CAA may be backing anti-rent control petition in Santa Rosa

CAA may be backing anti-rent control petition in Santa Rosa

By Lynda Carson — September 9, 2016

Mounting documentation reveals that 28 year old Mallori Spilker of Guerneville and the California Apartment Association (CAA) may be backing an anti-rent control petition in Santa Rosa.

Recently the City Council passed renter protections including rent control, and just cause eviction protections to stabilize communities being brutalized by greedy landlords involved in the eviction-for-profit system.

On behalf of the CAA, Mallori Spilker who used to work for the California Association of Realtors (CAR), recently spoke against the renter protections being proposed in Santa Rosa at a City Council meeting. Spilker claimed that the landlords were left out of the discussions, and that the renter protection proposals were legally questionable, and punitive in nature. However, in contrast documentation reveals that there has been plenty of involvement by landlords in the renter protection discussions taking place in Santa Rosa, and that they were organized too fight against the renter protection proposals by the CAA.

The CAA is a wealthy organization that takes in millions of dollars in contributions. Money that is being used to meddle in the affairs of cities across the state to corrupt the political process, and fight back against any reasonable renter protection proposals throughout California. The CAA has handed out $2,161,312 from 2004 to 2012 to politicians and their campaigns, according to Follow The Money.

Thomas K. Bannon of Sacramento is the CEO of the CAA, and during 2014 he raked in $330,930 in compensation.

According to the Press Democrat, paid signature gathers have descended on Santa Rosa in recent days, circulating petitions demanding that the City Council must repeal the renter protections it passed recently, or call a special election.

Additionally, according to the Press Democrat, “The campaign has surfaced after an official with the California Apartment Association Issues Committee contacted the city last week to start the process of establishing a local independent expenditure committee, City Clerk Daisy Gomez said.”

“The official, reached by phone Wednesday, said he was an accountant serving as the treasurer for the committee and was unable to comment. He directed inquiries to Shant Apekian, the association’s vice president of public affairs. Neither Apekian nor its local government affairs director, Mallori Spilker, returned repeated requests for comment.”

“At this point, the California Apartment Association is not answering questions related to the petition drive,” Mike Nemeth, the organization’s communications director, said in a statement.”

Calls made to Bay Area Petitions in San Francisco, and Discovery Petition Management, in Sacramento, indicate that Tyler Ensley of San Francisco may be heading the petition drive in Santa Rosa for the CAA in the effort to block renter protections from taking effect in Santa Rosa. But this has not been verified.

When the CAA came up with a petition to block renter protections from going into effect in the City of Richmond in 2015, according to sources the CAA hired Paul Olson of Olson and Associates, who hired Alex Arsenault of Massachusetts to run the signature gathering campaign.

The Press Democrat has reported that many people are complaining already that they have been tricked into signing the petition to over-turn renter protections, and how people can have their name removed from the petition in Santa Rosa.

This all sounds very similar. What is happening in Santa Rosa appears to be very similar to what happened in Richmond in 2015 when the CAA used a petition to steal renter protections from the renters in that city.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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