Tenants of America's Biggest Landlord Form Union to Fight Evictions, Rent Hikes

The largest landlord in the United States resumed evictions in 2022 after years of upholding a self-imposed eviction ban, and in at least one city that means resetting rents with huge increases, a new report says. And now, tenants in buildings owned by investment firm Blackstone are organizing to do something about it. 

The report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment found that, in Florida alone, the private equity giant had filed for 350 evictions between August and December 2022. Extrapolating from a sampling of just three counties and two states where Blackstone owns property, the report estimates that Blackstone may have filed thousands of eviction filings just in the last six months of last year.

During the pandemic, Blackstone refrained from evicting people for non-payment for two years across its housing portfolios, even after a federal eviction ban lapsed and some cities and states had no eviction ban in place. It could afford to do so: the company owns over 300,000 rental units across the United States, has a market cap of about $100 billion, and manages $975 billion worth of assets across the globe. Since the end of the firm’s voluntary pause on evictions, they’ve ramped up at a staggering pace: In Georgia, the company filed 170 evictions last October; in Maricopa County, Arizona, the company filed 70 evictions in September, according to the report. “In some cases, Blackstone filed to evict tenants who owed just one month’s rent,” it said.

In a statement to Motherboard, a Blackstone rep disputed its findings but refrained from providing examples where numbers were wrong, saying, “The report and statements are riddled with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations. We believe we have the most favorable resident policies among any large landlord in the U.S., including not making a single non-payment eviction for over two years during COVID.”

But Blackstone now appears to be enjoying the financial benefits from evictions. Earlier this year the head of its real estate division Nadeem Meghji invoked the company’s evictions to reassure investors in the company’s real estate investment trust (REIT), according to a transcript from a video call leaked to Insider. 

“We’re also seeing a meaningful increase in economic occupancy as we move past what were voluntary eviction restrictions that had been in place for the last couple of years,” Meghji said on the call.

The Blackstone Tenants Union (BTU) was formed in 2021 when Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action (ACCE), a 501c4 that works on housing issues, helped organize tenants in San Diego after the buildings were purchased by Blackstone. Tenants decided on their own to form a union as a chapter of ACCE, and elected a chair, co-chair, secretary and treasurer in December 2021, according to ACCE communications director Anya Svanoe.

Darlene S., 68, president of BTU, said that the organization meets once a month to share grievances and work on strategy. She said ACCE called her in 2021 after Blackstone bought her building and told her about the company’s buying spree. She said when Blackstone took over, maintenance slowed down in her building. Residents had a sit down with representatives from Blackstone and gave them a list of maintenance issues. She says the company started to take care of issues after the push back, but kept raising rents.

“The rent has skyrocketed,” Darlene, who requested that her surname remain anonymous, told Motherboard. “There's tenants that had leases in the past before Blackstone who no longer have lease renewals.” She said people have been evicted and others couldn’t afford the new rents, moving in with friends and family or leaving town.

At a group of apartment buildings at Escondido in San Diego County, Blackstone’s evictions appear to have allowed the company to raise rents faster than it would legally be able to through lease renewals, according to the report. It looked at average rents in 8 Escondido apartment complexes containing so-called “naturally occurring affordable housing,” or housing that rents at affordable rates without any formal rent restrictions or subsidies. California state law limits rent hikes in lease renewals to 10 percent or less, yet average rents in these buildings have grown by as much as 64 percent between September 2021 and March 2023, according to the report. 

In a statement, Blackstone said its ownership of U.S. housing isn’t an overall driver for national rent increases. “We are not driving rents. A shortage of housing is driving increased rents. We own less than 1 percent of rental housing in the U.S., and given our ownership levels, we have virtually no ability to impact market rent trends,” the statement read.

“Further, we are committed to following all relevant laws, including California’s rent stabilization law–AB 1482, and any implication otherwise is inaccurate.” (The report does not suggest Blackstone is violating the law, but rather evicting tenants in order to raise rents within its parameters.)

Tenants with the San Diego Blackstone Tenants Union held a town hall meeting with San Diego Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, Mayor of Imperial Beach Paloma Aguirre and Councilmember Jose Rodriguez on Saturday, calling on them to support the Homelessness Prevention Act, or SB 567, which would limit rent renewals to 5 percent and extend “good cause” eviction protections, so that month to month tenants can’t be evicted without reason.

“All three of them committed that they would work with us to build support for rent control and just cause in their cities and to move city resolutions in support of SB 567—the statewide rent cap reduction and just cause eviction protections expansion,” the ACCE’s  Svanoe said. 

Jacquelyn Delgado joined the San Diego Blackstone Tenants Union in February, just a week before moving out of a Blackstone-owned apartment. Delgado, who lives with her husband, children, and brother, said that she signed and turned in a 12-month lease last August, agreeing to pay $2,192 a month. 

But when Blackstone took over the apartment, she said, a rotating series of temporary office workers at her property manager gave her varying explanations for why they weren’t honoring the lease, claiming Delgado was responsible for a new, higher monthly rent. She said that the company finally told her that her husband and brother hadn’t signed the lease, so it wouldn’t be honored.

Blackstone has refused to accept any rent payments from her since November unless they were in full for the new amount, along with late fees, she said. While this was happening, she said that she struggled to get anyone to address needed repairs in her unit, including a broken fridge and sink.

In a statement to Motherboard, Blackstone said, “Since our ownership of these communities began, we have completed 23,000 work orders, invested $37 million to make them better places to live, and implemented financial literacy and after school programming on-site free of charge to residents.” The company told Motherboard that it returns what it considers to be partial rent so that tenants have funds to move elsewhere. 

Delgado moved in February, but she said she’s still fighting the company over unpaid rent at the higher amount, which surpasses $10,000.

She said her building is mostly families, and some of her neighbors were going through similar issues with Blackstone, which is refusing to accept rent or sign new leases. “They were trying to live week to week, paycheck to paycheck,” Delgado said. 

She’s worried that Blackstone is trying to kick her former neighbors out in order to bump up the rent. 

“That’s why they didn’t want to accept the rent,” she said. “I just think that’s ridiculous what they’re doing, I think that’s unfair. There’s people that lived there for years and always paid the rent, and as soon as [Blackstone] took over, out of the blue, they don’t want to accept the rent, they won’t accept the lease.”

She doesn’t understand why such a rich company needs to resort to evicting tenants. “If they have billions of dollars….what’s the need of kicking [people] out and getting more money? Why are they so money hungry?”

Blackstone’s reach extends far beyond San Diego, and even the United States. In 2019, the UN accused Blackstone of exacerbating the housing crisis across the globe by inflating rents across its portfolio and charging enormous fees for repairs and maintenance. The problem was not just in the U.S., but also in Denmark, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain and Sweden.