As LA renters struggle under the weight of rising housing costs, a new campaign has emerged claiming to stand for equity and affordability. Calling itself “Make LA Affordable,” the campaign paints itself as a grassroots push for housing justice. But a closer look reveals that it is actually a public relations effort by the California Apartment Association, a powerful landlord lobbying group with a long history of opposing tenant protections across the state. The group is using familiar tactics. co-opting the language of fairness and equity to weaken rent control, disguise its true interests, and protect landlord profits at the expense of working-class renters.
The Make LA Affordable website tells a misleading story. It argues that rent control in Los Angeles is failing because it supposedly benefits affluent renters who no longer need help. According to their talking points, tenants making six figures are unfairly occupying rent-stabilized apartments, leaving behind low-income Angelenos who cannot find affordable housing. The site urges city leaders to reject what it calls “extreme rent control” and instead adopt means-tested policies that remove protections from people deemed undeserving. This framing flips the concept of equity on its head. Rather than advocating for stronger protections for vulnerable tenants, Make LA Affordable argues for weakening universal safeguards and turning rent control into a welfare program with gatekeeping.
The campaign avoids any mention of the core driver of rent instability in Los Angeles: the ability of landlords to dramatically raise rents when tenants move out, a practice known as vacancy decontrol. Thanks to the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, landlords can reset the rent to market rate every time a unit turns over. This creates a financial incentive to push tenants out and encourages speculative rent hikes. Landlords know that tenant turnover offers the largest opportunity to raise rents, and they rely on those moments to boost profits. Make LA Affordable deliberately misrepresents the problem as one of low-income tenants being crowded out by the well-off, when in reality the issue is an unregulated market that rewards displacement.
To support its claims, the campaign points to a February 2025 report commissioned by the California Apartment Association and authored by Beacon Economics. Beacon has faced significant controversy over its work, including a public letter signed by more than 100 University of California faculty and graduate students calling for an investigation into its use of the UC Riverside School of Business name on corporate-funded reports. Critics say this arrangement allows Beacon to publish research advancing industry interests without real faculty oversight or the rigorous peer review expected of university research. Economists and faculty have described the relationship as a “toxic arrangement” that undermines academic credibility and serves as a vehicle for corporations to launder their policy goals through the UC brand. In the past, Beacon has produced industry-backed reports opposing wage increases for fast-food and in-home care workers, drawing fire for oversimplified analyses that ignore countervailing evidence.
In its CAA-commissioned report on Los Angeles rent control, Beacon argues that stricter protections would backfire, causing rents to rise faster during turnover and deterring investment in housing. It claims that renters in Los Angeles are doing better than the public realizes, that rent control does not reduce homelessness, and that the financial burdens on landlords are too often ignored. The report attempts to discredit the Economic Roundtable’s analysis supporting rent control, particularly its finding that a $100 rent increase is associated with a 9 percent increase in homelessness. Beacon’s report insists that homelessness is more closely tied to mental health and income loss than to rising rents, despite citing the same GAO study that has been widely accepted by housing researchers and policymakers.
While the landlord lobby floods the media and city offices with studies and scare tactics, real tenant advocates are organizing across Los Angeles to win meaningful protections. The Keep LA Housed coalition is made up of tenants, legal services organizations, labor unions, and community groups fighting for a stronger Rent Stabilization Ordinance that reflects today’s housing realities. Unlike the manufactured outrage of Make LA Affordable, Keep LA Housed has built deep, broad support through a coalition of over 80 organizations. Their proposal is clear, reasonable, and grounded in the lived experiences of renters throughout the city.
The coalition is calling for a set of common-sense updates to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. They are demanding that annual rent increases be tied to 60 percent of the Consumer Price Index and capped at a maximum of 3 percent with no automatic minimum increase. This would replace the current system, which allows for increases up to 8 percent and includes a floor that triggers hikes even when inflation is low. They are also calling for the elimination of add-on rent increases for households with additional occupants or those who pay utility costs as part of their rent. These bumps, currently set at up to 10 percent for each new occupant and one to two percent for utilities, add significantly to housing costs and penalize families who take in aging parents, sick relatives, or children. The coalition also opposes rent banking, a practice that allows landlords to defer rent increases and then impose them all at once in a future year, effectively creating a sudden spike that renters are unprepared for.
The formula that determines allowable rent increases under LARSO has not been updated in nearly four decades. During that time, wages for most Angelenos have stagnated while housing costs have soared. The outdated formula has contributed to widespread housing insecurity, displacement, and overcrowding. According to Keep LA Housed, more than half of all renters in Los Angeles are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. One in ten renters spend more than 90 percent of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. The coalition points to recent studies that show renters now need to earn at least $48 an hour, nearly three times the minimum wage, to afford the average apartment in Los Angeles. These conditions are unsustainable, and rent stabilization is one of the few tools tenants have to hold the line.
Make LA Affordable is working hard to stall these reforms. The group has deployed an email template urging residents to contact their city councilmembers and oppose changes to the rent control formula. The email repeats the campaign’s favorite talking points: that rent control is too broad, that it protects the wrong people, that it discourages investment, and that it reduces tax revenue. Nowhere does it acknowledge the power imbalance between tenants and landlords or the role of speculative real estate investment in driving up costs. Nowhere does it offer any solution to the fact that tenants are facing eviction, skipping meals to make rent, or sleeping in their cars. The campaign is not designed to fix rent control. It is designed to kill it.
The contrast between these two efforts could not be more stark. One side is fighting to keep people in their homes, drawing on the voices of renters, community organizers, legal aid attorneys, and working families. The other is disguising corporate landlord interests in the language of social justice while quietly lobbying to roll back the few protections tenants still have. The city’s own Housing Department has acknowledged that the current rent formula is outdated and inequitable. New rent increases based on that broken formula just went into effect in July. Every month that passes without reform puts more tenants at risk.
City Council must decide whether to listen to real tenants or to a rebranded landlord lobby. The Keep LA Housed coalition has laid out a comprehensive, evidence-based, and compassionate roadmap to stabilize rents and prevent displacement. Their demands are not radical. They are aligned with what other jurisdictions like Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and unincorporated LA County have already implemented. In those cities, caps of 3 percent on rent increases are standard and have not destroyed the housing market. If anything, they have preserved affordability in ways Los Angeles has failed to do.