In addition to burdening housing providers, the draconian rent and eviction control initiative going before Pasadena voters this fall would create a city bureaucracy costing taxpayers nearly $6 million per year. 

Measure H qualified for the city’s November ballot following a signature-gathering campaign funded by San Francisco rent control advocates and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the same group behind the failed statewide rent control Propositions 10 and 21.  

This Pasadena proposal is far more restrictive than state renter protections already in place under AB 1482, and portions of the law would apply to single-family homes.  

Measure H would: 

• • Limit rent increases to less than the annual inflation rate.  
• • Impose strict eviction rules for most rental units. 
• • Delay the eviction process — even when criminal activity is occurring. 
• • Make renters potentially testify against neighbors accused of criminal activity as part of eviction proceedings. 
• • Force a minimum payment of six months’ market rate rent to terminate a tenancy. 
• • Create a permanent government bureaucracy with the power to set rents, levy fees, and pay itself a salary.  
• • Cost Pasadena residents and housing providers at least $6 million annually.  

“We all agree that Measure H is the least effective way to ease the cost of housing, particularly for our lower and middle-income households,” said Matt Buck, the California Apartment Association’s vice president of local public affairs. “There are no assurances that rent control helps the lowest-income renters and those who need rental housing the most.”