(VERSION EN ESPAÑOL)

If you live in Anaheim, chances are good – around 55% – that you pay rent, to live where you and your family live. And if you do pay rent, you should be part of Tenants United Anaheim. It costs nothing, and you don’t have to go to any meetings (though you can!) We just need to know how to get a hold of you, because we are the group that is looking out for the interests of that 55% of Anaheim’s people. (Website, e-mail, Facebook, Instagram.)

Most cities the size of Anaheim have a group that advocates for the city’s tenants. And we saw the need for that here. Because over the years we’ve seen Anaheim rents hiked over the legal limit, tenants illegally evicted for phony renovations (“renovictions”) so the apartments can be rented out at a much higher rate to someone else, and other illegal or questionable evictions. And there’s nothing the tenants can do unless a) they know the law and their rights, and b) they can afford an attorney. There is no help, or nearly no help, coming from the city, which is run by politicians funded by landlord associations.

And the rents just keep rising in Anaheim, which Forbes last year named the “4th Worst City for Renters.” Our renting families, even those who’ve been here for decades, are forced to choose between rent, food and medicine, or driven out of town, even into homelessness. We’ve been losing state funding for education because of families being driven out of town by excessive rents and unjust evictions.

It’s time for a group that looks after the rights and interests of that 55% of the city’s people. And it’s only fair, because:

The Landlords are doing fine.

First: You MAY know your own landlord personally, and he MAY be a real nice guy (or lady), and maybe your landlord follows all the laws – some do. But more and more Anaheim tenants are paying rent to out-of-town corporations like LA’s Helix or Newport’s Saywitz, even foreign corporations. Corporations driven only to maximize their profits, to the fullest extent of the law and even beyond the law when they can get away with it. Corporations that don’t care about the folks they’re renting to, or how society is affected when they’re driven out of their homes.

But whether it’s big corporations or mom-and-pops, landlords have their interests taken care of by powerful lobbying groups like the California Apartment Association (CAA) and the Apartment Association of Orange County (AAOC.) These groups donate generously to the campaigns of most of our Councilmembers and most of our state representatives, and when a law to help tenants is proposed, these groups are right up in there making SURE that law gets watered down. That’s what happened to our current California Tenant Protection Act (TPA) from 2019. Here are some of the ways the landlords’ associations declawed THAT law:

Reasonable rent control, in these days of inflation, would mean rents could be raised once a year ONLY AT THE RATE OF THE COST OF LIVING. Landlords were already making a profit or they wouldn’t be in business; it seems fair that they should keep making the same profit. But our TPA allows rents to be raised annually by cost of living PLUS FIVE PERCENT (with a limit of 10% total.) Why should landlords be allowed (encouraged even) to INCREASE THEIR PROFITS BY 5% EVERY YEAR, on the backs of struggling, hard-working people?

On top of that, even this very generous law is not always followed, and many landlords raise rents even higher than allowed, and ignore other tenant protections that are in that law. And nothing happens. That’s because there is NO “ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM” in the law – some cities or counties enforce the state law, but most don’t, Anaheim doesn’t. It’s up to each tenant to 1) know when the law is being broken, and 2) get themselves an attorney if they can afford it.

On top of all THAT, even this weak, watered-down, unenforced law is set to “sunset,” to disappear, on Jan. 1, 2030, which is getting closer and closer. Lawmakers who care about us tenants keep trying to make new laws to fix all this, but they just never get enough votes, because of the lobbying and campaign contributions of these landlord associations.

That’s just one way all landlords are helped by their “Associations.” When you go to court against them they’ve got an army of well-practiced attorneys behind them. There are numerous publications giving them tips on how to pursue their business most profitably. There’s even a controversial A.I. program named RealPage that helps them conspire to fix rents and avoid healthy competition.

The point is, the landlords are very organized, they take care of themselves, they are doing all right. It’s up to us to do the same. This is why we need a Tenants United Anaheim, like the ones they have in LA, in Pasadena, in Santa Ana, in nearly every California city our size or bigger. And you should be in it, if you pay rent.

T. U. A.

We at Tenants United Anaheim aren’t attorneys or lawmakers, just tenants helping other tenants. In the months we’ve been together, we’ve helped numerous tenants stay in their homes, tenants facing illegal and unjust evictions, renovictions, and illegal rent gouging. We let them know their rights and the law, we hook them up with attorneys we know, or with the city which has occasionally been slightly helpful. But what we really want to do, once we have enough members and volunteers, is to pass Anaheim’s OWN Tenants Protection Act (like they have in Pasadena, LA, Santa Ana, and many other California cities.) That would entail:

An annual rent cap tied to something reasonable like cost of living or 3% – NOT cost of living plus 5%;
An Anaheim RENT BOARD to receive complaints, hear both sides, and ENFORCE the law;
Importantly this would cover Anaheim’s MOBILE HOME PARKS which aren’t covered at all (except for Rancho La Paz very temporarily.)

But we’ll write more about this in our next piece. For now, ALL ANAHEIM TENANTS are invited to our next general meeting this Monday night, Oct 27 7pm, at the Untold Story Bookstore, 301 N. Anaheim Blvd. Translation will be available for Spanish speakers. And whether you can make that meeting or not, reach out to us here: