Local tenants and activists met at Logan Heights Library with City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera to call for more tenant protections on March 25. The town hall coincided with a report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) called “Blackstone comes to collect: How America’s Largest Landlord and Wall Street’s Highest Paid CEO Are Jacking Up Rents and Ramping Up Evictions.”

The Blackstone Group is the largest private equity company in the world, with $975 Billion in assets under management (AUM). Blackstone is by far the nation’s largest landlord, owning and managing over 300,000 units of rental housing in the U.S., and many more around the world. The report shows that Blackstone bought 5,600 units in San Diego County in 2021. As units become vacant, the company raised rents in some units between 43-64% in just two years.

As San Diego becomes increasingly unaffordable, throwing more families into homelessness, Blackstone, the area’s third largest landlord, aggressive rent increases on thousands of units adds to the problem. By jacking up the price of their units, Blackstone is rapidly dwindling the number of naturally affordable housing units in the area, accelerating the housing shortage.

At the conference, members of Blackstone Tenants Union (BTU) shared their experiences and accused Blackstone of delaying maintenance to pressure current tenants to move out so they can raise the rents further. Other issues include not offering repayment plans for late rents.

“My family is not the only one that’s going through this. [I] took it upon myself to go and speak to over 20 tenants. To my surprise, a lot of them are facing the same issues as I am from, harassment to being talked down to, to not having maintenance issues taken care of,” said Viviana Rana, a member of the ACCE Tenant Union.

Evictions result in a serious disruption to many aspects of people’s lives and have an impact beyond those directly affected. Being evicted has been shown to lead to a number of physical and mental health problems, including stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, and even thoughts of suicide.

In particular, children are most affected by evictions. They need a place that is physically and emotionally stable and safe, but eviction may lead them to physical danger, emotional trauma, academic decline and delays.

“I have had my own experiences with evictions and displacement, some of which have been used against me right now by the property owners who are trying to undercut our efforts to strengthen tenant protections in San Diego. We’re not going to let that work. The shame is on them, not on us,” said Sean Elo-Rivera, San Diego City Council President. “We will break them down across the state.”

He concluded that housing is a human right.

The Blackstone Tenants Union have the following demands of the investment company:

1. Limit rent increases at all of its properties to a maximum of 3% per year

2. Work with tenants behind on rent to make affordable payment plans

3. Stop all “no fault” evictions

4. Maintain properties up to code and respond quickly to all health and safety issues

5. Stop using money and political influence to block local, state or national efforts to establish rent control or other basic tenant protections

In addition, they called on elected officials to close “no fault” eviction loopholes, pass a Rent Control and Just Cause ordinance, and publicly support SB 567 – The Homeless Prevention Act.