By Macy Meinhardt, V&V Reporter, CA Local News Fellow
Plagued with headaches while living with mold, cockroaches and a list of unmade repairs, Jennifer Arroyo knew it was time to stand up to her landlord.
“That’s when I was, like, you know what, enough is enough,” Arroyo said. “I’m not paying any rent to you until you start fixing the issues that I have been bringing to your attention for years.”
For 12 years, Arroyo and her four children lived in a two-bedroom apartment in San Diego’s Spring Valley neighborhood. Then, in 2021, the building was acquired by Blackstone, a private equity firm and one of the largest landlords in the United States. That’s when Arroyo said a list of maintenance issues, including mold, went unresolved.
In January, Arroyo said that she withheld her rent payment in protest. Next came an eviction notice in February.
Arroyo’s story is part of an increasing pattern of displaced tenants at Blackstone-owned properties, according to a report in August by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action (ACCE)
“Blackstone has a strong financial incentive to evict existing tenants in San Diego because California law limits how much a landlord can increase rents for current tenants,” said Jordan Ash, the housing director for the PESP and author of the report.
Under California law, landlords can raise rent annually by up to 10 percent – or by 5 percent plus the percentage change in the cost of living, whichever is lower. But the law does not apply to new tenants.
Minorities, specifically women, are disproportionately impacted by this. Nationwide, Black women are twice as likely to face an eviction and housing instability compared to white women, according to a recent report from the Center for American Progress.
“Given that nonpayment of rent is the leading cause of eviction, understanding the unjust economic disadvantages historically and currently faced by Black women in this country is integral to understanding the disproportionate occurrence of eviction,” the report states.
Nationwide, Blackstone’s properties are concentrated in neighborhoods where Black residents make up 58 percent of the population, according to the PESP and ACCE analysis. In San Diego, Blackstone-owned apartments are primarily located within El Cajon, National City, Santee, Spring Valley, Chula Vista, Ramona, and Pacific Beach.
In July, the San Diego Board of Supervisors voted to look into nationwide lawsuits against “corporate bad actors,” including Blackstone.
“In recent years, private equity giants and large corporations are increasingly buying up the nation’s scarce supply of homes, including in the San Diego region — driving up prices for their own profit and making the housing affordability crisis worse,” said Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who spearheaded the initiative.
Blackstone’s History in San Diego
In 2021, Blackstone acquired 66 rental buildings comprising 5,800 relatively low-cost units across San Diego county for approximately $1.5 billion.
Prior to Blackstone’s purchase, the analysis says, many of the housing units were considered affordable without being subsidized by any government program. However, since Blackstone’s acquisition, the apartments owned by the firm have increased by 38 percent, from an average $1,696 to $2,339, according to Yardi Matrix, a division of the property-management software firm Yardi.
Blackstone’s spokesperson, Jeffrey Kauth offered statements against these claims through email. Responding to criticism about higher rents, Kauth wrote: “The reality is that average rents at these San Diego communities are 20 percent below the San Diego market average.”
Ash, at PESP, argued that while rents at Blackstone’s San Diego properties may have been below the local average, “that doesn’t say much since San Diego is one of the most expensive areas in the country.”
The reality of higher rent has left tenants like ninety-one-year-old Rob Chappell struggling. Since 2020, Chappell said that he had lived in the State Apartments in Rolando Park without complaint. Since the Blackstone acquisition, he said, undisclosed fees and add-ons to his rent have arrived steadily, increasing his monthly payments from $500 to more than $700, he said. The remainder of Chappell’s rent is government-subsidized, he said.
Chappell said that he has not been told why his rent has increased.
“I’ve been here, I pay my rent on time, and now they keep bugging me that I owe money,” said Chappell, who lives alone. “How can that be if I pay my rent every month, and now I owe more money. What money?”
Tenant Jontue Andres faces a similar dilemma. She lived in the Blackstone-owned Terre E Bradley Apartments in El Cajon since May 2020 where, according to the joint PESP- ACCE analysis, the monthly cost for new rentals has increased by 50 percent from $2,092 to $3,141 from 2021 to 2024, respectively.
In July, Andres said she was locked out of her payment portal account and informed that she was placed on eviction status. When asked why, she said that she was told by her landlord that she had an outstanding balance of $490 from the previous two months. Andres says she was unaware of the remaining balance. In order to remain in her apartment she would need to pay $3,898, which included her outstanding balance, her July rent, and $1,225 in eviction fees.
Andres added that her time at the Terre E Bradley Apartments was marked by a “nightmare” rat infestation. In photos she provided to Voice & Viewpoint, rat droppings litter the carpets and her childrens’ bedding. Another photo showed gnaw marks on her baby bottles. Andres said she emailed and verbally complained to her landlord on multiple occasions of the infestation, which led to no effective solution.
“If they would have come in and conquered the issue to begin with, when I first let them know, then it wouldn’t be as big of an issue as it is now,” said Andres.
Today, Andres has placed many of her possessions in a storage unit and is staying with her children in a hotel while they look for a more affordable place to live.
Another tenant at the Terre E Bradley Complex, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of a retaliatory eviction, said that her fire and carbon monoxide alarms went unrepaired for two months.
Ash said that what is happening in San Diego fits with Blackstone’s impact on the national rental market. “With corporate landlords, their main goal is to make money,” he said. “They’re not concerned with tenant satisfaction. It would fit with their business model of using certain tactics to get people to leave, whether it’s through eviction or just by creating circumstances so that people would choose to leave.”
In his emailed statement, Kauth denied allegations of tenant neglect as a tactic for displacing residents. “That is categorically false,” he wrote. “The truth is quite the opposite – we have invested over $100 million to improve living conditions and have already completed over 44,000 repairs, including those that were previously unaddressed before our ownership.”
Eviction Disparities, Blackstone Impacts on Livelihoods, Housing Security
In Jennifer Arroyo’s case, she took her argument to the Legal Aid Society of San Diego after she received her eviction notice. Her attorney was able to send an investigator to her apartment to document her living conditions, which later helped her win the eviction suit and be given back her security deposit.
“For renters, knowledge is powerful, and knowing what your rights are is very important,” said Legal Aid lawyer Gilberto Vera.
Despite winning her lawsuit, Arroyo and her children still remain without a permanent home. They are currently in a hotel, while they look for a new place to live in.
Evictions can lead to homelessness, said Vera. “That’s one of the hard truths I realized,” he said.
It’s a reality that San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer wants to tackle.
“We’re looking at legal action against any major corporate Wall Street investor who’s illegally fixing prices and driving up rents in San Diego County,” she said. “That’s one big thing that we’ve been working on, and that specifically targets Blackstone.”
Specifically, the county’s chief administrative officer and legal counsel will lead a San Diego-wide assessment of tenant harassment, evictions, price gouging, and price fixing. Their report is due to the Board of Supervisors in January.