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Lauren E. M. Everett, "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing" (Temple UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to this podcast on the New Books Network, I bet you like to read. I know that I do. That's why I founded the New Books Network. So as readers, we need to know what to read. And I have a podcast to recommend for you. That being the Proofread podcast, do you have a goal to read more this year? How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The Proofread Podcast is here to help you. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They have 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. They offer a brief synopsis, there's fun and witty commentary, and there are no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. Life's too short to read a bad book, so subscribe to the Proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming soon.
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Dr. Lauren Everett
So good, so good, so good.
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Marshall Po
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Lauren Everett about her book titled Fortunate People in a Fortunate at Home in Santa Monica's Rent Controlled Housing, published by Temple University Press in 2025. This book title is actually very convenient for me because it explains very nicely exactly what we're going to be looking at which is we're going to San Monica, California, but maybe not to the most shiny famous places on the TV screens. Or maybe it is what we're talking about. That's kind of part of the point, right? Who gets to decide who gets to live in this place? What are the conditions like in that housing? What's it like to have to be thinking about these kinds of questions of housing and precarity? So this is a book that talks about law, about politics, about real people's experiences, and how all of those things are intertwined. So plenty to discuss. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Lauren Everett
Thank you so much for having me. And that was such a wonderful setup for the book. I love that.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, let's continue the theme of setup for the book. Could you start off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write a book about rent control and tenants?
- [03:16]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, of course. So obviously my name is Lauren Everett, so I'm originally from Venice and Santa Monica. Those are neighboring communities. Santa Monica is a separate city, whereas Venice is part of the city of Los Angeles. So I have my own, obviously, experiences growing up there. My dad lived in a rent control department in Santa Monica for about 35, 40 years. So this is, of course, a very personal topic to me. And then I was a renter for decades, obviously, as an adult. And then I also was a tenant advocate and tenant organizer here in Portland, Oregon, where I live now. So with the combination of all the things that I've learned from tenants and that I've experienced myself and through my family, I know that not only is rent control an incredibly valuable policy, but that we really need it everywhere in this country. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation about rent control. Something that I often see is just a very blanket argument like rent control doesn't work, and it's just Econ 101 and these sort of like self evident kind of arguments that we don't even need to discuss it because everyone knows. But as someone who does know that it does work, I really wanted to present a counterpoint to this from a perspective of academia, because that is of course, what carries a lot of currency in our culture. So I decided to. I had already had a Master's in Urban Studies and I decided to continue and get a PhD in the same program and do this specific research because again, as a tenant and tenant organizer, I know that it's really valuable to provide this perspective. So in a nutshell, that's why I decided to write this Book that is.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
A very useful foundation and definitely sort of to some extent what I kind of expected you to say as an answer to that question. When before I had read the book, you know, having read the blurb, having read a bit about you, I was kind of like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Go ahead now and open the book. And then I was surprised because you start off the investigation of kind of all of the thinking and policy that goes into these kinds of debates, as you said, that we're still having now about housing in the United States by going back to England in the 1600s. So why there as a starting point?
- [05:35]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah. So in my studies, I got really into learning about kind of property law, property theory, the history of property law. It's something that I don't remember ever really learning about in high school or junior high school or even really discussing with anyone. The importance of private property is just such a given in the United States. It's so deeply embedded that people don't even talk about it really. So when I first learned about the Enclosure act, which began in the 1600s in the UK and Ireland and I think likely other parts of, of Western Europe and lasted for about 400 years, I was extremely fascinated because they have a direct relationship with settlement of what is now the United States. So a lot of listeners might know what they are, especially in the uk, but again, we didn't learn about them. So what happened was land was used in a much more complex common system. I wouldn't say similar to, but more similar to how indigenous people in the United States maybe used land or used land. So there were all kinds of different rights, shared pasture, people could forage for pea and berries and mushrooms and, you know, whatever they needed to survive. But they could also be basically small proprietors of their own agricultural enterprises. And then when the landowners decided that they could actually monetize the land by enclosing it and using new agricultural, like mass agricultural practices, that started happening. And then these people who had been their peasants, AKA tenants, which is a through line, you know, had their entire way of life changed. So they became. They could either do wage labor on the farms, or they could move to the new cities that were forming and do wage labor there in factories and other settings. Or they could get on a ship if they had the fare, or they could be an indentured servant and get the fare and go to this new place where there is supposedly unlimited land. Of course, people own that land already, but, you know, unlimited free land. So the premise of having land and land as Freedom is so embedded in our ideology here in the United States, it's just really synonymous with, like, full citizenship, our kind of rugged individualism that's at the core of our national character. And so that's why I begin it there, because it's really important to understand the relationship that those events has to the settlement of this country and how that's progressed over time.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Got it well explained that way. It definitely does have a pretty clear through line. And to bring it up to kind of more modern ways of thinking, at least, can you tell us more about what homeowner ideology is in the US and how this relates to renters?
- [08:23]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so in my research, I found that this. This idea of. Of kind of, like free land, of homesteading, all these things kind of over. Over time. In the United States, you know, we had the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, which is like a. A small farmer. So that eventually became. Became kind of transposed to the single family home, which was kind of like a little, tiny mini homestead, except the difference was that it was separated from the workplace. So obviously, with a farm, you're living where you're working, or if you have a workshop, if you're a blacksmith or something like that, you're living where you're working, but in this new form. Someone has their own little castle, but they're going somewhere else to work. But so the way that it was marketed kind of at the beginning of the 20th century, like in the 20s and 30s, these homes where, you know, you go to work, you come home, you're the master of your own domain, so very much pulling that ideology and that imagery of the homestead and the yeoman farmer through. So as any American knows, owning your own home, you know, in 2025 and for a long time, is part of the American dream. It's a cornerstone of the American dream. So that means that ownership is prioritized in government policy. Not only in government policy, but also culturally, socially, in so many different ways. And renting, then kind of by default is positioned as this sort of, like, undesirable, maybe almost even, like, deviant type of tenure where if, you know, everyone's supposed to want to own a home. So if you don't want to own a home, that's very strange. And if you can't, well, maybe you didn't work hard enough. Right. So that. That also, like, feeds into the bootstrap mythology. And so basically, this even goes back even further to when there were tenant farmers and farmers that own land. And two classes emerged which kind of landed and unlanded people. And so that has carried through. Even back in the colonial era, tenants were not allowed to vote. So tenants had nothing to do with the Constitution being written or ratified. Which is a really important point because it really shows that this class bifurcation associated with property ownership goes back a very long time. Today we have different expenditures related to housing that are extremely different depending on tenure. So for homeowners, we have the mortgage interest deduction, and that's an entitlement, which means that anyone who's eligible for it, who owns a home can take it in their taxes. And it's a very expensive expenditure versus, by comparison, there's nothing like that for renters. And the funding for public housing is an appropriation, which means that Congress has to approve it. And it's limited. So I think I want to say like one in three or one in four people who need Section 8 housing vouchers for public housing actually have them. So there isn't nearly enough for everyone. But meanwhile, it's basically a blank check for homeowners. So that's just one example of how policy really privileges homeowners. And I could go on and on about this, but those are just a few points.
- [11:38]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
No, I think that gives us enough of a sense. And I'm sure other things will come up as we turn to Santa Monica specifically. And I want to do this at a precise moment in Santa Monica's history. 1979. What happens at this point?
- [11:52]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so Santa Monica, where I was born, was settled or not settled, but it was platted as a resort town. So it was originally a Spanish land grant, you know, owned. There was like a few pieces of land owned by a few people, individuals. It was purchased by some white guys and they platted it out and, you know, sold the lots. Southern California was not settled for trade like most places in the United States. It was settled. It was for real estate, basically. Real estate was the product. So it's a beautiful place if you've never been there. So it was a resort town then. It was a major defense industry production center during World War II. And it grew a lot in that time. A lot of rental housing was built. And then it was just sort of like a sleepy beach town, just sort of normal Southern California town, nothing exciting. But in the 70s, some young folks started moving in. There was energy from, you know, the anti war movement and other community organizing that had taken place during the 60s, early 70s. And meanwhile you had a pretty traditional city council really focused on business and kind of what's called the Growth machine ethos, right? Like just economic progress, prosperity, and just very kind of traditional. I mean, in a California context. But meanwhile, all across the state, housing was becoming more and more expensive. And of course there was just national inflation at that time. Construction was slowing down, I presume for similar reasons that it is now because materials are probably becoming more expensive than labor. So we had a population increase combined with construction slowing down, which equals landlords seeing the opportunity to raise rents. And I'm framing it like that because often people say rents, rents were rising. Well, landlords raise rents, just to be clear. So meanwhile, the movement was growing statewide for rent control. New York City already had rent control. I believe New Jersey might have. I don't know as much about New Jersey, but New York is the stronghold of rent control in the United States and has had rent control in some form since World War II. And people didn't think that California was really going to be an environment for rent control because it wasn't political so much like the East Coast. But things were, things were starting to pick up steam. So the real estate investment industry kind of read the room and tried to pass a law at the state level to preempt local rent control ordinances. This is a very common law. Almost every state in the United States has this law, including Oregon, where I live. But government, government, Governor Jerry Brown actually vetoed that law. So he kind of really saved the day. So meanwhile, local campaigns were picking up to pass local ordinances. And just a note on that, like, generally local ordinances are going to be better because they're more specifically tailored to what that community needs and the conditions there versus when at the state level. It's good to have a state level just as like a catch all, but then local can really fine tune it. So in Santa Monica, rents were also spiking. Again, the city government was relatively conservative. There was no interest in rent control. But it really started with a group of seniors led by someone named Sid Rose. And they started having meetings talking about rent control. Then some of these younger activists who had been moving to Santa Monica got involved and they managed to put a measure on the ballot in 1978, and it just narrowly lost. So the next year they kind of leveled up. They formed a coalition called Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, which still exists. And I think critically, they partnered with Tom Hayden's Coalition for Economic Democracy. John Jane Fonda was also really involved in that. So that first of all got them probably a lot of attention compared to some of the other campaigns, but also resources. I Think they had some really early, like, computer database access. And so my mom was actually really involved in this campaign. She was the volunteer coordinator and my dad was also. He helped out. And he definitely has stories about going out in like, the middle of the night and putting door hangers on everyone's doors. So they had a really energized, you know, vibrant group of people who were, like, really committed to making this happen. So they spent hundreds of hours on the ground. They put the measure on the ballot again. So this is a city charter amendment. And they won. They won by about the same margin that they lost the previous year. And so this was a huge kind of revolution. I actually have a clipping my mom saved from the New York Times. So this is national news. You know, it wasn't just some kind of minor local thing. They really, like, flipped the script in Santa Monica and they also won two city council seats. And Santa Monica's basically never been the same since. Since that happened, they continued to just keep winning.
- [16:51]
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Dr. Lauren Everett
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Marshall Po
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Dr. Lauren Everett
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- [18:05]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And for delivery, that is a massive effort indeed. Thank you for telling us a bit about it. And I'm curious especially about the element you mentioned of kind of New York being a key part of it and the perception of like, oh, well, California isn't kind of a good place for this. But clearly it was in this case, as you said, it made national news. So was this part of a wider movement of rent control or was this really kind of out of nowhere?
- [18:31]
Dr. Lauren Everett
I mean, it was definitely a wider movement in California. Also in Massachusetts There was rent control in Cambridge, which was later overturned, actually. And then there was also rent control. D.C. voters passed. I'm not sure if voters or council passed it. In the mid-70s when DC first got their own local government, that was one of the main issues then also locally, LA county, the city of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Palm Springs, West Hollywood, incorporated as a city, it was unincorporated, Louisiana county to have rent control. And a big reason for that is because it's an epicenter for the gay community in la and there's so many people with AIDS that couldn't, you know, couldn't afford rent increases. So it's a whole other history there. But yeah, so it was part of a larger movement. But, you know, a lot of the states, like I mentioned, clamped down with the state level preemption because of the real estate investment lobby seeing that this was going to be something that a lot of tenants were going to want and we're going to emulate. One thing that was unique in Santa Monica is that the voters voted for rent control, whereas in a lot of other situations, city council implemented it. So in the city of la, it was council. And then in Santa Cruz and San Francisco, around this time, there were ballot measures and they didn't pass. And San Francisco now does have rent control and I don't think Santa Cruz does. They might recently have had it, but yeah, so different methods in different places. But yeah, I would call it the second kind of second wave of American urban tenant movement.
- [20:06]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that's helpful to sort of place this into context. You, of course, in the book are investigating what happened in 1979, as you've explained, but also the legacies of these policies. Right. The book doesn't stop in 1980. So can you tell us more about how you've gone about figuring out what the impacts of all of this have been in terms of kind of methods and perspectives?
- [20:30]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so as I mentioned, this was my dissertation research. So I really wanted to see, I mean, where this started. My research questions were basically, I'm not going to read all of them, but, you know, to what extent do people living in rent controlled housing feel at home and what factors contribute to those feelings and experiences and what role do tenant protections play? So I kind of worked backward and chose Santa Monica as an exemplary case for my case study methodology. But what I really wanted to understand is how these policies are playing out on the ground. Because almost basically everything we know about rent control from an academic perspective is from economics. So it looks at these large data sets, it tries to find Relationships between numbers from census data and other data sets. And it kind of like amazingly, has never just asked people who live in rent controlled housing about their experiences. So that was really a critical part of my approach is I wanted a human centered methodology and methods and also specifically tenant centered. Interviewing landlords would also be interesting. And a few people did suggest that, but that was kind of beyond the scope. But yeah, I wanted to understand how this is playing out on the ground. And so case study is appropriate when you're exploring a complex phenomenon like this with like all these different interlocking factors. And then for my primary method, I used semi structured interviews. I do a lot of interviews in my job now. I love interfering people. And so semi structured just means there's a list of questions, but you can really like deviate from that as much as you kind of let the participant guide. And what I've found with that approach is that people reveal what is important to them very quickly. So for example, if you ask like, hey, tell me, tell me a little bit about your apartment. So they might say, oh, there's, you know, there's nice, nice natural light. I like the landscaping, but my landlord is really difficult to deal with. So like immediately, you know, the landlord is an issue. You don't even have to get to that question. So that's why I chose that method. And then the last thing I'll say is that my general approach was inspired both by the LA Tenants Union and a piece that one of their members wrote about, again, like centering tenants when we talk about housing, because we don't have a housing crisis, we have a tenant crisis. Right. Like the housing's just the structure. The structure's fine, it's the tenants. But also a sociologist named. I'm going to mispronounce this probably, but Jim Kameni, who called for a sociology of residence, which is kind of a pivot in housing studies, to understand housing policy through the lived experience of people who occupy the housing, rather than just focusing on the structure, the rent, the location, all of these attributes that really miss this humanity of the housing experience.
- [23:25]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's very important to focus on and help us understand why you have that focus. But before we get to talking more about the residents, we will, I promise. You mentioned there that interviewing landlords would of course also be a really interesting aspect of this. And you're right, it's well beyond the scope. But you do talk about it at least a little bit in the book. So before we get into the tenants and what they think and experience, what should we understand as kind of the opposite side, I suppose, of that relationship in terms of the key ways that real estate industry people or landlords view the existing policies in Santa Monica around rent control?
- [24:05]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah. So I. There's a chapter in the book where I review two years of a trade industry publication called Apartment Age. And I just came across this magazine and just couldn't resist including. Including this content because it is kind of incredible. So I've been in a lot of, like, testimony spaces that, like, you know, it's state government or, like, local government. And I've heard a lot of kind of similar things from landlords, from investment industry, real estate investment industry lobbyists, et cetera. And so I really wanted to find a source that kind of, like, echoed some of these things. So I will say, number one, that, like, obviously not everyone who's a landlord feels this way. I know that people are humans and have different opinions. But this organization, the Apartment association of Greater Los Angeles, has existed for over a hundred years. They have over 10,000 members. And so they're clearly a very established organization. So I think it's relevant that this is the tenor of their publication. Okay, so having said all that, the perception of rent control is 100% unfavorable in this publication. There's no balance of, like. Well, I can understand why it's important, but it would be nice if we could tweak it. And here's the considerations or here's some, like, fixes. It's just. It's completely unfair. It's a battle against landlords. Why are we persecuted? Why does everyone hate us? I gotta admit, I loved. I really enjoyed reading this. It's pretty bombastic. A lot of the content of the magazine is just neutral. It's like tips for property management or things like that. But these editorials, including by the executive director and by the board president, yeah, they're very kind of bombastic and colorful and use a lot of, like, metaphors to explain the unfairness and the persecution. And then, of course, not surprisingly, situated within it all is this very staunch commodity view of housing that, hey, this is a commodity good that I own. Why is anyone trying to take away my rights to make a profit? And again, there just really isn't acknowledge. Isn't an acknowledgment that, like, you know, there should be a balance. People just want to live their lives. They can't afford, you know, unlimited rent increases. So, yeah, in a nutshell, in Santa Monica. So back when rent control was first passed by voters, there's A local group that I don't think is very active anymore called Action Apartment association. And they, they coined the People's Republic of Santa Monica. And they would have banners with like, hammer and sickle, you know, other red star and other Soviet imagery, communist imagery. So definitely there were still a few instances in this publication. They don't mention Santa Monica often, but when they do, they will use that moniker still. And I did see a hammer and sickle, so they're still grinding that axe over 45 years later, which is amazing.
- [27:06]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's pretty persistent. Definitely worth flagging and keeping in mind as we now turn to asking or talking about the residents that you got to interview through the semi structured interviews. What did they think or feel about their place in Santa Monica? What. What sorts of things made people kind of be more at home or feel more of a sense of security as tenants?
- [27:31]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so just first to say that the people I interviewed were a wide range of ages, ranging from I think like early late 20s, early 30s to early 80s, and they were all low to moderate income, so capping at area median income, which I think was about $90 at that time. So these are people that are never going to own property in Santa Monica and maybe not ever in Los Angeles either. So just to situate in that. But yeah, so almost everyone feels at home. There's just one person who doesn't. She lived in her apartment for a really long time and she's older, and I think she just felt really frustrated that she didn't have any options. And maybe there were some other things going on too. And then there were a few people that had just sort of mixed feelings. But for the most part, people felt. Felt at home. The main things were the ability to personalize their space, which is a pretty common human need, and also the social fabric of their building. So knowing their neighbors, which doesn't mean like necessarily being friends with their neighbors, but just like knowing like, waving hi, having their number maybe in an emergency, that type of thing. For some people, it was like raising their kids there, and for other people it was just a long period of time spent there. Right. Like decades of their lives. The social fabric one is kind of like a really important point because this really illustrates how rent control helps create and sustain communities. So it doesn't just benefit individuals. It has this, like, magnifying effect where everyone, kind of not everyone, but a lot of people know each other. And that makes people feel at home, it makes them feel safe. Versus a few people who mentioned, like, Airbnbs in their Building or just apartments that are constantly turning over because the landlord wants to keep resetting the rent. That really undermined their sense of security or feeling at home. It felt, you know, kind of chaotic and like there was just kind of always upheaval and they don't know who those people are, which makes sense because humans are meant to live in groups. But yeah, overall the participants were really rooted in Santa Monica, for the most part, happy with their apartments. There might be some issues, but nothing major for most people. And there really are. They're committed to staying in Santa Monica. There were only a few people who talked about at some point maybe moving out of Santa Monica. But that said there was some discontent about the city itself or not the city government, but. Well, city government as well, but the city as a of part place for longer term residents. You know, there has been a lot of change. And like you mentioned, there's this like shiny TV movie version of things in Santa Monica. And when, when I tell people I'm from Santa Monica, they assume that I grew up with money, by the way. So that's, that's the impression, that's the image that Santa Monica has now. But you know, these people are lower and middle income and Santa Monica was different when I was growing up, for sure. It wasn't oriented towards people with wealth. So it's really painful when you, when you've lived somewhere for a long time and you see things changing to serve, you know, other, other people, people that you don't know, people that you maybe don't understand their lifestyle and you can't afford things anymore. You can't afford to go out to dinner. When I visit, I'm just like shocked by the prices there. So that I use place alienation to describe that. That's a term from the environmental psychology literature. And so that was kind of an interesting thing. That wasn't the primary focus of my investigation. But home is a holistic concept, right? That's not just the residents or the neighborhood or the block. It's also the city. So it's all the scales. So yeah, I would say there were some mixed feelings at that scale. But definitely one thing that made people feel secure was knowing that there are resources for renters when there's an issue, knowing that city government, and I don't mean elected officials, but like bureaucracy is generally pro renter. So that definitely made a, made a difference. A number of people had issues that they went to various city bureaus to resolve. And overwhelmingly they had positive experiences where they could resolve their problems. And that is not a normal experience for renters in America. I was on the organizing committee of the tenant union in Portland for six years and we would, you know, talk to renters all the time where there's the only recourse was going to small claims court or getting a lawyer. And that's just a really high, you know, barrier to, to getting your your issue resolved. Especially when someone's dealing with all kinds of other things in their lives. Like who has time or energy for that when you just want to, you know, get a hole patched or something.
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- [32:24]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Did I burn down the toy? I don't think so.
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- [33:48]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And is the ease of dealing with the bureaucracy in Santa Monica is that because of the rent control policies? Like usually we think about rent control as being the direct benefit is that your rent is controlled.
- [33:59]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Right?
- [34:00]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And it's when it's being discussed about whether or not it works that's sort of where the focus is. But if we're adding these things like the ease of dealing with bureaucracy right Are those sort of Additional benefits to rent control that maybe go beyond what we usually talk about in terms of impact.
- [34:15]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yes, that is such a good question. So people often do are laser focused on just that financial piece of the rent, which is obviously a huge part. But part of the rent control program is that there is a rent control office that's funded by a landlord fee. And I believe the tenant maybe can pay part of that. I know that's the case in the city of la. So number one, it's cost neutral, it's free, basically for taxpayers, which is huge. But yeah, so part of rent control is that you have to have the mechanisms for enforcement, you have to have the resources. And then in addition to the rent piece, there's also just cause eviction, which means that there are rules about how a tenancy can be terminated. It can't just be terminated because the landlord decides they want to, which is the case in most parts of the country. There are a few qualifying reasons, obviously, like violating the lease at a certain point, you know, if the landlord or their family want to move in, a few things like that. But for the most part, someone can't just be kicked out. And then there are a number of other things that voters and council have passed over the years. There's also an anti harassment law, anti tenant harassment law, and that's enforced through the city attorney's office. And then of course there's code enforcement and they all talk to each other. So that's a critical piece, is that they communicate, which often city bureaus are siloed and don't communicate, which is really inefficient. So there's a really like a comprehensive tenant support program that they're always adding to. And so it's always evolving. They just, I think right before the book was finally like locked, they passed a source of income, a new source of income, class protection. So like with fair housing law, there's federally protected classes like race and gender and kind of the obvious ones. They added housing status, which means the landlord can't discriminate in an application process because someone was experiencing homelessness. So, yeah, it's impressive. They're really committed and they're constantly adding new things.
- [36:22]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's a lot more than just your rent is fixed. That's a great starting point. But there's a lot more clearly beyond that. What then do residents do? You've kind of explained what they do when there's a problem with a whole patching. Right. That kind of thing. How do residents cope with kind of somewhat more existential Concerns around housing precarity.
- [36:43]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so that brings in kind of later on in my book, I identify some things that contribute to feelings of security and insecurity. And of course, security would be the tenant protections also sometimes income, different, you know, other things, resources. But in terms of the factors that contribute to feelings of precarity, there are three. Well, actually it's four major areas. So first, in addition to policy on the local level, which is, I would say, positive for security, there are negative policies for security at the state level. So we have the Ellis act, which means that a landlord can serve a tenant with a notice to terminate their lease agreement because they intend to tear down the building and quote, unquote, go out of the rental business. This is horrifically abused. It actually came from a lawsuit from a very young Santa Monica landlord in the late 80s. But people just buy buildings and do this. So they're clearly not intending. It's not like they had this building before rent control started and they're like burdened with this building. So Santa Monica has lost many, many rental homes because of this and all over California. So that's a huge source of insecurity because people know when their building is sold. It's like, oh, are we going to get Ellis? What's the plan? And then the second state level policy which is really like, works with the Ellis act is the Costa Hawkins act, which basically says a, there's vacancy decontrol, which means that between tenancies, the landlord can charge whatever they want to the new tenant, whatever the market will bear. So that's a huge incentive if you have a tenant who's paying well under market to close that rent gap and maximize your return. And that especially happens in building sales. But what happens is it's like a loop. So knowing that you can charge more inflates the value of the building. And so it's arguably, if it was, if that loophole was closed, perhaps the building wouldn't. Value wouldn't be as high and then you wouldn't be. So like, feel like you needed to raise the rent to make, to break even or to make a profit. So those two things cause a lot of insecurity. And then that's interlocking with the rental and real estate market. You know, people talk to each other, right? They know what rents, market rents cost. They know what real estate costs. One person saw that her apartment building was listed online. So, you know, people are smart, they can do research, they have this information. And then the other factor, or I guess the third factor is the sociopolitical ideology about renting. So that is what a positive for security, which is, you know, the city's pro renter stance, the cultural normalization. So there isn't like the same kind of stigma or like class bifurcation as much anyway in Santa Monica I would say still a little bit because they're very wealthy parts of the city that are single family homes. And then the last thing is the landlord or the manager, the property manager. There's so much variation from, from person to person with business model, you know, personality. A lot of these people do have small landlords that are both the landlord and the manager. And some of them sound pretty wild. Like they have some, they've some antics over the years. So it's just there's so much variation there and I've experienced that as well. I've been lucky to have some like pretty decent landlords. But. But yeah, you get one who's difficult or, or who's trying to kind of pull, pull things on you all the time and that's incredibly stressful. So those are the elements. So people have different coping mechanisms to kind of reach stasis. A concept that I use here is ontological insecurity, which is a. From sociology. And it just basically is. I kind of describe it as the feeling that the floor is going to drop out at you at any time. You know, when you think you're going to lose your home. It's so fundamental that you're kind of in a state of constant panic or anxiety. And this can also be like health related, relationship, job. Of course there's all these like really fundamental elements, but home is so foundational that I mean I've experienced it before thinking I was going to lose my home. And it's like you're physically in a state of panic all the time. So some of the things people do, avoid conflict with their landlord, avoid contact. I've definitely like been very selective about some of the things that I approach my landlord with in the past. You know, just like, hey, maybe I can do this or maybe it's easier just to ignore this or whatever. So that's a big thing, doing your own maintenance or your own interior work. Some people enjoy doing this or think it's just like a reasonable trade off. So just to be clear, that's not always a coping mechanism. Like there's like a fear element, but certainly for some people approaching as a group. So this is the concept of a tenant union. No one I interviewed is in a tenant union. But some people did describe like, oh if there's a problem, you know, I'll talk to so and so and this person and we'll try to approach them together so none of us are vulnerable. And then also making a plan for what happens if you're displaced. So one person mentioned, the city does have, I think it's called the community development core. I'm not 100% sure, but it's their own decommodified housing that the city owns. And if someone is displaced from an Ellis act eviction, my understanding is that they kind of are moved to the top of the waiting list for that housing. So one person mentioned, like, I'll just try to live in that housing. And another person was like, well, I have a lot of wealthy friends, maybe someone will help me out. So just kind of thinking about a contingency plan is another, another strategy.
- [42:41]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, the strategies definitely might help cope. They also take up a lot of energy. Right. That's a key part of this, is that they're not. Just because there are coping strategies doesn't mean anyone wants to be in that kind of situation and that the impact isn't very real. So given that you have actually gone and talked to people who are renters about what they think about rent control policies, if we go back to that initial motivation you talked about in terms of contributing to the debates in academia and in policy around rent control and the things you heard being talked about and the things that weren't being talked about, what are some of the policy and research implications and contributions then of the case study you've conducted?
- [43:22]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, so I think I'll just start with some kind of additional research that I think would be really interesting and insightful. Stemming off from this would be doing those landlord interviews. Right. Learning more about their business models and decision making. And in Santa Monica specifically, just to kind of pair with this would be really interesting. I think another one that someone has called for in the past, Manuel Pastor at usc, is the impact of rent control on the local economy and small businesses. A lot of people mentioned that they had a lot of, not a lot of extra money, but they were able to save extra money or spend money on other things because they weren't spending as much money on rent. So that would be something to explore. Also the value of tenant labor and investment. Some people did really extensive remodels on their homes and spent a lot of money over the years. And that's something that I've really never heard mentioned. And I think it's something that probably primarily happens in rent controlled environments. So It'd be interesting to maybe contrast that with a non controlled context and see how that might differ. Also research on the benefits to well being of these neighbor relationships. There's definitely some good research on that actually in a public housing complex close to where I live in Portland, that it was redeveloped by the federal government and people didn't want to move because they were like these, this like network of mutual reliance is so important to my family that it's. I'd rather live here in this kind of decaying housing than not. So that would be another area. And then my research, I mean, I think one of the most important things is it shows the ways that rent control absolutely does work for tenants who are the intended beneficiaries, to be clear. So I think that it presents a really important counter perspective and counter argument to the claim that it doesn't work. And those things that usually hinges around housing stock deteriorates or things like that. Housing stock definitely deteriorates in non controlled contexts and I know that because I live in one. So I mean there's that. So looking into that a little bit more, I also just found all these kind of results about how people can like change careers, how they can go back to school, all these ways that they can really kind of reach self actualization more because they have this like supporting supportive housing arrangement that is secure. Of course they still have an income, but at least the increases are moderate and they have all these security of these tenant protection policies. So the, yeah, the impact on the individual is profound, I would say. And then also the impact on the community, you know, people showed a, like a kind of a willingness to volunteer more, to engage more, to want to get to know people. There's a stereotype of renters as transient and disengaged. And there's literature on like neighborhood associations and community engagement that show that, you know, homeowners are more engaged. That's not what I found. So I think that that really reveals that it's not that renting inherently causes any of these things that other researchers have found, but it's the way that renting is structured and it's the rights of, of the, of the renter in this specific context. So it shows that we can make renting not bad. Basically we can make it not terrible and make it like a kind of a real option for people that either cannot afford to own property or don't want to own property, which there are people that are not interested. And I think that's a valid choice. My research definitely shows how these State level laws weaken rent control's impact. So even though I would say it's working in lots of ways, there are also ways that it's not working and it can't work because of these state level loopholes. And speculatory investment has been going on in cities for hundreds of years. David Harvey said land is the second circuit of capital. And we, we see that with, I mean, our president is a real estate investor. Like that's, that's where we're at. This is the country we live in. So yeah, definitely closing those loopholes would be helpful. But you know, on a bigger level, if we want to live in a society where everyone has their basic needs met, which obviously includes having a home, we need to be realistic about the conflict between land as an investment commodity and that objective, because those are kind of irreconcilable. It's not to say that no one can build luxury housing, no one can build mansions. Fine, that's whatever. It's not really, it's kind of almost a separate issue because that's like a niche product. But we need social housing in this country. We need community land trusts, limited equity co ops, sweat equity programs, vacancy taxes, land baking. Like all these things exist. We just need to invest in them for real. And you know, just be, be realistic about the fact that the market is not going to fix this problem. It is not designed to fix this problem. Only we can fix this problem. Paris is doing it. They're, they have a goal of buying, well, they're currently buying a bunch of apartments that are for sale and their goal is to make 40% of the city's housing stock social housing. So, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. But I think this country, you know, we're in deep denial because we want to have it both ways. We want to have these investment vehicles of our single family homes, but we also somehow want there to not be homelessness and housing insecurity.
- [49:05]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, this is definitely going to be part of that conversation. And it sounds like this is something you're continuing to work on past the completion of this book or if there's anything you want to tell us about your current work, whether or not it's related, anything on your desk at the minute. You want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [49:20]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Yeah, sure. Well, I do work in this field, but I would love to talk about. I'm actually working on a screenplay. It's a narrative feature, it's a genre film and it is about a high school history teacher who's teaching an AP course about revolutions and discovers that she is a werewolf. I know it's like you're like, what? But this is spoiler alert. She does her first kill is her landlord. So I'm just doing a little tie in and there's a lot of politics in it, kind of political observations. And I also brought some of the things that I heard from my participants into the script, some of the things that happen in the apartment complex. So yeah, I'm excited about that project.
- [50:04]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That certainly sounds very fun and creative. Best of luck.
- [50:07]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Thank you.
- [50:08]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
In the meantime, while you're working on that, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Fortunate People in a Fortunate At Home in Santa Monica's Rent Controlled Housing, published by Temple University Press in 2025. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [50:24]
Dr. Lauren Everett
Thank you, Miranda. It was fun.