I have been reading all the letters written about rent control
that have been sent in to the editor for the past few months. Deja
vu! It's nothing new to me.
I lived in East Palo Alto as a tenant when rent control was first
proposed there. I voted for it and lived in an apartment under rent
control for more than 10 years. As is normal with rent control, no
one ever moved out of their apartments, and I got to know everyone in
my 31-unit building well. We were like a big happy family. Everyone
was happy to have rent control.
Then, I watched as my neighborhood started to go downhill. Repairs
on the buildings weren't made. Instead of a good landlord/tenant
relationship, tenants didn't even bother complaining to the manager
or landlord. They just called the housing department instead. Then
the fighting started between the city government, the landlords and
the tenants.
From the time rent control was first talked about until the
present day, rent control dominated everything that was printed in
the local newspaper and local television. Everyone in and around my
building talked about virtually nothing else. Rent control came to
dominate city politics, with politicians trying to get elected by
solving all the problems that rent control created.
City Council meetings always had rent-control-problem scheduling.
The newspaper always had write-ups about the people being helped by
rent control and the foreclosures that ended up leaving a lot of
people homeless due to the evil landlord who didn't run his building
correctly. Even with vacancy decontrol in 1995, almost all news
reporting was dominated in some way by something rent-control
related.
As time went by, crime in East Palo Alto skyrocketed and the city
had to respond to this new crime wave with heavier police activity,
and by trying to solve the problem by arresting tenants, not by
evicting them. I also remember the quantity of housing stock actually
increasing as landowners tried to satisfy the huge demand for more
rentals by converting their properties into apartments, but with
outrageous rents to start.
Just as rent control was a heavy issue for Valley secession, rent
control, if passed, will be an all- consuming issue for the city of
Glendale. With a two-thirds tenant-population, a myriad of
landlord/tenant issues will always be at the forefront of the
majority of City Council meetings, and gauging the severity of the
proposed rent-control initiative, it looks like the Glendale
Municipal Court is to be flooded with lawsuits.
