Update: Local rent stabilization will not be on the ballot in Redwood City in November. On July 8, the San Mateo County Elections Office concluded that the petition to place rent stabilization on the Redwood City ballot fell short of the requirements for a ballot initiative.
Nieves Pacheco has lived in the same two-bedroom Redwood City apartment for 22 years, but in the last 12 years, her monthly rent has more than doubled—increasing from $975 to $2,575, she says.
Pacheco, a member of Faith in Action Bay Area, immigrated from Mexico and moved to Redwood City 36 years ago as a single mother with three young children. Redwood City is where she raised her children and established her community. “I don’t think they’re going to get me out of here except with my feet first,” she said of the city she has long called home.
Continued rent increases, however, have put her and many others at risk of being priced out of Redwood City and the Bay Area at large.
“We have been affected in many ways, emotionally, economically, our families or our children have had to leave the city,” Pacheco said in Spanish.
In November, voters in Redwood City may have the chance to vote on capping annual rent increases at 60% of the consumer price index or 5%.
Across the Bay Area, immigrants like Pacheco are part of a larger movement to stay in the cities where they’ve worked, lived and built a community despite the challenges they faced coming to the U.S.
“We came to this country to have a better life, to give a better future, a better future to our families,” Pacheco said. “That has made us warriors, brave enough to go where others haven’t, even if we are immigrants, even if we don’t have documentation.”
In San Mateo County’s Redwood City and the cities of Pittsburg and San Pablo in Contra Costa County, advocates collected signatures for ballot initiatives with the goal of allowing voters to decide on local rent caps and stronger protections for tenants. The ballot initiatives in San Pablo and Pittsburg both called for capping rent at 60% of the consumer price index or 3%, whichever is lower, for certain types of rentals.
In the past decade, most local rent stabilization policies or updates to existing rent caps in the Bay Area have come through city council votes rather than ballot measures. Most recently, Concord’s City Council passed a rent stabilization and just cause ordinance after years of back and forth between tenant advocates, landlords and city officials.
However, in San Pablo, Pittsburg and Redwood City, advocates said they decided to pivot to ballot initiatives after years of attempting to raise the issue with local city councils.
“We’re using the tools that are at our disposal. And those tools at this moment are to rely on our City Council to pass these tenant protections or to rely on the voters to pass them,” Rhea Elina Laughlin, the executive director of Rising Juntos, said in a May 28 interview about the decision to pursue a ballot initiative. “In the face of inaction, we’re now turning to the voters.”
On Wednesday, June 5, Contra Costa County confirmed that not enough valid signatures were collected in either San Pablo or Pittsburg to qualify for the November ballot.
Laughlin told El Tímpano in an email that the organization was surprised by the failed petition and plans to request a review of the signatures.
The San Mateo County Clerk’s Office has yet to say whether or not the rent control measures would make it onto their county ballots and declined to comment for this story.
In the face of inaction, we’re now turning to the voters
Rhea Elina Laughlin, executive director, Rising Juntos
If it is determined that enough valid signatures in Redwood City were collected, voters could decide to implement a rent cap of 60% of the consumer price index annually in April or 5%, whichever is lower, for certain types of rentals. Redwood City would become the second city in San Mateo County to adopt local rent stabilization for multi-family homes if the measure is approved by voters. East Palo Alto passed rent stabilization in 2010.
California does have some limited statewide rent-stabilization policies in place. Under the California Tenant Protection Act of 2019, rent is capped at 5% plus the consumer price index or 10%, whichever is lower, and applies to single-family homes owned by corporations or real estate trusts and all multi-family homes that are more than 15 years old. The law also allows local jurisdictions to enact stricter policies so long as they adhere to the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Act. Under Costa-Hawkins, only multi-family homes built before 1995 are subject to rent control.
However, voters statewide will be able to decide for the third time in November on whether to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act. If the Costa-Hawkins Act is repealed, Redwood City’s ballot initiative states that rentals would only be exempt from the local rent cap for the first 10 years after being built.
Latinos hard-hit by rising rents
Latinos make up a large portion of those affected by high rent increases in both San Pablo and Redwood City, as a majority of Latino households in both cities rent rather than own.
“Our resident-base is primarily Latino immigrants, primarily female, and primarily mothers who understand the importance of fighting for these policies for generational change, so that the struggles that they’re facing day-to-day—to pay their rent and keep food on the table—are not the same struggle that their children face [in the future],” Laughlin said. “Our movement is definitely driven by those most impacted and that includes low-income Latino immigrants and mothers with children.”
As of June 4, the median rent for a two-bedroom is $2,165 in San Pablo, $2,200 in Pittsburg and $3,935 in Redwood City, according to the real estate listing website Zillow.
According to Redwood City’s 2023-2031 Housing Element, 52% of all renter households in Redwood City pay more than 30% of the household income to rent, and Hispanic households make up the highest rate of cost-burdened households in the city, according to 2019 data.
In San Pablo, 57% of renters are cost burdened, according to the 2023-2031 Housing Element’s Needs Assessment. The data show Hispanic households experience the highest rate of overcrowding in the city, and Black and African American households make up the highest rate of extremely low-income households, which are at a higher risk of experiencing housing cost burden.
Trinidad Villagomez, another member of Faith in Action, said after a rent increase of $400 a month in recent years, she took on a second job to make ends meet.
“I was shocked because, I said ‘Where I am going to get $400 to pay that rent increase?’” Villagomez said in Spanish. “’If I leave, where do I go?’ In other places I was going to maybe even pay more.”
Viallgomez immigrated from Mexico and has lived in the same one-bedroom Redwood City apartment for 17 years. She moved in when rent was $875 and now pays $1,700, she said— adding that for several years annual increases were between $50 to $100, but more recently she experienced steeper jumps. Through Faith in Action focus groups, she said she knows she is not alone and feels that many renters are pushed to the limits of what they can afford.
“I am living here for better wellbeing, but where is that better wellbeing? What is the welcome that the city offers to immigrants?” Villagomez said. “Redwood City is a city that welcomes immigrants, or at least it used to be.”
In San Pablo, Rising Juntos member Veronica Martinez became involved in advocating for rent stabilization after her landlord attempted to raise her rent more than her single-income household could afford during the pandemic, she said. For the past several months, she has been helping Rising Juntos collect signatures in San Pablo.
“I feel proud and empowered because I have obtained information from these groups on how to advocate,” Martinez said in Spanish.
Martinez immigrated from Mexico and has lived in San Pablo for 28 years, living in her three-bedroom rental for the last decade. She said when Rising Juntos began collecting signatures, her car was out of commission, so in order to support the ballot initiative she walked door-to-door in her neighborhood, canvassing for signatures wherever she could walk to.
“I want (people) to understand that every human being, documented or undocumented, has rights and a primary right is to raise your voice and fight for what you need, to advocate for what you need because we cannot continue with these rent increases,” Martinez said.
