Two Major Articles Expose Landlords' Dirty Trick; Urge Voters to Vote NO on 98

Pasadena Star News: "Advocacy Groups Denounce Proposition 98"

Members of the League of Women Voters, the Western Center of Law & Poverty and housing attorneys joined fixed-income renters at the AARP's Pasadena headquarters Wednesday to issue a "fraud alert" against advertisements promoting Proposition 98.

The proposition, which is being championed by a coalition led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, is billed as an effort to keep government from handing property to private developers using eminent domain...

"The eminent domain argument is a Trojan horse," said Kathy Fairbanks, a spokeswoman for the AARP-led coalition. "About 80 percent of the funding for the `Yes on 98 Campaign' comes from landlords, and all they care about is eliminating rent control."

Much of the support the proposition has received has indeed come from landlord groups, said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

"This would have a devastating effect on renters and undo centuries of landlord-tenant law," said Spiegel, adding that Proposition 98 would also do away with other renter-protection measures, such as notices for no-fault evictions and caps on what landlords can charge for credit checks.

"This is a doomsday measure backed by wealthy landlords and mobile-home park owners," added Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, "It is nothing but lies, lies, lies motivated by greed, greed, greed."

Read the full article here.

Los Angeles Daily News: "Tenants Fear Rent Control Loss"

"While rent ceilings for tenants of a housing unit would stay in place until they moved, the initiative jeopardizes restrictions against evictions, critics say. Easy evictions mean easy vacancies. New vacancies allow higher rents. And once a tenant living under old rent-control laws moves out, rents can be hiked at any time for succeeding tenants."

"Proposition 98 is a wolf in sheep's clothing that would roll back key environmental and tenant protections," Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti said. He authored a city resolution against the measure last week.

He supports a rival ballot measure, Proposition 99, "which would protect Californians from government taking property that should remain in private hands, but wouldn't negatively impact other important environmental and tenant laws," he said...

Read the full article here.

Help spread the word.

Vote NO on 98; Vote YES on 99!