SAN DIEGO — One county leader is fighting back against corporate investors who are buying up available homes here in San Diego, and making it even harder for ordinary San Diegans who either want to buy or rent.
The County Board of Supervisors will take up a proposal to combat this growing practice of "Wall Street" investors buying up homes and apartments for their profit, making the affordable housing crisis even worse.
County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer calls San Diego "ground zero" for this growing trend of giant financial corporations buying up residential homes.
It's a trend that she says is forecast to increase ten-fold by the end of this decade.
"It's hurting first-time home buyers, it's hurting renters," said Lawson-Remer, vice-chair of the Board of Supervisors, adding that as more and more corporate investors snap up available homes using cash, San Diego's already limited housing inventory is depleted even more, driving *down* availability and driving *up* prices...
"The normal resident who I'm fighting for can not compete because they're trying to borrow their money at 7 percent, and the Blackstones of the world are coming on with all cash and their money's free," said Lawson-Remer.
Blackstone, for example, is the country's largest residential landlord, which in 2021 bought 66 buildings throughout the county: roughly 5,600 housing units.
Lawson-Remer said this not only makes it exceedingly hard for would-be first-time buyers to achieve the American Dream but also drives up rents
"We know that big corporate institutional investors are making that hard for everyone, and we're fighting back," Lawson-Remer told CBS 8.
It's a fight that the Board of Supervisors will take up Tuesday.
Lawson-Remer is proposing a number of steps to tackle this issue, including a comprehensive county-wide study of how widespread this practice is..
The supervisor's proposal also calls for taking legal action at the county level.
"We'll look at what kind of litigation that we as a county can implement on behalf of residents of San Diego County to hold these corporate investors and corporate landlords accountable," Lawson-Remer added. "We already have those tools at our disposal."
Already on the state and federal levels, prosecutors are going after corporations that have allegedly engaged in price-fixing to keep rents artificially high.
This county-level action comes as several statewide legislative bills are currently being debated in Sacramento, including one by San Diego Assembly Member Chris Ward that would ban residential real estate developers from selling homes on a large scale to corporate investors.
"Who are we fighting for? Are we fighting for the corporate interests?" he asked on the Assembly floor earlier this year. "Or are we fighting for Californians, for their dream of home ownership?"
This county-wide proposal, which is on next Tuesday's board agenda, would also look at other policies that the county could adopt to help protect ordinary home-buyers, as well as renters: for example, the possibility of refusing to do business with companies that engage in any sort of anti-competitive practices or price fixing to set rents.
Lawson-Remer led a protest in Pacific Beach on Monday, ahead of the board meeting.