Guest Opinion | Ira West: Making Room for the ‘Least of These’

Pasadena shoppers are starting to see large window signs popping up in small businesses around town. Their message? Support rent control in the November election. 

On a recent weekend I accompanied Mercy Young, the 36-year-old campaign coordinator for the Pasadena Rent Control Campaign, as we walked along Colorado Boulevard across the street from the Paseo mall, engaging with staff and owners to drum up support for placing the signs in their windows. 

In one hour, she chatted up 11 businesses, placed or gave out 8 signs, and only received two outright “no’s”—one from the owner of a store who said he owned properties. 

Staff and owners at other stores and restaurants were often enthusiastic. At one, a worker behind the counter revealed her rent had increased 4 times over the last year and was now paying $2,400 for a studio. 

But we didn’t walk through the Paseo. “It’s very unlikely for corporations to endorse local efforts, particularly political campaigns like ours,” Young said, “whereas mom and pop business owners have been very receptive to our cause and are more than happy to put one of our signs in their storefront windows.”  

This is the first time a rent control campaign in Pasadena has garnered enough support from voter signature drives to make it onto the ballot, after a failed attempt in 2018. People from other communities are often puzzled that rent control has never taken off in this city—where some 62 percent of residents are renters—when elsewhere across the state rent control battles have been successful, starting in Southern California in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, followed by Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. 

Last fall, Santa Ana became Orange County’s first city to enact a rent control measure. Other jurisdictions nearby have already instituted eviction protections similar to Santa Ana’s, including Los Angeles County, Inglewood, and Culver City.

But since 1994, state legislation has imposed severe limits on what kinds of rent control are possible for cities and counties to adopt.  

Young, with a seven-year history in the affordable housing field, sees deep structural forces at work in Pasadena, defined by wealth and property ownership. Only one Pasadena City Councilmember, Jess Rivas, is on record supporting rent control. Councilmember John J. Kennedy, on the other hand, has said “Rent control is a well-intentioned bad idea.” Kennedy’s bio on the City of Pasadena website notes that he’s in the real estate business. 

The City Council’s response to the grassroots campaign to get rent control on the ballot was to vote for city staff to prepare an economic impact report on the proposed rent control initiative. According to Michelle White, long-time Pasadena advocate for fair housing, “Typically, such analyses address the arguments promoted by the real estate industry almost exclusively and give short shrift to the impact on city’s renters.”

Added Young: “Landlords want to protect their interests, such as the upkeep of the neighborhood, and don’t care about the single mother and her four kids getting evicted right behind that tree,” Young said. 

“Landlords justify ‘renovictions’ [evictions due to major renovations] as an upkeep of the neighborhood and to increase property values,” explained Young. “Paired with this are other wealthy, influential groups that prioritize protecting the character and landscape of the city” over the needs of struggling renters. 

As a prime example, “The Pasadena Heritage Foundation wants the city to designate more and more parts of the city as landmark districts,” thereby making those districts ineligible for affordable housing. 

Just-cause eviction protections is another key part of the proposed rent control ordinance. As is relocation assistance if a tenant is evicted for a “no fault” reason. 

A long-time resident of Northwest Pasadena, Nate Cooke, presented his eviction story to the city council. His new landlord, Cooke said, evicted him to remodel his severely neglected unit after he lived there for six years, and then listed the property with this description: “Priced for immediate liquidation. 3 units in prime rental location. No rent stabilization…. Opportunity to increase the rents.”

Said Cooke: “Landlords should not be allowed to evict tenants without just cause. Rents should not be allowed to increase astronomically from one year to the next. Because we lack these basic protections, my family is being forced to leave Pasadena to find a place we can afford. We will continue to commute here. My work is here.”

Every weekend, dozens of volunteers—including not only renters, but homeowners and people in all age brackets—fan out across Pasadena to drop literature at apartments and homes, place lawn signs, and drum up support ahead of what organizers see as an inevitable counterattack by deep-pocket real estate interests.

But Kerwin Manning, Senior Pastor of Pasadena Church in Northwest Pasadena and one of several Pasadena churches endorsing the campaign, is hopeful the tide will turn.

“The right to affordable housing is something every human being deserves,” he said. “We have to do a better job at what scripture calls caring for ‘the least of these.’ City Council leaders here have always catered to the elites of our community, such as the Caltechs and the JPLs. But we have to make room for those who can’t afford to live here. Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes, I am.”

Ira West is a retired high school teacher and former journalist. He’s currently a volunteer in the Pasadena rent control campaign.