A campaign mailer excoriating one of Mountain View’s two rent control measures on the Nov. 8 ballot has Measure V backers crying foul. Put out by the California Apartment Association, the mailer appears to say that the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office has found that Measure V “hurts renters and Mountain View.”
A closer read of the mailer shows that the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) report cited dates back to early February, several months before the ballot initiative that would become Measure V was put forward.
“I just want to make clear that we do not take positions on state or local measures,” said Mac Taylor, a legislative analyst with the LAO. “(The report) was written six months ago, before we’d even heard of it.”
The LAO report cited in the mailer is “Perspectives on Helping Low-Income Californians Afford Housing.” Taylor told the Voice that he was familiar with the Mountain View mailer because the LAO has been receiving calls about it.
“The report didn’t focus on rent control; it had one additional paragraph (on) how expensive it would be if you wanted to help low-income households directly through state or local subsidies,” said Taylor. The report addresses why it’s important for the private sector to be involved in building more housing, he said.
A spokesman for the Mountain View Tenants Coalition, which led the campaign to put Measure V on the ballot, offered a point-by-point rebuttal of nine items on the mailer that the group deemed to be misleading or false claims. Those include the assertion that Measure V creates a rent control tax, and that it expands beyond the restrictions on rent control laws imposed by the state’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.
Measure V abides by Costa-Hawkins’ provisions, which exclude units built after 1995 from rent control, and impose a per-unit fee on landlords to fund the program, not a tax, said Daniel DeBolt, the YES on V communication coordinator.
“Voters need to consider the source of this mailer. The California Apartment Association has been waging war against renter protections for decades, and their main weapon is misinformation,” DeBolt said via email. “Voters should expect lots of inaccurate and deceptive mail from apartment owners until Election Day.”
Joshua Howard, the apartment association’s vice president, defended the mailer and said that it printed verbatim the sections of the LAO report relative to rent control.
“What’s clear is that the rent control scheme proposed in Measure V is a failed policy and will do nothing to address the real housing issues facing Mountain View families,” Howard said via email.
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