Salinas Is Set to Cap Rent Hikes, a Historic Step for Monterey County and Farmworker Towns

In a first for Monterey County, the farmworker community of Salinas is poised to cap rent increases and adopt additional renter protections.

On Tuesday night, the Salinas City Council voted to move forward with three measures: rent stabilization, just cause for eviction, and tenant anti-harassment ordinances.

The movement comes after over a year of organizing by residents in the majority-renter, majority-Latinx city, and it reflects a growing momentum behind tenant-friendly policies both locally and nationally. Vice President Kamala Harris has embraced the cause, vowing at a rally for her presidential campaign to “take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.”

Even as the list of California cities with rent control gets longer, Salinas stands out for its rural nature and heavily immigrant population.

“It’s really historic for a city like Salinas to move forward with these protections,” said Suzanne Dershowitz, senior staff attorney with Public Advocates, a legal advocacy organization that’s supporting the effort.

Historically, large cities have borne the brunt of the housing crisis, but as it worsens, it’s spread to rural communities.

“The struggle for housing has been evident since before the pandemic, the pandemic just intensified that tenfold,” said “xago” Juarez, an organizer with Building Healthy Communities Monterey County who’s been campaigning for renter protections in Salinas. “This is beyond crisis.”

Advocates argue the policies would help prevent homelessness and displacement in a city where rents increased more than seven times as much as renter incomes between 2000 and 2022 and where the number of rent-burdened households spiked by nearly 60% over the same period.

Over half of households in Salinas rent, and half of those renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The median rent in Salinas is $2,400, according to Zillow.

As cities struggle to rein in housing costs, they increasingly turn to rent caps and other tenant protections. At least 29 cities in California have rent control measures in place, according to a tally by Tenants Together. Only one of those — Oxnard — is a farmworker community.

In the Bay Area, measures that would enact rent control or strengthen existing policies are on the ballot in San Anselmo, Larkspur and Berkeley in November. Concord, Antioch and Fairfax recently adopted rent caps, while efforts to put them on the ballot in Redwood City, Pittsburg and San Pablo failed.

Researchers have reached mixed conclusions on the subject (PDF). Some studies find rent control reduces tenant displacement in the short run but deters landlords from investing in maintenance and drives up rents in the long term; others find no impact on housing markets; some find people of color are more likely to benefit, while others conclude white, wealthier people are.

While California cities and counties have the authority to enact rent control laws, the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act prohibits them from imposing rent control on single-family homes, condominiums, properties built after 1995, and new tenants. In November, voters will weigh in on Proposition 33, which would repeal that law and prevent the state from taking actions to limit local rent control in the future.

In Salinas, the sustained pressure from residents on city leaders to enact renter protections is especially striking given it’s a largely immigrant community where language barriers, legal and economic status present hurdles to influencing policy.

“There’s all these barriers, things that work against them,” Juarez said. “They don’t have the privilege of having their complaints heard.”

For two years, Juarez has been helping to teach farmworker families about city government and how to participate in public meetings. “A focus of that work is them recognizing their power as residents, regardless of documentation, citizenship status, education,” he said. “If they live in Salinas, then they belong in Salinas.”

The Salinas rent control plan would cap annual rent increases at 2.75% or 75% of the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. It would apply to multi-family residences built before Feb. 1, 1995, per state law.

The eviction ordinance would strengthen protections for renters who are kicked out for no fault of their own, including if the owner wants to move in, take the unit off the market or remodel it. In the case of fault evictions, the policy would require landlords to provide the equivalent of three months’ rent as relocation assistance, and if they put the property back on the market within five years, they would have to offer it to the evicted tenant first.

The third ordinance would expand renters’ protections against harassment by landlords, adding prohibitions against actions like failing to provide maintenance.

The Salinas City Council is set to vote on adopting the policies by the end of September.