The crisis is particularly acute in low-income communities, who overwhelmingly pay a large portion of their already-small income on housing, and communities of color, who have faced decades of legal and extra-legal residential segregation, housing discrimination, predatory lending, and exclusionary lending practices, such as redlining. While hundreds of thousands of Californians experience housing instability or have to make the choice between paying rent and buying basic necessities like food and medicine, corporate landlords are profiting from this crisis.

Over 3 million California renter households are “rent burdened,” or paying over 30% of their income on rent, while nearly 1.6 million of those 3 million renter households are “severely rent burdened” (paying over 50% of their income on rent). In other words, over half of California tenant households are rent burdened, and one in four are severely rent burdened. 

This report focuses on two of the largest and wealthiest corporate landlords in California: Invitation Homes, which is controlled by The Blackstone Group, one of the largest private equity and asset management firms in the world, and Equity Residential, which is also the third largest apartment owner in the U.S. Millions of Californians are rent burdened, or paying over 30% of their income on rent, which often results in reverberating effects such as not having enough money for food or health care and can put people at risk of housing instability, eviction, and homelessness. Download the report to learn more.