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Newsom signs bills to boost housing, provide more hotel shelter beds
VOL. 10, 8,
NO. 186
Feds, state AGs claim tech firm enabled landlords to artificially raise rents
By Staff
By Joe Taglieri joet@beaconmedianews.com
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Gov. Gavin Newsom chats with a man experiencing homelessness, both seated, as officials observe in Fresno in 2022. | Photo courtesy of California Governor/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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ov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed two bills to address homelessness that aim to help local governments add more shelter beds and facilitate the swifter construction of housing units. Assembly Bill 2835 elim-
inates the sunset date on tenancy rules that make it easier for service providers to place people experiencing homelessness into privately owned hotels and motels for more than 30 days. This approach has been proven to enhance stability for
those in need. AB 3057 aims to streamline and "jumpstart" local governments' procedures for issuing building permits for "junior accessory dwelling units," or JADUs, in an effort
to create more affordable rental units statewide. An example of a junior accessory dwelling unit is the conversion of a singlefamily home's garage into a living space.
See Housing Page 31
Riverside County supervisors defend animal services agency, call on cities to make changes By City News Service
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iverside County supervisors Tuesday signaled that municipalities which contract with the Department of Animal Services need to start finding solutions to their stray pet overpopulation problems instead of always leaning on the county, causing it to suffer
adverse publicity, especially on euthanasia rates. "It's time to tell contract cities, 'You need to go on your own and build your own shelters,'" Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said. "We're going to have to do something different. We cannot continue to be your punching bag. Because your city has
hundreds, if not thousands, of animals being turned into our (four) county shelters, nationally and internationally, we receive the criticism." Jeffries vented his frustrations during an otherwise routine series of contract See Animal services Page 15
rate adjustments for the cities of Desert Hot Springs, Hemet and Palm Desert. The adjustments were required under the 2024-25 fiscal year budget to contend with unforeseen higher operational costs impacting the Department of Animal
he U.S. Department of Justice and eight state attorneys general, including California AG Rob Bonta, sued a technology company Friday for allegedly creating software that enables landlords to artificially raise rents — especially in Southern California. Landlords use RealPage Inc.'s revenue management software to price multifamily rental units. The federal lawsuit filed in the Middle District of North Carolina alleges RealPage enabled landlords to artificially raise rents by taking part in a pricing alignment scheme that raised rent revenue across the board, according to Bonta's office. The scheme allegedly was fueled by the illegal sharing of confidential pricing and supply information that affected residents of multifamily buildings in Orange County, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Temecula, Murrieta, San Diego, Carlsbad and other parts of California. The lawsuit contends that Richardson, Texasbased RealPage harmed consumers by decreasing competition, limiting price negotiation and increasing prices in the rental housing industry, according to Bonta's office. “Anticompetitive agreements are illegal, whether See Rent Page 32
done by a human or software program," Bonta said in a statement. "RealPage misused private and sensitive consumer data to take the competition out of the rental industry, leaving renters no other choice but to pay the intentionally high prices that landlords agreed to set. This means that even if rental home supply was high, rent prices stayed the same, and in some cases, rents went up. This conduct is unacceptable and illegal, and given California’s current housing shortage and affordability crisis, it is causing real harm. Every day, millions of Californians worry about keeping a roof over their head and RealPage has directly made it more difficult to do so.” According to Bonta's office, RealPage's subscription-based software generates rent increases via algorithmic models intended to grow landlords’ revenue. "It does so by amassing competitively sensitive data from competing landlords through its pricing algorithms and sharing this data among subscribers," according to Bonta's office. "Landlords understand that their nonpublic data will be used to recommend prices not just for their own units, but also for competitors who use the programs. Landlords agree to provide this information because they understand they will benefit from the