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renter protections
Renters in Philly Say: ‘Fighting Together We Are Stronger!’
The Philadelphia renters are part of a growing tenants’ rights movement, with advocacy that centers on the government support provided to irresponsible corporate landlords.
Jun 08, 2024
Tyrone Jones had good reasons for pulling on a bright gold Renters United Philadelphia t-shirt and delivering a petition to the corporate headquarters of Odin Properties last week. Jones is a tenant of Odin’s, one of the largest property owners in Philadelphia and the landlord for 10,000 rental units across multiple states, and he has been living through difficult conditions.
Jones uses a wheelchair, and only one of the four entrances to his building is accessible. Even at that entrance, the ramp is so narrow that he can barely fit through. The lock to the door to the building is hard to reach from the chair, the double doors of the elevator nearly impossible to navigate.
Leaks coming through Jones’ ceiling went unrepaired so long that the ceiling caved in. Now, mold has developed. The closest exit from his apartment has steep stairs Jones cannot descend. “God forbid if there is a fire on the side where the ramp is,” Jones says. “I couldn’t get out of this building at all.” A short video of Jones showing his building and apartment has been posted online by Renters United Philadelphia here.
Among the other renters joining Jones at Odin headquarters was Lori Peterson. Also an Odin renter, Peterson explains that the rodent problem in her apartment is so bad that bugs crawl on her while she sleeps. Cockroaches drop into any pot or pan of food while she is cooking. “They say they do pest control regularly, but they don’t,” she says. The front door to Peterson’s building has a hole where the doorknob should be, she too has leaks in her apartment, and she recently found a dead mouse on top of a dress in her closet.
The petition the Odin renters delivered was signed by over 450 people and states in part, “In neighborhoods across Philadelphia, particularly in Black working-class areas, Odin Properties has allowed its buildings to fall into disrepair... These unsafe living conditions are a direct assault on our dignity and well-being, exacerbating the housing crisis and fueling displacement.”
The petition calls for the problems to be fixed by July 17, along with a freeze on rent and evictions during the repair period and rent rebates for those who lived through poor conditions. The renters also call on the City of Philadelphia to inspect all of Odin rental properties and severely penalize all landlords whose properties violate housing codes.
The tenants point out that Odin is receiving generous government subsidies, with the Philadelphia Housing Authority paying the rent for many of the Odin units that are in the worst condition. The City of Philadelphia has even promoted its partnership with Odin, which receives reimbursement from low-income housing vouchers. “We are asking the city to light a fire under Odin’s behind, to be honest with you,” Peterson says.
Odin Property did not respond to a request for comment.
The Philadelphia renters are part of a growing tenants’ rights movement, which includes strong tenant union presence in places like Louisville, Kansas City, and Connecticut. Much of the advocacy centers on the government support provided to corporate landlords like Odin through direct subsidies or federal housing loan support .
On the way home from delivering the petition, Peterson received a call from Odin staff, asking for a meeting. Management was waiting for Jones at his building, asking to look at his apartment problems. No repairs have happened yet, so the renters have a plan to escalate the confrontation on July 18 if their demands are not met.
“I have at least a little hope,” Jones says. “When we are fighting together, we are stronger.”
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Largest US Corporate Landlords Reap Huge Profits Amid Double-Digit Rent Hikes
"These companies fueling the housing affordability crisis are among many corporations across industries that have shamelessly profiteered."
Apr 17, 2023
Three months after the Biden administration unveiled a nonbinding "Blueprint for Renters Bill of Rights" that was applauded by corporate landlords for doing little to rein in unfair rent increases and evictions, a new report by government watchdog Accountable.US showed on Monday that those same property owners reaped enormous profits in 2022 as they demanded more of their tenants' incomes in rent and excessive fees.
The group found that the six biggest property management companies in the United States—Starwood Property Trust, Mid-America Apartment Communities (MAA), Invitation Homes, AvalonBay Communities Inc., AMH, and Tricon Residential—brought in $4.3 billion in net income last year, over $1.3 billion more than in 2021.
That financial windfall came as the companies were raising rent prices and engaging in what Accountable.US called "abusive tactics" to evict people, in some cases after they had applied for rental assistance.
Starwood Property Trust increased rent by 30% or more at some of its thousands of properties in 2022 and saw its net income skyrocket by 115% to more than $1 billion—$591 million of which it spent on dividend payments to shareholders.
AMH and Tricon Residential credited their "pricing power" and "strong rent growth" for helping them secure $310 million and nearly $780 million in net income last year, respectively. The former company recorded a 47% increase while the latter's income grew by 70%.
MAA also reported that "higher fee income" and "continued growth in average rent per unit" were behind the ballooning of its net income, which grew by nearly 19% to more than $654 million.
"This is egregious," said tenants' rights organizer René Christian Moya of the report's findings.
\u201cThis is egregious. And it is something the @WhiteHouse and @POTUS should be thinking very clearly about as tenants across the country are being gouged by corporate landlords\u201d— Ren\u00e9 \ud83d\udfe5 (@Ren\u00e9 \ud83d\udfe5) 1681754467
Four of the companies included in the Accountable.US report are members of the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), which celebrated the omission of national rent control measures in the renter protections that President Joe Biden proposed in January while also claiming the proposal's recommended regulations would be too "onerous" on landlords and would "discourage much-needed investments in housing supply."
Part of the companies' financial windfall was driven not by rent increases but by fees the landlords have piled on top of rent, including late fees, and extra charges for "smart locks," pets, and using online systems to pay rent.
"Corporate landlords 'squeeze more revenues from portfolios' by charging a range of 'ancillary' fees, resulting in 'fee revenue vastly outpacing rental growth,'" said Accountable.US.
Invitation Homes is one landlord that's been accused in the past of "fee-stacking" by tenants who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2018—all while providing tenants with homes where they face "leaky pipes, vermin, toxic mold, nonfunctioning appliances and monthslong waits for repairs," according to the report.
The record profits, dividend spending, and poor service of the six companies, said Accountable.US—in addition to shelter costs rising by a "striking" 8.6% overall in the consumer price index last month—demonstrates that "aggressive interest rate hikes" imposed by the Federal Reserve "have done little to deter profiteering from corporate landlords."
The group called on Congress to work with the Biden administration to "stabilize runaway housing costs," for example by passing legislation proposed by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) last month which would invest $200 billion in affordable housing, or a bill introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) to end rent-gouging by coporate landlords.
"The nation's largest landlords have shown their burdensome rent hikes are based on greed, not need, after reporting billions of dollars in higher profits over the last year," said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US' Economic Security and Corporate Power program. "These companies fueling the housing affordability crisis are among many corporations across industries that have shamelessly profiteered, undeterred by the Fed's repeated interest rate hikes."
"Higher interest rates have not curbed inflation sufficiently and have done nothing to combat corporate greed," Zelnick added, "and instead are causing severe economic consequences for everyday Americans, from lower wages to lost jobs."
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Corporate Media Failing to Report Shortcomings of Biden Rental Plan
Corporate lobbyists flexed their power, got the White House to fold, and are publicly warning Biden not to test them again.
Feb 05, 2023
Last month, the Biden administration unveiled a slate of new agency-level actions it claimed would “protect renters and promote rental affordability.” The announcement followed nearly a year of public pressure from Congressional Democrats and the tenant-led Homes Guarantee campaign to get President Biden to crack down on rent-gouging and unjust evictions. In late January, the campaign sent the White House a list of 11 essential policy directives to include in its tenant protection plan.
Unfortunately, the White House’s final action slate was a far cry from what tenants — millions of whom are only one missed paycheck or life emergency away from eviction — had been asking for. In a press statement, Homes Guarantee campaign director Tara Raghuveer said the White House Plan falls short “of using the full power of the administration to regulate rent and address market consolidation by corporate landlords.” The plan consists largely of voluntary, incremental measures that do almost nothing to help tenants today. Almost all of the campaign’s essential demands are missing from the White House plan, including any material rent regulations or efforts to integrate good cause eviction protections into existing federal housing programs.
In lieu of these measures, the Biden plan includes something called the “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge”, a set of nonbinding voluntary pledges from real estate industry groups to “improve the quality of life for renters.” Among the Challenge’s participants are the National Association of Realtors (NAR), National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), and National Apartment Association (NAA), all groups who (as I’ve previously written in this newsletter) represent corporate landlords whose anticompetitive practices have fuelled the rental housing crisis. These groups spent much of the last year lobbying the White House to ignore tenants’ demands for robust rent regulations and tenant protections. Their efforts ultimately succeeded, with the final Biden plan failing to include the bare minimum that tenants had asked for.
If the White House thought they would be rewarded by the industry for caving to its demands, they were sorely mistaken. NAR and NMHC immediately issued crocodile tear-laden press statements arguing the Biden plan contained “duplicative and onerous regulations” that would “drive housing providers out of the market” (as if private developers are doing a great job solving the crisis on their own currently!). NAA, saying the quiet part out loud, boasted in a press release that their lobbying efforts had “helped avert an executive order advanced by renters advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes.” That’s right, they openly bragged about keeping life terrible for tenants through sheer force of Washington muscle.
Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.
Taken together, the real estate industry’s public statements and behind-the-scenes lobbying paint a clear picture of what’s really going on here: corporate lobbyists flexed their power, got the White House to fold, and are publicly warning Biden not to test them again.
Unfortunately, instead of exposing this underlying dynamic or pushing back on the real estate industry’s lies, many media outlets are instead quoting industry press statements without fact-checking their claims orproperly reporting on their lobbying work. CNN and Yahoo! News both quoted press statements from NAA President Bob Pinnegar and NAR President Kenny Parcell (not that one) claiming the White House’s plan would increase housing costs for renters and was inferior to supply-focused policy alternatives. Forbes and Marketwatch likewise quoted NMHC’s press release trashing rent control as a “failed policy” and praising the group’s members as “competitive [and] resident centered.”
None of these outlets compared the industry’s “sky is falling” assertions about Biden’s policies (or federal housing regulations in general) to independent economic analyses to assess whether their claims had any merit.
Worse, none of the outlets listed above mentioned these groups’ functions as lobbying fronts for rent-gouging private equity landlords. NAR, for example, was described by CNN and Yahoo! News as merely a “real estate industry representative group,” with no mention of the fact that it was 2022’s biggest lobbying spenderin the entire country, includingand spent millions to kill the Build Back Better Act’s sorely-needed investments in public housing supply. Marketwatch characterized NMHC as an “industry group” while Forbes referred to it merely as a “private housing actor.” Neither outlet mentioned that NMHC’s “competitive [and] resident-centered” members are among the nation’s biggest corporate landlords and pandemic evictors, or that NMHC has previously lobbied for lucrative corporate tax loopholes and against the CDC’s eviction moratorium.
Marketwatch likewise referred to NAA as another “industry group,” while CNN and Forbes both described it as a “network of over 95,000 members owning and operating more than 11.6 million apartment homes globally” – a definition taken straight from the group’s own website. Despite quoting NAA’s press statement, it seems none of these outlets read the whole thing: NAA’s open admission in its press statement to killing an executive order on rent-gouging is nowhere to be found in the CNN, Forbes, or Marketwatch coverage.
The media’s deference to industry is nothing new. Last October, I wrote for this newsletter about how the mainstream press often presents real estate lobbying groups as neutral “experts” when reporting on the housing crisis, and fails to disclose their obvious conflicts of interest. Just a month after I wrote that, NPR’s Jennifer Ludden again proved my point by quoting NMHC spokesman Jim Lapides for a story on rent control — without even once explaining what NMHC is or disclosing who its members are.
Even reporting about the industry’s own lobbying efforts lacks vital context. In a Politico story about industry lobbying published one week before the White House plan’s release, RealPage chief economist Jay Parsons told reporter Katy O’Donnell that federal regulation was unnecessary, as “the balance of power [in the market] has shifted toward renters -- they’re going to have more options, more competitive pricing and better deals.” Nowhere in O’Donnell’s piece does she mention that RealPage is currently being sued by renters for seemingly helping a cartel of corporate landlords artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law.
While it’s not inherently a faux pas to quote industry reacting to policies that could affect them, the problem comes when industry’s claims are taken at their word unquestioningly — especially when the same credulity isn’t extended to tenants. It’s fairly common to see groups like the Homes Guarantee campaign referred to as “activist collectives” and the like by the mainstream press, in such a way as to signal to readers that this group has a political perspective and their views should be taken with a grain of salt. That’s fine, but reporters should also apply the same approach when quoting industry groups who have their own political agendas. Too often, if an industry group has an acronymed, dull-sounding name and dresses its lobbyists up in nice suits and clean haircuts, they’re taken as the serious “adults in the room,” even when what they’re saying is utter nonsense.
For examples of good coverage of Biden’s plan, look to alternative media.“Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, for example, spoke to Tara Raghuveer and tenant organizer Davita Gatewood about how Biden’s plan actually measured up to tenants’ material needs and prior asks of the administration (during Goodman’s interview, Raghuveer called out the National Apartment Association by name for its gloating press statement and anti-tenant lobbying work). Similarly, The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, doing what many mainstream journalists apparently failed to do, actually read the NAA’s full press statement and highlighted the group’s gloating about killing a tenant-backed executive order. Indiana University Law Professor Fran Quigley, writing for Jacobin, likewise cites Raghuveer’s and the housing industry’s reactions as evidence of the weakness of Biden’s plan.
Housing reporters in the mainstream press need to learn from these examples and do a better job of accurately covering the rental housing beat. Organizations like the National Association of Realtors aren’t neutral forums where industry professionals chitchat: they’re lobbying groups which exist to make their members richer, often at the expense of renters. They should be considered just as political as tenant’s advocates, if not more so. Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.
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