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How Corporate Landlord Blackstone Perpetuates the Housing Crisis w/ Jordan Ash of PESP (G&R 411)
00:32:22
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Green and Red Scrappy Politics for Scrappy People, a regular podcast on radical environmental and anti capitalist politics. Brought to you by Bob Bozanko and Scott Parker. Welcome to the silky smooth sounds of the Green and Red podcast. I'm your co host, Scott Parkin in Berkeley, California. Bob is out today, but will be back soon. But joining me today is Jordan Ash, who is the housing director, leads the housing work for the private equity stakeholder project. And we're going to be talking about private equity and housing, and we're going to be talking about Blackstone and housing. Recently, Blackstone has been the news because the CEO of their real estate investment fund was shot in that mass shooting in Manhattan a few weeks ago. So we wanted to sort of talk a little bit about Blackstone, not so much about Wesley lapatner, who was the person who was shot, but Jordan, welcome to the Green and Red podcast.
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B
Thanks. Great to be here.
- [01:13]
A
Yep. And so, you know, doing a little bit of research, a little background sort of prepping for this episode, you know, I saw that private equity firms own about 8,200 apartment buildings, representing about 2.2 million units, which is about 10% of the total number of apartments in the U.S. blackstone, which is the largest private equity firm in the world and is by far the largest owner of apartments in the US own 230,000 apartment units as of report that the private equity stakeholder project put out in April, which is almost 100,000 units more than their next closest competitor maybe. It seems like this is a lot of consolidation that has been going on in the housing market. And we've been hearing more and more about this and it's somewhat tied to the housing crisis, into the homelessness crisis. I'm wondering if we could just start off talking about, you know, how has Blackstone been able to consolidate so much housing, so much real estate?
- [02:13]
B
Yeah, well, and Blackstone has a, you know, within the, within the investment world of housing, a long history and is kind of basically responsible for, for starting a lot of the investments in housing. So after the housing crisis and foreclosure, Cris, Blackstone, which already was a very large private equity company, saw an opportunity and they swept in and starting about 2012, they started buying up single family homes that had been foreclosed on. So we're able to get them at rock bottom prices. I don't know at the time what their plan was, if they saw any, you know, had a plan beyond just that. They saw, you know, an opportunity to buy these homes up cheap, but they Ended up basically renting them out then rather than selling them. So. And kind of created what has gotten a lot of attention in terms of the investors in single family rental, single family home rentals. So we got a lot of attention and in some markets, you know, that, you know, there's companies that own thousands of homes. So Blackstone started a company called Invitation Homes that was the largest for a long time, the largest owner of single family homes. They got out of that business in around 2019, you know, netted several billion dollars from, from their, from the sale of that. They took the company private and then since about 2020, they have, you know, gotten back in the housing business in a big, in a big way. So they've been buying up mobile home parks, they've been buying that. They got back into the single family home business and they've been buying up apartments. They bought a company, American Campus Communities, that was the largest owner of student housing. So now Blackstone is the largest owner of student housing. They bought about 70,000 units of affordable housing properties that had been financed with low income housing tax credits and buying up to department buildings. So they are now, yeah, the largest landlord in the United states owned over 200,000 apartment units and over 300,000 just rental units.
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A
Obviously this country's, this country is in a housing crisis. There's, it's harder and harder for, you know, young people partially because of the income people are making to buy a home, but also because the cost of housing is going up. And then, you know, just a quote, I think some politician, some third party candidate for many years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, the rent is too damn high. And so what is Blackstone doing in this moment? Are they contributing to the raising of the rents and the raising of the cost of housing?
- [04:41]
B
Yeah, absolutely, that's, that's a really good point. So Blackstone and other, you know, large corporate landlords is kind of the term, kind of the catch all term for these investors. Corporate landlords really like to downplay their role in the housing crisis. They really like to point out as if they own, you know, very small numbers and to say they're not contributing to it at all. They'll point out that maybe nationwide they may be only on, you know, like a few percentage points of the, of the overall housing, but when we find, when we look at particular markets, we see serious concentration. So when we looked at private equity ownership of apartments, so there's some places such as Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, where private equity companies own more than a quarter up to a Third of all apartment units in that metropolitan area and Blackstone being the largest, you know, has, has a large concentration in a number of markets also. So we have documented in terms of their rent increases in a number of properties what has happened after they've purchased a property. The, the private equity business model is to, with, with, you know, many areas, you know, including housing, is they identify an asset and they buy it not because it's profitable right now, but because they think that it can be even more profitable. They see an opportunity. So with the, with the rental property, they identify property that they can make more money from. And the way that they do that make it more profitable is by increasing rent, adding fees on to, you know, charging fees for things that tenants didn't used to be charged for, and then reducing expenses by neglecting maintenance and repairs. So they make the property more profitable and then sell it. So their goal is, you know, to turn around and sell properties within three to seven years. So their business model is to increase rents in order to. Not, not necessarily because of the money that they make from the rents. Right, right at the moment, but because it makes it more. The property more profitable in order to sell it. So they are, they are driving up rents. We've kind of documented that that's their business model. One of the things is that there's been a lot of attention owned by another private equity company. But there's a company called RealPage that's owned by a private equity company called Thoma Bravo that has been in the news a lot. There's over 30 class action lawsuits. The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against them. A number of cities, including San Francisco, was the first that passed an ordinance to ban RealPage and other algorithmic software programs. But it basically is collusion done by an algorithm. So landlords are, rather than talking to each other and sharing rent information, they submit their rent information to a central hub. The hub takes that information and then shoots it back out to the landlords and tells them how much they should charge based on that and their goal in that it's very explicit, RealPage is that they have identified that through this program and through this algorithmic software that landlords can charge more rent than they would have otherwise. So when Blackstone is charging increases its rents, not only is it impacting those tenants immediately that are renting from them, but because of this, this Real Page collusion, it's actually then influencing other landlords.
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A
And that's where, that's where landlord, even if it's like a small landlord, like you know, a person who owns their own apartment building basically is like, oh, we're just charging market rate, which is like, what is coming up through this. Through this platform.
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B
Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah.
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A
So, you know, I, I listened to an interview. There's an author named Brian Goldstone. Brian Goldstone, who has a new book out called no Place for Us, which is about homelessness. And he actually was talking about Blackstone, and he was actually talking about how Blackstone has been buying up extended stay hotels.
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B
Oh, okay.
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A
And so when people are getting evicted from Blackstone properties, they're having to move with their families into these extended stay hotels, which is, as he describes in the book, is like basically like a prison cell. It's like they, once they're in, it's very hard for them to get out, especially if they're like below the poverty line and have kids and things like that. And, you know, Blackstone, it's. It's like horizontal integration in a way. And they're just basically continuing to profit off of people who are in precarious situations as far as housing goes.
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B
Yeah. I mean, it's a tragedy and it's a real crisis in terms of what's happening and how little is being done to stop it. I think all across the country, people recognize, they acknowledge, there's an affordable housing crisis, and yet there have been very few solutions in order to address it. Meanwhile, we see every day kind of, you know, various forms of affordable housing, you know, kind of disappearing. So, for instance, with manufactured home parks are one of the last. One of the last places of affordable housing. And we've been seeing in the last few years very similar thing where Blackstone, other private equity companies have been buying them up, you know, increasing the rents a lot, evicting long term tenants who have nowhere else to go.
- [09:47]
A
Just to kind of pick on a. Pick a couple things out of what you were saying before. One, you were talking about Charlotte and Atlanta being places where there's a lot of properties, like I think you said, 25%. But it seems like a lot of the consolidation with private equity, particularly Blackstone, is happening in Sunbelt states. Yes. Is there, is there a reason for that?
- [10:08]
B
Yeah. Yep. So there's two. There. I mean, there's two. There's two reasons that we believe. So, yes, in the, in the single family home rentals market, there's a real kind of concentration in the Sunbelt states. You know, Atlanta has over 70,000 single family rental homes owned by corporate landlords. And then we've documented it now in terms with apartments also, there's two reasons. So one is there is, you know, large population growth. There continues to be so, which increases the demand for housing and more people needing, you know, places to live and the supply can't keep up with it. The other is that they have very weak, you know, tenant protections that, you know, the landlords are able to, to get away with a lot in terms of, in terms of both, in terms of increasing rents, in terms of conditions such as eviction and the, the timeline and protections that tenants have. So it's, it's really, the conditions are very favorable to landlords.
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A
And, and does that apply to California as well? I mean, like here in the Bay Area, we have very strong rent control. Like, I lived in San Francisco for 12 years and yes, my rent was pretty stable the entire time I lived in the place I lived. But I know that, like, for example, you talked about some of the student housing. I know that Blackstone has made a deal with the University of California for student housing. And so does that apply to other parts of California?
- [11:29]
B
You know, I think in California, yeah, it's kind of. There's, there is, I know, a large concentration. There's a large number of single family homes that are owned by private investors. I think there, it's just because they can make a lot of money from it because of the demand. I mean, they're also very clear on looking for places where, yeah, just kind of where there's not going to be new housing built to meet the demand because of, because the conditions.
- [11:52]
A
And in the report, you actually talk, you actually tell a number of compelling stories. You, you know, have referenced to, like, anecdotal stories about tenants being evicted, abused, exploited by these corporate landlords. Could you actually share a little bit of that, some of those, some of those anecdotes? Sure. Is there any that y' all put into the report that really sort of stand out to you?
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B
Yeah, I mean, so one thing is that we have done a lot of work with. There's a community organization in California called ACE Alliance.
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A
We've had ACE people on the show.
- [12:26]
B
Okay, fantastic. So, yeah, yeah, really, really great group. Works on many issues. One of them is being in terms of tenant organizing. We've worked with them closely in the San Diego chapter. Blackstone 2021, I believe it was, purchased a portfolio of about 60 homes that had about 6,000 units in the San Diego metro area. That had been what was called naturally occurring affordable housing, meaning it was cheap housing. There weren't any subsidies for it. There weren't Any requirements for it to be cheap. It just was housing where poor people lived, which is increasingly disappearing and existing less and less. When Blackstone purchased it, community leaders, politicians, one of their first, you know, concerns that they raised was about this issue that, you know, this is. These are some of the last apartments that are affordable to families. You know, San Diego is, you know, one of the least. One of the most expensive areas in the. In the country. And, you know, Blackstone, we've documented in terms of. In terms of the rent increases in those apartments, you know, in some units, you know, up to 100% or so much more than the metro area, so much more than other increases. One of the things is that, you know, because of what we were talking about, tenant protections in California, that there is, you know, there are rent caps so that Blackstone is prohibited from, for an existing tenant, increasing, you know, rent more than 10% a year, which is still very high. But if they can evict that tenant and move somebody else in, then there's no limit how much they can increase the rent. So it kind of creates a financial incentive for Blackstone to evict tenants. And one of the things that we have seen is just being very aggressive. So in these San Diego apartments, just that if a tenant has been, like, one month behind Blackstone being very quick to evict them, even if the tenant has said that, they can get caught up, you know, Blackstone kind of using it as an opportunity and being very aggressive to get that tenant out.
- [14:30]
A
When they are doing this, you know, what they've already. They've already been doing. You know, I read about hidden fees. I've read about rent increases. I've read about, you know, shoddy maintenance or not responding to maintenance. And. And so it seems like it's a little bit of a war of attrition on a tenant, but then they kind of come in with this sort of like, okay, you're evicted, because you did not. You didn't. You know, you haven't paid your rent on time or you haven't paid these fees on time.
- [14:55]
B
Yeah, and this is something that we have seen that when a. When a landlord, you know, kind of a corporate landlord buys a property that, you know, and they may want to increase the rents and there may be various, you know, various obstacles to doing that, one being the current 10, and any kind of, you know, existing laws or the tenants is not being able to afford it. The kind of. To. To be able to afford, like, the rent that the. The landlord wants to. Wants, wants to. To be able to charge. So we've seen, yeah, just kind of being very aggressive about, you know, getting tenants out, either, you know, forcing them out or also just kind of basically having the tenants kind of remove themselves by realizing that, you know, they're not going to be able to, for instance, when the lease is up, the landlord says how much the new rent is, the tenants realizing that they're not gonna be able to afford it and then, you know, and then moving out themselves.
- [15:46]
A
You are listening to the silky smooth sounds of the Green and Red podcast. Please check us out on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. And if you're listening to us on your favorite audio platform, please give us a rate and review. It helps us with, with the algorithms. And if you really like what you're hearing, please go to our patreon patreon.com greenred podcast and become a patron or make a one time donation by going to our website@greenandredpodcast.org and hitting that support button. You know, Steve Schwarzman is actually the CEO of the Blackstone billionaire Steve Schwarzman. He's a big Trump supporter. He was the chairman of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about Steve Schwarzman. He's like, you know, as far as CEOs go, probably most Americans don't know who he is. But if you follow these things, he's in your list. He's in the group of lists that you have about bad actors, bad characters in our society.
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B
Absolutely. For all the reasons that you just said.
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A
Yes.
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B
He's multi billionaire, one of the highest paid, if not the highest paid CEO. Shockingly large amounts, you know, it's kind of hard. You know, a lot of CEOs are paid 10 million, $20 million a year, which is a lot. I think it's, you know, I don't have the exact numbers, but comes out to an obscene amount, such as like $20,000 an hour, if you were to calculate it or something crazy where, you know, they work a couple hours or work one day and they make more than, you know, most of us make in an entire year. But Schwarzman has made even more than that. Hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of compensation. The way it's structured, I think it approached a billion dollars one of the recent years. And it really is, you know, horrible to kind of, to see the various ways that he's kind of making that money. So, you know, I focus mostly on housing, you can see it in terms of problems with, with how much they're charging, how they're treating tenants black. A portfolio company that Blackstone old owned called Packer Sanitation Service a few years ago, you know, was in the news a lot because of child labor. You know, so of, you know, of actually having Packer Sanitation cleans the machines and slaughterhouses. So very, very dangerous job. And they were violating, you know, child labor laws having children, you know, clean these machines. And this is, these are just the ways, you know, these are just a couple examples of, you know, kind of the ways that Blackstone makes the money in order for Schwarzman. And then another number of the other executives are billionaires. Also.
- [18:21]
A
I actually read a story from maybe like five or six years ago from the Intercept about where they were buying up agribusiness in Brazil and deforesting the Brazilian rainforest. My other question on Blackstone, which is, you know, kind of preparing for this episode, is that actually Chuck Schumer's son in law also works for Blackstone.
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B
Ah.
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A
And I know that and I'm just, it kind of speaks to the sort of like corruption in our political system that we have the Trump supporter as CEO, but then also he's hiring the son in law of the leader of the Senate. The Democrats in the Senate.
- [19:00]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and just, you know, just last week I think we kind of saw how one of the ways that this plays out is Trump's executive order to kind of to make it available for individuals 401ks to be able to invest in private equity. The laws have been for a while where it's been acknowledged that private equity is a risky investment. And it's not something that just anybody should be able to, should, should be, should invest in because of the dangers and risks of losing their money. So right now, because of 401ks kind of wanting to protect people that most of private equity investments are limited to what are called accredited investors. So having, you know, you know, at least, you know, several million dollars in assets or mostly it's institutional investors such as pension funds are one of the largest and other, you know, insurance companies, but individuals most of, you know, most of us cannot even if we wanted to, to invest in a private equity fund. This will be, you know, changed soon. And this is, you know, a huge benefit to the private equity companies who are already, as we've talked about, you know, the executives are already billionaires. They're already raking the money. This will just be, you know, contribute to that more.
- [20:11]
A
You know, we interviewed Yanis Varoufoukas last year, who is the former Greek finance manager. And he's actually put out a book about private equity. He's put a book out about the economic system, but basically makes the argument that private equity is at the top of it because especially since the finite, the 2008 financial crisis, they've just been buying up so much, and they bought. They've bought up everything from housing, like what we're talking about, to, you know, agribusiness in the rainforest, to a lot of. Have a lot of investment in, like, tech and they own the cloud, which is like something that we all live our lives by. But I mean, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that, like, private, as far as, like, corporate power goes. I mean, private equity is sort of at the top, above Wall street, above the fossil fuel sector. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah, big question. Yes.
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B
Yeah, yeah, it's a very big question.
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A
Yeah.
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B
There are a number of reasons also for kind of, you know, some of the differences. I mean, not that, you know, a company like Wells Fargo is, you know, doing anything good. You know, obviously there's hard, you know, lots of things in ways that they've kind of broken the law. They are under more scrutiny at least, so it's actually easier to catch them maybe in terms of some of the violations, because they're a publicly traded company. So, you know, where, you know, you and I can buy stock, and I can buy one share of stock in Wells Fargo for, I don't know what the price is right now, $70, $100, whatever. But because they are publicly traded, there also are more requirements for them in terms of disclosures, in terms of reports to both shareholders, in terms of the government, more of their transactions are public. We're able to see a lot more in terms of finances, of, you know, how a company is doing and, you know, profits. And with private equity, it's all just kind of, you know, done, you know, behind in the dark. We don't have that information. We kind of don't know what they're doing. It's really hard to even know kind of what they own. So, you know, one of the things, they're buying a lots of things and they're not required to necessarily disclose it. So, you know, our, our count of housing is definitely an undercount because of some of this. So they're able to kind of get away with a lot more than if they were, you know, than if they were publicly traded. And there were certain requirements. So the kind of the natural instinct among these large corporations to. Not the natural, but the kind of the basis of them to make money, it's kind of unfettered in terms of private equity, kind of able to run wild.
- [22:43]
A
It's particularly disturbing that companies like BlackRock and Blackstone and Vanguard who control so much capital and have so much financial power in our system, essentially, there's no transparency there at all. Except for you maybe get lucky with discovery in a court proceeding or a whistleblower.
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B
Yes, exactly. Yep.
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A
Very important. So my next question is, you know, where. Where is the pushback coming from to these private equity robber barons? Like some of that's listed in your report. But if you could just talk about that.
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B
Yeah. And you know, specifically in terms. In terms of housing, I'd say in terms of, you know, there is a very robust tenant union movement right now that, you know, starting kind of spurred on by the pandemic, I think, where that, you know, we've kind of. We are seeing tenant organizing that we haven't seen in a. In a very long time. On, you know, on a very local level to. On a national level, there's some, you know, organizations. We were close closely with a group called the Tenant Union Federation, which is kind of a national federation of tenant unions and taking a very, you know, aggressive approach to. To organizing, you know, and there's also a really strong movement in terms of policies, particularly in terms of. On the local level for, you know, lots of places wanting to have rent control and to be like California and have. Have tenant protections. So there's really kind of a move. A move for. That. There's a very strong move for. For. And this, you know, it's not just private equity, you know, companies that are affected by this, you know, all types of landlords. But. But, you know, it does. It is important for, you know, to kind of rein in corporate landlords and private equity landlords, you know, tenant protections such as just cause evictions, so that, you know, can. They can't just evict somebody if they want to. Right. To counsel because of. In housing court right now, there's just such an imbalance where people don't have any lawyers if they're being taken to court or being evicted and often don't show up. So, yeah, there's a real movement in the country to organize tenants and to improve policies. So I think it's been succeeding mostly at the local level, but it's been. People are still working also on the state level and the federal Level.
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A
Right. And where are we seeing the strongest versions of that, that tenant rights, tenants rights movement? Is it in some of these Sunbelt states?
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B
I wouldn't say that, no. I mean, you know, I know New York State and I, you know, apologize. This is, this is not my area of specialty, but New York State has really fantastic, really very strong coalition partly, you know, kind of resulting same people that, you know, a lot of the same people who were backing in terms of, in the New York City's mayor race and kind of, you know, pushing for tenants rights there. So that's one of his main issues.
- [25:33]
A
That's one of his mom Donnie's main issues, so.
- [25:35]
B
Yes, exactly. Yes. So people have been working for a long time in New York State to build kind of a state coalition. It's not the only place that's the one that kind of that comes to mind.
- [25:50]
A
Right. In the report you talked about lawsuits by the Department of Justice, which I'm sure current Department of Justice is not suing private equity, but also state attorney generals as well.
- [26:01]
B
So particularly in terms of. Yeah. With this company, Real Page, in terms of collusion for price fixing and the rents. Interesting. So this is. That lawsuit is continuing under this Department of Justice. So this, you know, interesting. Against RealPage. Yes. They have had the opportunity to, to not continue it. We've seen with, for instance, with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau where they have, you know, given up on a lot of cases, reversed their, you know, kind of let a lot of companies off the hook, reversed cases that they had already, you know, been kind of where they had already gone after companies. But in the Department of justice's lawsuit against RealPage, they are continuing that. They have, you know, been responding to RealPage's motions to dismiss had been added. So, yeah, so it's against RealPage. And then there are six. Six of the largest landlords in the country were. Have also been named as defendants in that lawsuit, including Blackstone. And yes, it's the Department of Justice. There were eight state attorneys general who also had signed on to that, including their two Republican attorney generals. So the attorney general in Tennessee and Kentucky both sued as part of this. And then I think Kentucky was separate sued RealPage for this. A number of state attorneys general have kind of brought their own lawsuits, such as in Arizona against Real Page. So, yeah, and I think, you know, it's realpage is not responsible, solely responsible for the housing crisis. It's kind of one thing that's contributing to it. But I think it really shows that a number of people kind of Want to do something about it. And this was something they could do. So identified, you know, kind of one of the most egregious things that was contributing to the increase in rents and have been prosecuting it.
- [27:48]
A
And do you just. My final question is that all this inequality, undermining democratic processes, transparency, things like that, where do you see that going at this point as far as this inequality around? I mean, there's many places where inequality is currently playing out in our world. But you work on housing, so how do you see landlords getting richer, people getting out put on the street or to extended stay hotels? How do you see that affecting what's happening with the sort of processes which try to regulate that or, you know, provide people with better opportunity?
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, there's a number of kind of different parts to it or aspects to it. I mean, one thing I'd say particularly in terms of when we talk about inequality is having to do with single family homes. So that has, you know, really unfortunately, you know, the way that our system is set up is that housing is the main way for families to gain wealth. So for most people that's, you know, that's kind of the wealth that they have and you know, maybe different if it weren't, if it weren't that way, but that's the way it is. So because of the, the, the increase right now in corporate landlords buying up single family homes that the homes that they're buying are basically ones that would be called considered starter homes. So kind of the homes that would be most available to folks who are buying their first home and they're tending to buy it in not necessarily kind of the inner city, but maybe first ring suburbs or kind of districts just kind of just outside the city, but still large areas where there are, particularly in terms of African American families looking to buy a house, other families of color. So they are basically kind of preventing families from being able to not just be able to kind of have benefits of homeownership and stability, but actually being able to build wealth. There's a huge racial wealth gap in the country. The homeownership gap is one of the things that contributes to that. This really furthers that even more.
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A
Excellent. Well, I'm going to leave it there. I do actually have one other question is that if people want to know more about private equity and how to fight private equity, tell us a little bit about the private equity stakeholder project. Where can we find out more?
- [30:08]
B
Yeah, so our website is, I think it's Pestakeholder.org so PE as in private equity. So we are a non profit watchdog organization that works to kind of bring transparency and accountability to the private equity industry, particularly in terms of the way that it impacts communities, workers, the planet. We focus in terms of on five issue areas looking at the impact of private equity, so climate, health care, labor, housing and then we also do some work around mass incarceration. Yeah. And I, you know, focus, focus mostly on the housing part.
- [30:49]
A
Excellent folks. We've been talking with Jordan Ash, who is leads the housing work for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Jordan is a longtime movement person, has worked with labor, has worked with community organizations like ACORN and is obviously has written this great report which you should check out on the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. If you want to know more about this, if you like what you're hearing, please check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Blue Sky. If you're watching this on YouTube, give us a subscribe. If you're listening to this on audio platform give us a rate and review. And then if you really like us go to greenandredpodcast.org and hit the support button or become a patron@patreon.com backslash green red podcast. Jordan, it's been great talking to you. I'm really excited we got, we got to do this. And folks, just so you know, this is a series that we're hoping to do on Blackstone and potentially other private equity. So stay tuned for for future episodes. But until then, everybody make trouble and misbehave. We'll talk again soon. Sam.