{"slug": "opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and", "title": "Opinion: California legislators must ban landlord price-fixing software and shorten construction timelines", "summary": "California legislators are considering two bills, AB 1997 and SB 295, aimed at addressing the state's housing crisis. AB 1997 would shorten permitting timelines for low-income housing projects to 30 days, while SB 295 would ban rent-gouging software used by corporate landlords. The bills, sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, seek to protect tenants and accelerate affordable housing production.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...For too long, poor and working-class California renters have faced twin challenges in putting a stable and affordable roof over their heads. First, finding an apartment in a state that needs 2.5 million more housing units for all of its residents. Second, being able to afford that apartment once they find it.\n\nState legislators have enacted several laws in recent years to address those challenges, but they remain as persistent as ever. That can change with two state bills sponsored by AIDS Healthcare Foundation: AB 1997 and SB 295. They will protect tenants and more quickly produce lower-income housing.\n\nAB 1997 by California Assemblymember Alex Lee of Milpitas shortens the amount of time it takes for local governments to give permits to developers to build lower-income housing. Despite the many recent laws enacted to spur housing development, the construction of them continues to slow walk its way toward achieving state and local housing goals. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that over the last four years, the number of permits for multifamily housing (five units or more) has dropped by 18%.\n\nIn a 2025 report, the RAND Corporation stated that “the biggest thing driving up California apartment costs” is “time.” The time to produce a unit from start to finish is more than four years. “That means land costs must be carried for longer,” RAND noted, “equipment and labor are on job sites longer, and that loans are taken out for a longer term, and so on.”\n\nLast year, the California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform issued a report that stated the problem bluntly: “Collectively, the result of our failed approach to permitting is an anemic level of construction for the projects necessary to address our housing and climate crises.”\n\nAB 1997 reduces the permitting timeline to 30 days for very-low-income and extremely-low-income housing projects. That way, a developer can more quickly build affordable apartments for the poor and working class, providing a stable, healthy environment for people to live and thrive.\n\nSB 295 by State Sen. Melissa Hurtado from Bakersfield bans rent-gouging software used by corporate landlords to collude and wildly inflate rents. It is a response to the nationwide RealPage scandal, in which corporate landlords used a RealPage software program so they could illegally work together and dramatically raise rents throughout California and other states. SB 295 stops that predatory business practice in housing.\n\nRealPage promised landlords revenue growth even in a down market, driving outperformance by 2% to 7%, according to their marketing data. One property management company, Pinnacle Property Management Group (now part of Cushman and Wakefield), trumpeted that the company experienced a 4% revenue lift using RealPage software even during the 2009 recession.\n\nNotably, in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission declared that “price fixing is price fixing … Your algorithm can’t do anything that would be illegal if done by a real person.” One year earlier, a wide-ranging University of California San Francisco study found that most Californians end up unhoused because of exorbitant rents. “People are homeless because their rent is too high,” Dr. Margot Kushel, the lead investigator of the study, told the Associated Press.\n\nSB 295 and AB 1997 are part of a larger, multi-pronged strategy that AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its housing advocacy division, Housing Is A Human Right, are carrying out to address the housing affordability and homelessness crises. It is called the 3 Ps.\n\nThe 3 Ps are simple and effective: Protect tenants through strong renter rights, including rent regulations; preserve existing affordable housing, rather than thoughtlessly demolishing it to build luxury housing; and produce new lower-income and homeless housing through the adaptive reuse of existing buildings and pre-fabricated homes. AB 1997 and SB 295 seek to fulfill two of those Ps by quickly producing more low-income housing and then protecting tenants by better ensuring that housing is affordable for all households.\n\nMore than ever, Californians are demanding that politicians address unaffordable living costs. SB 295 and AB 1997 will help, as will the more comprehensive approach of the 3 Ps.\n\nPeople’s lives are literally on the line. State legislators must act now, passing SB 295 and AB 1997.\n\n*Patrick Range McDonald is the award-winning journalist for Housing Is A Human Right, the housing advocacy division of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/26/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and-shorten-construction-timelines/", "published_at": "2026-06-26 19:12:54+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-26 19:36:23.462017+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["AIDS Healthcare Foundation", "Alex Lee", "Melissa Hurtado", "RealPage", "Pinnacle Property Management Group", "Cushman and Wakefield", "Federal Trade Commission", "RAND Corporation"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/opinion-california-legislators-must-ban-landlord-price-fixing-software-and.jsonld"}}