The fight to pass Prop 33 won’t be easy. Ballot measures to repeal Costa-Hawkins have already failed twice—in 2018 and again in 2020.

Simon-Weisberg believes these failures can be attributed to the well-funded realtor lobby, which has consistently backed campaigns to preserve Costa-Hawkins. “It’s not a reflection of tenants’ doing something wrong, it’s the realtors’ spending so much money,” she said. “It’s always people who have so much money being able to distort our elections.”

Already, the realtor lobby has poured in over $33 million to kill the initiative, launching a widespread ad campaign against the ballot measure. Opponents of Prop 33 organizing as the “No on 33” coalition claim that the proposition would jeopardize the health of California’s affordable housing stock and reduce the construction of new affordable housing.

Not all economists agree. Manuel Pastor, the director of the USC Equity Research Institute, likens this criticism of rent control to that of minimum wage. “There’s long been a sort of economist story around supply and demand, and the idea that if you put in minimum-wage laws or rent-stabilization measures, that you’re going to distort the market,” Pastor said. But the recent wave of minimum-wage legislation hasn’t resulted in the rise in unemployment economists predicted, he said. In fact, a 2023 study published in The Review of Economic Studies found that, in the low-wage retail sector, minimum-wage increases often result in increased employment. “If the economic emperor has no clothes talking about the labor market, what is the reality going on in the rental market?” Pastor said.

Tony Strickland, a Republican council member for Huntington Beach, supports Prop 33 for a different reason from its progressive backers’. Strickland argues that the measure would give local jurisdictions protection from California’s enforcement of its housing policy, effectively blocking the state from suing jurisdictions like Huntington Beach. Strickland has said that the proposition would allow municipalities to circumnavigate the state’s affordable housing mandates by setting unreasonable rent caps to stifle any new housing development.

Critics of Prop 33 have highlighted Strickland’s support to explain their opposition, framing the ballot measure as a conservative proposal, while calling attention to other endorsements of Prop 33 that seem to unsettle partisan divides. Both Bernie Sanders and Strickland are supporters, while Democrats like state Representative Buffy Wicks and state Senator Toni Atkins have opposed the measure, citing the Strickland-championed theory that the measure has a “Trojan horse” provision that actually undermines affordable housing.

However, tenants’ rights activists say Strickland is fooling himself and such accusations are baseless. Simon-Weisberg points to the fact that setting unreasonable rent caps that discourage development is illegal. In fact, in the 1976 case Birkenfeld v. City of Berkeley, the Supreme Court of California found that rent controls are only legal “if they are reasonably calculated to eliminate excessive rents and at the same time provide landlords with a just and reasonable return on their property.” In effect, Simon-Weisberg says, this means that it would be illegal for a local jurisdiction like Huntington Beach to set a rent cap of $500, for example, to discourage new construction.

Moreover, a broader survey of endorsements sees political interests aligning in more predictable ways: The Republican Party of California has opposed Prop 33, while the state’s Democratic Party has endorsed the measure, positioning Strickland, Wicks, and Atkins as outliers in their own parties.

The critics have largely campaigned on the idea that Prop 33 creates a “loophole” rather than arguing against the policy of rent control itself. “Opposition campaigns never want to outright attack rent control,” said Shanti Singh, legislative director for the statewide coalition Tenants Together. “No one wants to admit that they’re attacking rent control. It’s too popular. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t use a lot of deceptive messaging.”

For many tenant activists, Prop 33—and the protracted struggle over Costa-Hawkins—could be a long-awaited step forward in the state’s ability to preserve affordable housing. The lessons of Costa-Hawkins are applicable beyond California as well. “You can’t tackle inflation without tackling housing,” Singh said. “It’s becoming harder and harder to ignore rent control as one of—not the only, but one of—the necessary policy solutions.”

However, Lopez warns that even if Prop 33 is approved at the ballot box, it will likely face legal challenges. Further, individual localities must go through their own legislative processes to implement new rent control policies, a process that could take years. “It’s not like everyone will magically have rent control the day after the proposition passes,” said Lopez. “It may also require some localities to amend their ordinances if they contained language mirroring the Costa-Hawkins limitations.”

If Costa-Hawkins isn’t repealed this November, activists say they will continue to organize. “We believe firmly in the right of every tenant in California to organize for and win decent living conditions, whether their landlord is a for-profit, a nonprofit, or the government—no exceptions. Our members organize across all these forms of housing,” Singh said. “We universally support Prop 33 on principle because repealing Costa-Hawkins is good and necessary policy regardless of who puts it forward.”