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Propositions 33 and 34 are dueling ballot measures over rent control, and then some. Here’s what you should know about Proposition 33. You can also consult our Proposition 34 guide.
With Proposition 33, Californians will vote again on whether to OK the possibility of local expansions of rent control. The measure is essentially another referendum on the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, after similar attempts failed in 2018 and 2020. That 1995 law restricts the reach of local rent control, barring cities and counties from capping rent increases on apartments built after Feb.
1, 1995, as well as on condominiums and single-family homes of any age. It also bans a practice known as vacancy control that bars landlords from raising rents on vacant units up to the market rate and limits those increases. Prop.
33, then, would let cities and counties enact or expand rent control and let them implement vacancy control. It wouldn’t enact any regulations on rents statewide, however — it would just open the door for local governments to do so. Currently, no city in San Diego County has any rent control policies in place, other than those mandated by the state.
Throughout California, landlords are beholden to a 2019 law that caps annual rent increases either at 10 percent or at 5 percent plus the local inflation rate — whichever is lower — for many apartments at least 15 years old. Because the nonprofit behind Prop. 33 keeps trying but failing to get a Costa-Hawkins repeal passed.
Prop. 33 is similar to measures that failed respectively in 2018 and 2020. Despite those losses, another effort to repeal Costa-Hawkins qualified for this November’s ballot.
Like the previous two, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, is behind it. Prop. 33’s biggest backers are the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its affiliated tenant advocacy groups.
They argue rent regulations are essential to fighting the state’s housing and homelessness crisis by keeping Californians in homes they can afford. Meanwhile, perhaps surprisingly, some Republican critics of state housing mandates also support Prop. 33.
That’s because, to them, the measure “gives local governments ironclad protections from the state’s housing policy,” as one Orange County lawmaker put it. Prop. 33 is opposed by the California Apartment Association, which says it would discourage homebuilding and encourage landlords to sell rather than rent their homes.
But it isn’t just landlords and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation at odds over it. Some prominent, pro-housing Democrats — including Sen. Toni Atkins of San Diego — have come out hard against Prop.
33, saying it could dramatically hinder new housing construction. Atkins called it “as deceptive as it is dangerous.” Such critics say the rent-control measure would give wealthy coastal cities that oppose new development a powerful tool to block it: It would let them impose affordability requirements so prohibitively high that they’d ultimately shut out any new development at all.
Rent control will be back on the ballot next year. What could that mean for San Diego?.
