The election is seven months away, but Los Angeles tenants and their supporters held a rally this week to protest the so-called “California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act” (CPOFPA), which would eliminate all rent control laws. Backed by large apartment and mobile home park owners and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, the initiative appears to be gathering enough signatures to qualify for the June 2008 ballot. Described as “even more secretive and draconian” than the Prop 90 that failed last November, the CPOFPA claims to be about eliminating abuses in eminent domain. But it is really about eliminating rent controls and inclusionary affordable housing laws, and goes beyond protecting homeowners to even preventing public entities from using eminent domain to protect the public health and safety.

With rising tenant mobilizing in heavily populated Los Angeles, it is not surprising that large apartment owners are again seeking a statewide ban on rent controls. But this new effort, unlike those that failed in the past, is being marketed as a way to protect homeowners from eminent domain----a popular position among much of the electorate.

In November 2006, voters rejected Prop 90, which also combined limits on eminent domain with more draconian provisions. Prop 90’s anti rent-control impacts were not explicit; now with large landlords and mobile home park owners funding the initiative, its abolition of rent controls is clear.

Southern California landlord interests are deeply concerned about the dramatic change in the Los Angeles political environment in recent years. A wave of mass tenant evictions for condo conversions and/or demolitions has brought tenant activism in Los Angeles to an historic high, and tenant protection laws are being passed by the City Council that never would have been enacted under former Mayor James Hahn.

The irony, of course, is that San Francisco landlords are making money hand over foot despite strong rent and eviction controls. But Los Angeles landlords are so accustomed to dominating city politics that rising tenant power has them spooked, and eager to dispose of the problem through a statewide solution.

Similarly, San Diego landlords are seeing tenants organize in response to record high rents and the lack of any eviction protections A “just cause” eviction measure nearly passed the City Council, and these landlords figure that investing in a statewide ban is the best longterm strategy for keeping San Diego rent control-free.

Whereas large apartment owners are not the most liberal bunch, as a group they are far more progressive than mobile home park owners. These folks have been fighting mobile-home rent control for years, eventually losing their strongest challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mobile-home parks are often located outside major urban areas, and park owners are particularly resistant to government regulation. Having continually failed to repeal rent control through the local and state ballot measures or the courts, and continually being out-organized by the tenant-based California Mobilehome Resource and Action Association (CMRAA), mobile home park owners have joined with apartment landlords to accomplish their goal under the rubric of reforming eminent domain.

If CPOFPA were slated for the November 2008 ballot, the expected large turnout would ensure its defeat. But opponents fear that June 2008 will be a low-turnout election, since the presidential primary was moved to February and there are no partisan races.

The only candidate races that will drive turnout next June are contested primaries for the State Senate and Assembly. The number of such races, and hence their potential to generate voter turnout, will not be clear until the voters decide in February whether to pass Prop 93, which reforms legislative term limits.

If voters approve Prop 93, then the number of contested legislative races in June will plummet. And generating turnout to defeat CPOFPA becomes more challenging.

Consider the Berkeley-Oakland area. If the voters keep our current term limits law, there will be hotly contested primaries for the Assembly seat currently held by Loni Hancock, and for Don Perata’s State Senate seat. Organized labor can be expected to mount full-fledged GOTV efforts for candidates in both races, and union outreach in Oakland is the most critical factor in generating turnout of low-income minority voters.

But if Hancock and Perata are allowed to stay in office, it will entirely be up to the No on CPOFPA campaign to generate turnout. And while Berkeleyans tend to regularly vote, Oakland voter turnout could be abysmal, particularly among low-income tenants.

So defeating the rent control ban is not a slam-dunk. And it requires the creation of the broad statewide coalition that defeated a straight out abolition of rent control measure in 1980 (Jack Lemmon used his movie star popularity in great television ads against the initiative).

Fortunately, constituencies directly impacted by CPOFPA go well beyond tenants.

For example, the law firm of Nielsen, Merksamer et al, considered the state’s leading legal advocates for landlords, issued a scathing analysis of CPOFPA’s “potentially devastating impacts on local communities.” The firm’s legal opinion concluded that the initiative could prevent the construction of badly needed public water projects, new housing developments, and “even invalidate regulations intended to protect the public’s health, safety and welfare.”

This is not the Sierra Club or Western Center on Law & Poverty saying this---rather, this opinion of the dramatically negative impacts of CPOFPA has been issued by one of the state’s most pro-Republican, pro- property rights firms.

The Nielsen opinion likely means that a broad range of development interests will be opposing CPOFPA. And the suburban homeowners that the pro-CPOFPA forces are counting upon for support may not back a measure that puts future water supplies at risk.

As the Nielsen legal opinion concludes:

"Without a doubt, the CPOFPA is even more deceptive and draconian than Proposition 90. With the exception of the rent control feature, the regulatory prohibitions concerning land use decisions and the prohibition against the use of eminent domain for the acquisition of property for the consumption of natural resources are hidden in the definition of private use. But the impact is nonetheless dramatic."

A San Francisco press conference to highlight the danger of CPOFPA will be held within two weeks, and tenant advocates across the state are already meeting to build a strong opposition campaign. Former Tenderloin Housing Clinic attorney Dean Preston has recently launched a statewide Tenants Together organization, perfectly timed in light of the need to forge unity against the June initiative.

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