control measure as a dangerous Republican plot to obstruct housing construction in California. Tellingly, Strickland and a former state assembly member who served Huntington Beach also banked contributions from the CAA and corporate landlords.
9. Official No on Prop 33 endorsers such as the Asian Business Association PAC, the Central City Association of Los Angeles, the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles County Business Federation, the California Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco Eastern Neighborhoods Democratic Club, and the NAACP California-Hawaii State Conference grabbed political contributions from corporate landlords through the California Apartment Association.
10. Official Yes on Prop 34 endorsers such as the NAACP California-Hawaii State Conference, Southern California Armenian Democrats, California Chamber of Commerce, and United Democratic Club raked in political contributions from corporate landlords through the California Apartment Association.
11. Abandoning the housing justice movement, California YIMBY, YIMBY Action, and Abundant Housing LA, all of whom officially endorsed the CAA’s No on Prop 33 campaign, benefited politically by making alliances with corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association. And the California Apartment Association spent major campaign cash on at least 20 politicians endorsed by California YIMBY, YIMBY Action, or Abundant Housing LA. Most times, the CAA and corporate landlords used obscure, little-known political committees to deliver financial backing.
12. While corporate landlords and the CAA were working to stop Prop 33 and pass Prop 34, they also shelled out campaign cash to sway local elections. In 2024, corporate landlords and the CAA helped kill a pro-rent control measure in Larkspur, California; helped repeal existing rent control policies in Fairfax, California; helped pass an election reform initiative in Richmond, California; helped pass a pro-density measure in San Mateo; and helped kill a parcel-tax measure that would have generated money to repair streets and improve parks in National City, California.
My newest findings show, yet again, that corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association have a stranglehold on California’s state and local politicians, making it extremely difficult for activists to pass much-needed tenant protections such as rent control and just cause evictions — the CAA’s reputation is so foul among activists that it’s routinely called the “California Anti-tenant Association.” As a result, corporate landlords are free to keep charging unfair, excessive rents, which fuels the housing affordability and homelessness crises. Californians, in other words, pay the ultimate price for Big Real Estate’s devious, multi-million-dollar political schemes.
These findings also show something bigger and more disturbing: corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association will go to any lengths to protect, and grow, their profits and to destroy their enemies — and many politicians, desperate to keep their power, are too willing to help. Judging by their actions, corporate landlords, the California Apartment Association, and certain politicians care little, if anything, about the long-term impacts of their slick maneuvers on the poor and middle and working class. For Big Real Estate and many elected officials, Californians, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, are only pawns in their game.
Corporate Landlords Readying for Battle
Since 2018, AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Housing Is A Human Right have worked to repeal or reform statewide rent control restrictions in California through a number of ballot measures: Prop 10 in 2018; Prop 21 in 2020; and Prop 33 in 2024. I worked on all those initiatives, and AHF and Housing Is A Human Right were joined by an impressive coalition of housing justice groups, labor unions, social justice organizations, and civic leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Maxine Waters, and labor and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta — a kind of holy trinity among progressives.
AHF, labor unions, and activists went to the ballot because state politicians repeatedly refused to repeal or even reform the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act — a 1995 law, pushed by the real estate industry, that created statewide rent control restrictions in California. Over the decades, the law has harmed tenants in multiple ways, allowing predatory landlords to charge outrageous rents, and, as a result, fueling the housing affordability and homelessness crises. A recent UC San Francisco study, for example, found that sky-high rents are forcing people out of their homes and into the streets.
With homelessness worsening in California, and with Eviction Lab finding that unaffordable rents are tied to higher mortality rates, AHF and other activists believed the repeal of Costa-Hawkins, in 2024 through Prop 33, was needed more than ever. The initiative was simple: statewide rent control restrictions would end, allowing cities to pass updated rent control policies.
Yet billions of dollars in revenue, if not trillions, were at stake for corporate landlords — such as Essex Property Trust, led by CEO Angela Kleiman; Equity Residential, led by CEO Mark Parrell; and AvalonBay Communities, led by CEO Benjamin Schall. If Prop 33 passed, new rent regulations would stop Big Real Estate from charging exorbitant rents, year after year.
In addition, a successful rent control movement in California would inspire activists in other states, motivating them to try to repeal their rent control bans — more than 30 states have rent control restrictions.
In California, corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association, led by CEO Tom Bannon, tried to frame Prop 33 as a wrong-headed way to solve the housing affordability crisis, even though the anti-rent control arguments that the real estate industry routinely rolls out are outdated and wrong, according to top economists. But Big Real Estate never really cared about lowering rents — the loss of massive revenues, all over the country, was the corporate landlords’ overriding worry.
At the same time, corporate landlords, whose top executives sit on the California Apartment Association’s board of directors and who call the shots at the CAA, were determined to silence one of their biggest enemies: AIDS Healthcare Foundation. AHF was the major financial backer for Prop 10, Prop 21, and Prop 33. So corporate landlords decided to stop AHF’s pro-rent control work by pushing forward Prop 34, which would knee-cap AHF’s ability to use money for housing advocacy in California.
Nearly every major newspaper in California ended up condemning Prop 34. The San Francisco Chronicle called the measure “cheap political gamesmanship that doesn’t belong on the ballot.” The Bay Area News Group Editorial Board wrote that Prop 34 was “an abusive use of the state’s initiative system to silence a political opponent.” And the Los Angeles Times urged voters to “emphatically reject Proposition 34 and send the message that they will not tolerate such a weaponization of the state’s citizen initiative process.”
In May 2023, AHF announced that it had collected more than 800,000 signatures to place the Justice for Renters Act, later known as Prop 33, on the November 2024 ballot. A few months later, in September 2023, the CAA announced in a press release that it was “ramping up” campaigns to not only stop the Justice for Renters Act, but to also pass the Protect Patients Now Act, later known as Prop 34. The CAA and corporate landlords were moving swiftly into action, telling real estate insiders that the CAA “has hired a cadre of seasoned pollsters, campaign consultants, legal advisors, and media relations specialists.”
In reality, the CAA and corporate landlords had begun their work months earlier to stop Prop 33 and pass Prop 34, keeping close tabs on AHF’s signature-gathering effort, contributing money, and writing their own ballot measure to silence AHF.
In June and July 2023, corporate landlords such as UDR, Woodmont Real Estate Services, and Frank Suryan Jr of Lyon Living shelled out major contributions to the California Apartment Association Issues Committee. Other corporate landlords sent big checks to the same committee in the following months. Essex Property Trust, for example, delivered a hefty contribution of $1.7 million in November 2023 — Essex Property Trust would contribute a shocking total of $32 million to the CAA Issues Committee by the end of October 2024.
Carrying out a shady, high-stakes shell game, the CAA then moved corporate landlord cash from the CAA Issues Committee to Californians for Responsible Housing and Protect Patients Now, which would become the CAA’s official No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34 committees, respectively.
Campaign filings for Californians for Responsible Housing and Protect Patients Nowshow that corporate landlords’ millions bought a small army of at least 21 consultants of one kind or another: DeBoo Communications, run by Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Jim DeBoo; Forward Observer, a consulting firm founded by longtime Republican operative Joe Rodota; Bearstar Strategies, run by Newsom insider Ace Smith; and Click Strategies, operated by yet another Newsom insider Nathan Click; among others.
But with their millions, corporate landlords weren’t just hiring political strategists, media consultants, and legal advisors. With the help of the CAA, Big Real Estate went on a multi-million-dollar shopping spree for political favors that would have made even Boss Tweed blush.
Corporate Landlords and the CAA Carry Out Shell Games
To easily spread around cash to politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom and to finance No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34 and to do it all on the sly, corporate landlords sent prodigious amounts of money to three of the four California Apartment Association political committees: the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee, the CAA Political Action Committee, and the CAA Issues Committee.
As mentioned before, the CAA Issues Committee financed No on Prop 33: Californians for Responsible Housing sponsored by the California Apartment Association and Yes on Prop 34: Protect Patients Now sponsored by the CAA. By Election Day, the CAA Issues Committee had raised an eye-popping amount of cash: $135,875,365, according to state filings. Just as astounding, out of the committee’s 355 contributors, a group of only 68 corporate landlords delivered a total of $131,765,298 — or 97 percent of all campaign cash sent to the CAA Issues Committee.
Corporate landlords are generally defined as landlords that use corporate structures, such as LPs, LLCs, and real estate investment trusts. The city of Los Angeles defines “small” or “mom-and-pop” landlords as one who owns four rental units or less.
Those 68 corporate landlords, who contributed at least $100,000 to the CAA Issues Committee between 2023 and 2024, include the largest apartment owners in the nation: Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Essex Property Trust, Camden Property Trust, GID, UDR, MG Properties, Greystar, AIR Communities, and The Related Companies.
In addition, Blackstone Group, which owns AIR Communities and was deemed by United Nations housing experts as one of the leading companies to cause the globalhousing affordability crisis, delivered $2 million to the CAA Issues Committee. Blackstone is helmed by CEO Stephen Schwarzman, the multi-billionaire who owns mansions in East Hampton and Palm Beach as well as a lavish, 2,500-acre estate in South West England called Conholt Park. Using profits he made by charging sky-high rents, Schwarzman planned to pump millions into the restoration of his 17th century home.
But among those contributions to the CAA Issues Committee, there was one that was highly suspicious. It involved a $100,000 check, delivered on October 21, 2024, by an entity called “Multiple Multi-Family Operations,” based in Carlsbad, California. A Google search doesn’t show a company in Carlsbad by that name. Neither does a business search at the California Secretary of State website. Some corporate landlord was trying to pull a fast one, most probably, by attaching a fake name to the $100,000 contribution. It’s something that the California Fair Political Practices Commissionshould look into.
Such crookedness is hardly surprising. While there are undoubtedly solid citizens within the real estate industry, it is also plagued by fraudsters, ponzi-scheme artists, slumlords, corrupt political contributors, and, more than once, real estate hot-shots who hired hitmen to murder people. Just buy a subscription to The Real Deal, the real estate trade magazine, and you’ll find those offenders in its monthly scandal column called “Dirty Deeds.” Atrocious, illegal behavior, in other words, is an ever-present strand in the real estate industry’s DNA.
There’s also the RealPage price-fixing scandal uncovered by ProPublica. Reporter Heather Vogell found that a cartel of corporate landlords, including CAA Issues Committee contributors Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, Greystar, UDR, and Camden Property Trust, used a RealPage software program to collude and wildly inflate rents in cities across the country. In response, tenants in California and throughout the country slapped RealPage and the cartel with numerous antitrust lawsuits, and the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against RealPage and a group of corporate landlords.
Taken altogether, that’s the kind of unscrupulous gang that was pulling all kinds of strings to kill Prop 33 and pass Prop 34 in California. AIDS Healthcare Foundation, on the other hand, was serving more than two million people living with HIV/AIDS, saving countless lives, and operating in more than 40 countries, including South Africa, India, China, Ukraine, Mexico, and the United States. And while corporate landlords were thinking up new ways to price gouge tenants, AHF was providing safe, affordable housing to low-income and formerly unhoused tenants in the United States.
With that in mind, here are the top 15 contributors to the CAA Issues Committee:
1. Essex Property Trust: $32,025,000
2. Equity Residential: $22,318,500
3. AvalonBay Communities: $20,134,000
4. Prometheus Real Estate Group: $7,718,000
5. UDR: $5,956,310
6. Prime Administration: $4,089,300
7. R & V Management: $3,435,150
8. Spieker Companies: $2,629,499
9. Sequoia Equities: $2,338,252
10. Jackson Square Properties: $2,186,350
11. Blackstone Group: $2,000,000
12. AIR Communities (owned by Blackstone Group): $1,884,975
13. Robert Larson, founder of Acacia Capital: $1,599,500
14. Woodmont Real Estate Services (a corporate real estate management firm): $1,576,700
15. Shea Homes and affiliated entities: $1,560,000
Just those 15 companies shelled out $111,451,536 — or 82 percent — of all money raised by the CAA Issues Committee. Astonishing numbers. Clearly, in the fights over Prop 33 and Prop 34, it was activists and labor unions versus the billionaires.
Many of the same 68 corporate landlords that contributed to the CAA Issues Committee also sent checks to the CAA Political Action Committee or the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee.
For the CAA Political Action Committee, 29 of the 68 corporate landlords delivered a total of $283,265 in 2023 and 2024. Those contributors include Related Management Company, Shea Homes, Woodmont Real Estate Services, Sequoia Entities, and THR Property Management, a subsidiary of Invitation Homes, the nation’s largest landlord of single-family home rentals. (THR Property Management/Invitation Homes sent $700,000 to the CAA Issues Committee — and Invitation Homes was also caught in a major scandal, in 2024, when the corporate landlord agreed to an incredible $48-million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for “unlawful behavior against renters.”)
For the CAA Independent Expenditure Committee, 15 of the 68 corporate landlords shelled out a total of $2,457,720 in 2023 and 2024. The CAA Independent Expenditure Committee was where many heavy hitters in the real estate industry, including scandal-plagued corporate landlords Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, Greystar, UDR, and Camden Property Trust, sent their cash. Essex Property Trust and Equity Residential were the top two contributors, shelling out $947,403 and $625,115, respectively.
That is nothing new. For years, Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Spieker Companies, and many other landlords have delivered millions in contributions to at least one of the California Apartment Association’s four political committees — directly or indirectly. What was it used for? As my special report revealed in 2021, to buy influence and favors by sending campaign contributions to state and local politicians in 51 out of 58 counties in California.
With all that cash, corporate landlords and the CAA carried out multi-million-dollar shell games, which worked this way: first, landlords contributed millions to the California Apartment Association’s political committees, and second, the CAA then distributed the landlords’ money to politicians and groups of one kind or another all over California.
So it was not the CAA’s money that the politicians, candidates, and groups were taking — they were raking in landlord cash. That’s how the shell games played out, year after year. It happened for the CAA’s No on Prop 33 and Yes on Prop 34 campaigns, too.
(Patrick Range McDonald, author and journalist, Best Activism Journalism: Los Angeles Press Club, Journalist of the Year: Los Angeles Press Club, Public Service Award: Association of Alternative Newsmedia, advocacy journalist for Housing is a Human Right, and a contributor to CityWatch.)
