Correspondence - Non-Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Orozco, Norma From: Nathaniel Greensides <mynci90@gmaii.com> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2021 1:05 PM To: eComment Subject: non -agenda item Dear City Council, Right now, landlords have no incentive to ensure an open and competitive market once a new tenant takes possession of a unit. In other words, landlords hold a monopoly on rental prices in the city. This is because there are no mechanisms to ensure fair market practices for rental units in our city. We have the opportunity to ensure that those who have made Santa Ana such a desirable place to live can remain for generations to come. Rent and Community Stabilization is hardly a controversial point to argue. Yet, the California Apartment Association and its pundits/supporters believe that Landlords should be allowed to maintain a monopoly on rents and continue unfair business practices instead of actually having to innovate upon how housing "providers" might actually do just that - provide and increase the supply of quality housing. In every business sector that I have ever been witness to, successful businesses find ways to produce better quality products at lower prices to the individual consumer. Yet, Landlords and the CAA believe that landlords should be allowed to practice the competition reducing practice of extracting ever more money from their consumers without an equal increase in the quality or number of units supplied to the market as financed by rent being collected. Tenants in our city have been seeing their rents increase with all sorts of fake reasons provided by landlords: supposed substantial repairs to the property thus warranting 60 day evictions instead of the landlord finding those tenants a temporary place to live while supposed substantial repairs take place; landlords allege taxes increasing despite enjoying a statewide cap of two percent on property tax increases (aka Prop 13 from 1978); while tenants aren't experiencing a similar increase of income from their jobs, landlords allege that the cost of goods and services is increasing (i.e. inflation); but the real reason that rents are increasing is because landlords are choosing to increase rent. Landlords could keep rents the same and thus earn less in profit, but Landlords instead choose to increase the rents thus prioritizing profit over people. Some say that prices increase because of some sort of "invisible hand". But actually, it is the hand of landlords' greed coupled with the other hand of systematic power granted to those who "own" land against those who don't. (I hold the belief that one can't actually "own" the land if there are liens from a mortgage or lender existing on the property. But even then, "owning" land is a western European colonizing construct that only came into existence because of the mass genocide committed against the indigenous people of the "Americas" who existed on the land for tens of thousands of years without any papers - monetary or otherwise - outlining "ownership" of land) Here's a thought that is probably considered heresy to landlords and the CAA: keep rents the same and you will have continued sustainable long term growth, happy tenants, and stable communities. But instead, those with access to community -destabilizing debt products and financing agreements for supposed "community development" are enabled and offered even more access to harmful and community destabilizing debt products and financing agreements via "opportunity zone" tax incentives and tax breaks in already vulnerable neighborhoods of our cities. This also ensures continued equity gains for those who live in neighborhoods zoned only for single family homes (which in OC and Santa Ana were created in the 1950s for white people only in case anyone forgot). Furthermore, the system allows LLCs and business entities to easily declare losses or declare bankruptcy only to create a new LLC or business entity and do it all again from scratch. There's literally no risk for these self entitled "investors" to rob and destabilize our community under one name only to do it again under some other name. The ability of landlords to easily displace and destabilize our city, communities, and households is unjust to say