When Matt Haney entered the California Legislature, he found himself in a very small minority of rental lawmakers.
Haney has never owned a property and, at age 41, has spent most of his adult life as a renter. His primary residence is his one-bedroom apartment near downtown San Francisco. His rent is $3,258 per month. (He also paid a $300 security deposit for Eddie and Ellis, two orange cats he adopted from a shelter during the pandemic.)
“When I got there last year, it looked like there were only three people out of 120,” Haney said of the Congressional tenants. “It’s a very small number.”
Last year, Haney and congressional colleagues Isaac Bryan and Alex Lee, two of them, sought to underscore their tenancy status and that less than half of California’s 17 million households are renters. Established a group of tenants. Tascha Werner, a fourth member of parliament since the formation of the caucuses, joined. The group added Senator Aisha Wahab, who took office this year.
Haney said a temporary sixth more politically conservative lawmaker attended one meeting and never returned. He may have other co-workers on loan who haven’t come out yet.
“Being a renter isn’t necessarily something people plan or put on a website,” Haney says.
It seems that much has changed. From cities and state capitols to the U.S. Congress, elected officials are increasingly flaunting their status as tenants and forming groups to promote tenant-friendly policies.
Politics is sympathetic. Candidates pet dogs, hold babies and talk about children. Considering how many families are struggling with housing costs and losing hope of being able to afford one, it’s no surprise elected officials are now talking about becoming tenants.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed frequently talks about rent-controlled apartments in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Lindsay Horvatha member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a powerful body that oversees a $43 billion budget and over 100,000 employees, she discusses housing policy premised on her role as a renter.
In June, Congress followed California’s lead in creating its own Tenant Caucus, but with looser standards. Representative Jimmy Gomez, chairman of the parliamentary delegation similarly Democrat from Los Angelessaid his group targeted members of neighborhoods with high renters, even if they own homes like him, instead of actual renters.
“Good elected officials are going to fight for their voters no matter what,” Gomez said.
He added that the strictest definition of “renter” could obscure financial concerns. For example, his parents were homeowners with combined incomes never exceeding $40,000 and lived in inland California without air conditioning. Some people just rent a $7,000 a month penthouse and own nothing.
“Can they be considered the same?” he said.
When asked how many of his colleagues don’t own a home, Gomez said, “My gut feeling is less than 10.”
In addition to pushing Democratic priorities such as housing subsidies and tenant protection, these lawmakers are also voicing the need for rental advocates at a time when more Americans are renting for the long term, and often for life. It is making a bet that it is politically advantageous to be seen as . Haney and Gomez both describe caucuses, which are groups of lawmakers organized around a common purpose: first for their bodies. It’s easy to believe.
Homeownership is synonymous with american dream. It is underpinned by various federal and state tax breaks and is so embedded in American mythology and the financial system that historians and anthropologists believe it has come to symbolize enduring participation in society. claim. The underlying message is that rentals are or should be temporary.
“There’s a pretty fundamental bias against renters in American sociological and political life,” says Jamila Michener, professor of government and public policy at Cornell University. “So when policymakers say, ‘This is an identity that is relevant, an identity that we are willing to own and commit to,’ that’s what matters.”
About two-thirds of Americans own their own homes, and survey after survey shows that the desire to own a home is still stronger today than in previous generations. However, the number of renters has steadily increased over the past decade, 44 million households While spreading across the country, tight housing costs are migrating from coastal enclaves to other areas. National metropolitan areas.
Perhaps more noticeable to politicians is that renters are getting richer. Households with incomes of $75,000 or more accounted for most of the increase in renters over the past decade, according to the Harvard Center for Shared Housing Research. At the same time, the struggle to find affordable housing is escalating from low-income tenants to middle-income households who, in previous generations, were much more likely to own homes.
In other words, renter households now consist of families who are far more likely to vote. And while homeowners have acquired trillions of dollars in home equity assets, renters have had to be aided by eviction moratoriums and tens of billions of dollars in aid after the pandemic, making their position more vulnerable. It was revealed.
“There seems to be a lot of political momentum around addressing these issues, as costs are coming in unexpected places,” said Whitney Airgood Obliki, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Center for Multi-housing Studies. said.
By organizing around economic conditions, lawmakers are embracing a concept pro-renters call “tenant as class.”
The idea is that renters are a large and politically diverse group, while low-income households at risk of eviction, high-income professionals renting of their own choosing, and living in the suburbs. single-person households, such as couples who want a home but cannot afford the down payment. Home leasing is one of the hottest areas in the real estate business and still has common interests. These include rising housing costs and unstable rental agreements.
“It’s a lens that doesn’t feel like it’s been captured in the same way as race, gender, age, ability, etc.,” said Bryan, a California legislator and member of the Los Angeles-based rental housing group. rice field. . “I am thrilled to be one of the first five members of Congress in California’s history to develop what political awareness is about this position.”
California legislators say one of the points they want to make by forming the Tenant Caucus is that they are among the tenants, even though they don’t have a lot of tenants. It also presented them with the surprisingly difficult question of who is a tenant and who is not.
Does this list include legislators who rent a residence in Sacramento but own a home or condo in their district? This is a qualifying criterion for a significant portion of Congress? decided no. What about Lee, a member of Congress and a member of the Tenant Caucus? Was his district residence his mother’s house and his childhood bedroom his bedroom? He owns no property, certainly not.
Despite having only five representatives, the California Tenant Caucus is as racially diverse as the states it represents, but is dominated by Democrats. no). Members are white, black and Asian.Mr. Lee is a member of parliament LGBTQ caucus.Wahab is the first muslim american Elected to the California Senate.
Politically speaking, the deviant is Tasha Werner of the San Diego suburb of Encinitas, a more conservative member of the caucus (along with the California Democratic Party). Werner, 50, was initially not identified as a renter by his colleagues in the renters’ group, despite being the group’s longest-serving member of parliament.
“I’m a white mother in Encinitas, so nobody called my office,” she said. “They thought, ‘She must be the homeowner.'”
Werner, who voted for a statewide rent cap several years ago, said he frequently disagrees with colleagues about the effectiveness of policies such as rent control. She was also more skeptical of state efforts to deprive cities of land-use control to speed up construction, and voted against a bill that would effectively eliminate single-family parcels in the state.
But Werner is also a lifelong renter who has moved three times since taking office. Her current home is her three-bedroom apartment, which she shares with her two children and her ex-husband. One of the reasons for her is that it is cheaper than her parents living separately.
“Families living in rentals come in all shapes and sizes. What I expect is a little bit of variety,” she said. “Like any caucus, we have our differences, but it’s important to come together and say, ‘These are the people that matter.'”
