Extremist rent control efforts not dead—only delayed
Still from Dracula (1931). Image by Wikimedia Commons
The California Legislature will not be tightening the state's rent control law this year—but local rent control advocates like Ash Kalra are still trying to keep the deeply misguided concept around. Reason mag reports.
This past Tuesday {Editors' note: 4/29/2025}, Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D–San Jose) pulled his bill, Assembly Bill 1157, which would have capped statewide rent increases at residential properties to the lesser of 2 percent plus inflation or 5 percent.
Current state law allows rent increases of up to 10 percent. Kalra's bill would have also expanded California's statewide rent control policy to single-family homes and condominiums.
Kalra's bill isn't fully dead. KQED reports it will be considered next year in the latter half of the California Legislature's biennial session.
A.B. 1157 had passed the Assembly's housing committee. It was just a few years ago that California became the second state in the country (after Oregon) to adopt statewide rent controls.
Kalra's bill naturally attracted the opposition of the state's landlords and real estate interests. Some of the YIMBY groups that had supported California's 2019 rent control law came out against Kalra's bill as excessively restrictive.
Despite the rehabilitation of rent control's image {Editors' note: not with us}, it remains as bad an idea as ever.
Read the whole thing here.
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