The War on Housing: A journal from the church of evictions at the AOA Convention

Mike Brennan could be the next great conservative politician. In 2023, I attended the Apartment Owners Association (AOA) Free "Million Dollar Convention" at the Long Beach Convention Center. My previous work involved understanding the local market of apartment vacancies and property management so I figured this would be a great opportunity to get inside the black box?-?in case you haven't tried, finding out WHO calls the shots on approving apartment leases isn't always straightforward. So I donned by freshest rugby polo and anti-non-profit-12 Nike Air maxes and sauntered into the convention á la Andrew Callaghan. Almost immediately, I noticed the characters were incredible. I stood out mostly right away based on my age. As you'd expect, to own an apartment complex in Southern California you probably invested at the right time in the 80s or 90s as property taxes stalled and home values remained a rocket ship. And so there I was, catching all sorts of looks and already figuring out how I was going to convince anyone I wasn't selling something.

Expecting booths with property owners, I realized shortly after arriving that this conference was really a products and services setup, and they were all selling me something that I couldn't buy, not being a property owner myself. Panicking, I followed the sound of a man professing loudly to the masses which brought me to seminar area A, the church of Mike Brennan, esq. I ducked low so as not to attract too much attention and grabbed a seat near the exit.

This guy has the 'Riz* (charisma*)!!! I thought to myself as I whipped out my phone to text my buddies: "This is awesome I found the Jordan Peterson of landlord law at the apartment owners convention." Mr. Brennan was preaching to the crowd about how big government in California was doing everything they could to STEAL and de-value YOUR property assets. Up to this point, I had prepared my elevator pitch for property management with an opener along the lines of "So I work for government…" and I immediately squashed this idea listening to Mike incite his coup. Heads were solemnly nodding in the crowd with each generational eclipse talking point emerging from Mike's pulpit: "I know people INTIMATELY who frauded the government for over $100,000 during pandemic stimulus, which is why unemployment is still low," or "In 6-years Blackrock will own 60% of the residential properties in the United States," while humbly admitting, "I know I'm a cynic and maybe I am a right-wing conspiracy theorist." You see, although Mr. Brennan esq. was giving a presentation on legislative updates to landlord-tenant law to pitch his own law firm, it was about much more than that. Brennan was effectively capturing a sentiment held in the room: COVID has fundamentally changed how we view social contracts like debt in society, and perhaps small landlords are the ones caught holding the bag.

After hand-waiving away his call from the emcee to conclude his seminar several times, Brennan finally took a bow to a near-standing ovation and returned to his table where he was followed by a line of hungry landowners. My discussion with a property management firm at a nearby table confirmed the visually obvious: Brennan Law Firm's phones were ringing off the hook to deal with the tens of thousands of evictions being processed since Los Angeles lifted its moratorium on the practice in Spring 2023.

The lifting of the moratorium on evictions coupled with county and city bills offering "right to counsel" legislation leaves this community at an interesting impasse with all arrows pointed towards expanding the legal system. Somewhere in the realm of 50,000–100,000 eviction court filings have been processed since it became legal again in March 2023. Interestingly, according to LA City Controller data, the vast majority of those are for folks who are 1–2 months behind rent, not massive. But those debts add up. And all the policy changes are just pushing more mom and pops into a costly and inefficient legal process. You can hear it from the AOA faithful gathered in Long Beach.

I took a break from property management networking when I spotted a local politician I've met in board meetings. He was the only politician I found at the convention and I think he was hoping to tap into the apartment-owning crowd for his hopeful run for a seat on the LA County Board of Supervisors. Hanging out with his campaign team for 30 minutes provided some interesting insight into how this base views politics.

The "hush-hush" R-word in this context was "Republican". A few separate owners, once evaluated for their trustworthiness, were offered a whispered, "he's a republican," to which they shot forward with an enthusiastic, "where do I sign up?!" I caught up with one such constituent and enjoyed a classic conversation following what I call the "send 'em to the desert" template. I get this take pretty often in my line of work and they go something like this: This guy was an apartment owner and concerned resident about the homelessness situation. "You round up all the homeless and bus them out to palm desert where they can live and work under solar panels". The theory usually hinges on a complete gutting of civil rights and also a planned economy, both things that sound like socialism (ha!) to me. I do the barely noticeable nod with mouth slightly ajar. I've heard a lot of "really smart, successful guys" come up with this same business plan. Maybe we need to get them all in the same room?

Getting back to the R-word, I think one of the most confounding things is how this powerful base lacks a visible political presence. Many parts of Los Angeles county are conservative at their core: anti-big government, maintain local control at all costs etc., but somehow climate progressiveism and mild social liberalism still make being a republican a stain. At the state level, Newsom and fellow dems are busy turbo-charging every ounce of affordable housing, development, and tenants rights legislation possible. So if there's so many successful apartment owners and associations in the property rich state of California, why don't they have an identity? And are they really the ones left holding the bag in a recession?

The last talk of my day at the AOA convention was another lawyer giving advice on how to screen tenants to prevent having to deal with a costly eviction. This lawyer wasn't nearly as entertaining as Mike Brennan, and his lack of details and empiricism left me with more questions than answers. I was hoping to come away from this talk with a silver bullet to get my low-income clients past the algorithmic tyranny of today's rental application process. Instead, I got vague platitudes covering the new ways to make housing inaccessible:

Minimum 650 Credit Score

3x Monthly Rent in Proof of Income

Passing 3–4 types of background check reports

But does that really stop evictions from happening? And if so, to what degree does it reduce risk? It seems to me like this newly socially accepted screening approach amongst the AOA is more of a response to tenant protection law than an empirical basis to protect revenue streams. So in "right to council" protections, perhaps we have an unintended downstream consequence of making housing more inaccessible through these new screening procedures.

To me, when policy interacts to further entrench the inequitable legal and financial systems in the day-to-day lives of the public, that's a mess. It all comes down to how we view debt, and in this case, debt in the context of housing. Should rental income be a government backed asset? Should your housing provider be able to live in another state or country? Is our private housing market fitting the needs of a shrinking high-income population? These are the questions I pondered as I downed the rest of my convention center black coffee and picked up my overflowing back of property management swag. "I'll be at another one of these soon," I thought to myself as I offered my seat to one of the many elderly who looked like they needed a break from moseying. Big Law Brennan's words still rang in my ears, "Gen Z'ers don't want to work, they just want to be YouTubers!" If only young folks cared about things like the cost of housing. I'll have to bring that one back to the neighborhood youth council.