Written by Melanie Burkholder, candidate for Assembly District 76
The tone deafness of the Democrats in Sacramento is, well…deafening. Many of them, including my opponent, do not have business backgrounds yet seem determined on compelling the good people of California to suffer through poorly written bill after bill signed into law by a governor all too willing to placate special interests, when in fact, his actions continue to hurt the very people he wants to help.
Take the recent passage of AB 1482, the so called, “Tenant Protection Act.” Not one year before, voters utterly rejected a statewide repeal (Prop 10) of the 1995 Costa Hawkins Act by a 62-38 margin, which if passed, would have allowed for statewide rent control to be implemented. So Democrats (including my opponent) decided they were smarter than you the voter and passed AB 1482. The new law limits the amount that rent can be increased on an annual basis, even if rent is far below what market rents currently are. For example, if you are renting a unit for only $1,000/month while fair market supports $1,200, you still could not raise your rent more than five percent plus some lower amount based on the region.
But it gets better! Assembly Member David Chiu (D) from San Francisco (possibly one of the most landlord unfriendly cities in the country) could not even write his bill in a way that is clear, because depending on whether you read the bill or what his intent is, that amount could be different, so a landlord, though trying to meet what the bill’s language, could still be sued for doing the wrong thing because AB 1482 is so full of mistakes! He does not even understand the difference between ‘areas’ and ‘regions’, which cuts to the core of what the law is trying to do.
And while AB 1482 does not affect all residential real estate, it does affect multi-unit properties, duplexes, and even single-family homes owned within an LLC instead of personal ownership. How will this affect tenants? Landlords, now fearing that at some future date their right to affect their rents will be even more restricted, will be very quick to bring their rents up, or raise them as much as they can in anticipation of future restrictions. In fact, some real estate attorneys are already recommending all landlords increase their rents by the maximum allowed by law because Sacramento may just come back some day and change the percentage.
But wait, there’s more! Now Assembly Member Phil Ting (D), also from San Francisco, wants to pass AB 828 which would allow tenants to pay only 75 percent of their required rent for an entire year if they can show some type of financial impact from the current COVID crisis. And while tens of millions of Americans are experiencing severe hardship which is a truly terrible situation for all of us, this merely transfers the impact from one individual to another. Most residential property owners are your neighbors and friends, people just like you, many of them elderly and retired who rely on the residual income they provide and the equity built up in those properties for their retirement.
I am a small business owner. I know what it takes to run a business, and I want to bring intelligence and common sense to the State Assembly. AB 5, AB 1482, AB 828, the list just goes on with a litany of shockingly poorly written legislation, given little critical thought, while our real problems continue to go unanswered. I want to be your Assembly Member because I care about my friends and neighbors more than I care about special interests, and I promise you that I will never look you in the eye and say, “I’m better than you.”
For more information about Melanie Burkholder and her campaign, visit MelanieForAssembly.com.
