Take Redwood City’s Measure E, which would impose strict rent control on any apartment built before 1995.
While the promises surrounding Measure E — a sweeping local rent control and eviction protection initiative — are wrapped in the language of compassion, the harsh economic reality is that this measure will worsen the very housing crisis it claims to solve. For the long-term health of our community, voters must soundly reject Measure E.
Capping rental rates under Measure E will drastically reduce the economic incentive to construct new rental housing. Building housing in the Bay Area is already an incredibly costly and risky endeavor. By creating artificial limits on returns, the city will effectively halt future affordable and market-rate housing developments, choking our supply and exacerbating the regional housing shortage.
Furthermore, rent control paradoxically decreases the overall options available to low-income renters.
When landlords see their revenue stream constrained, they are left with far less money to maintain and upgrade their properties. The inevitable outcome is a stark increase in rundown, deteriorating buildings left to crumble. This hurts vulnerable tenants the most, trapping them in subpar living conditions. Check out the apartments in Berkeley, which has rent control.
At the same time, because properties are locked in at under-market rates, tenants inside rent-controlled apartments face a massive financial disincentive to move, even when their lifestyle changes— such as when kids move out or jobs change. This “lock-in” effect freezes the natural turnover of housing, leaving fewer available units on the market for newcomers and expanding families.
The burden of Measure E will fall disproportionately on mom-and-pop landlords. Smaller landlords lack the vast corporate cash reserves or legal compliance teams needed to absorb sharp, unexpected operational cost increases — such as soaring property insurance, utility hikes and general inflation.
Forced out by rigid regulations, many small-scale providers will choose to sell their properties and exit the market altogether, further depleting Redwood City’s rental stock.
Voters should also cast a skeptical eye on the forces pushing this measure. The organization behind the initiative, Faith in Action Bay Area, regularly brands itself as a purely “grassroots” effort. However, they are an affiliate of a powerful national Faith in Action network with roughly 1,000 chapters across the United States. This national apparatus relies on substantial financial backing from major institutional players, including the Open Society Foundations funded by billionaire George Soros. This is an astroturf campaign, not a simple neighborhood movement.
Finally, the administrative price tag of this measure is a raw deal for local residents. If passed, Measure E will force Redwood City to erect a massive, costly rent control bureaucracy complete with program administrators, hearing examiners, and legal service coordinators.
According to analysis highlighting the measure’s structure, the ongoing operational cost of this brand-new city department — amounting to roughly $84 to $120 per unit each year — will ultimately be passed directly down from the landlords to the tenants themselves. Renters will literally be paying out of pocket to fund the very bureaucracy restricting their housing market.
Redwood City already benefits from strong state-level protections under the California Tenant Protection Act, as well as local tenant ordinances. Adding an expensive, counterproductive layer of local bureaucracy will stall housing growth, decay existing stock, and harm both renters and small providers. Vote “no” on Measure E.
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