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From:Christopher Gregson To:GRP-City Council Subject:Item 9.B Public Comment Date:Friday, July 24, 2026 4:29:19 PM Attachments:Legal Exp 02-25-21.xlsx [You don't often get email from c.t.gregson@icloud.com. Learn why this is important at https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fus-west- 2.protection.sophos.com%2F%3Fd%3Daka.ms%26u%3DaHR0cHM6Ly9ha2EubXMvTGVhcm5BYm91dFNlbmRlcklkZW50aWZpY2F0aW9u%26p%3Dm%26i%3DNjRkZDg4ZDJkOTIyMWYyOWQyMzk0OTA3%26t%3DQXQrTks5eVRETVB4b0tLcWJoMGJTQ1hKTWNtSndlM0xNbHhMZzh0VkNQWT0%3D%26h%3D8c2abd3ef9a546a6b301cba978d0e22f%26s%3DAVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVYb9JTX7BylxxrZWN_h03781j6zwgLZQBTVfnMWFXPt4hcrD9deJ05ztzf1sfA8ZKX4- qgftXEFsvYTgZnvOTOE&data=05%7C02%7Ccouncil-autoreply%40redwoodcity.org%7C831e53c6f6ae498f9e7d08dee9db5e78%7C02eee40d6a354d7588035403096cc23e%7C0%7C0%7C639205325586650994%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TgAifGuTrd82M7MNZlqt2Fx93%2FrKupiomdp17tb7FNQ%3D&reserved=0 ] I’ve been a resident of Redwood City for 24 years and I want to express my strong opposition to the expanded rent control measures of Item 9.B. I understand that the city council my be required to place the measure on the ballot, but I would also like to see the council publicly oppose the measure. I’ve been a landlord in Oakland for the past 15 years, so I’ve personally seen where this measure leads and it’s a complete nightmare. It has led to a crushing regulatory burden for small landlords in Oakland, a bloated and unnecessary city bureaucracy, significantly lower tax revenues for the city, and an increasingly hostile climate between landlords and tenants that has made constructive dialog impossible. In large part because of its housing policies, Oakland is running a $100m annual budget deficit. The police are underfunded by 40%. The roads are riddled with pot holes and cluttered with trash. And yet the city continues to spend lavishly on the Rent Adjustment Program. It’s a terrible waste, and a misallocation of tax dollars. In addition, the hidden agenda of these lengthy regulations is actually to gut the courts and to prevent any kind of meaningful contract enforcement. I don’t say this as an attack on rent control or eviction control, per se. There can be a role for these types of policies. But what people don’t understand is that most of the regulations are designed to prevent small landlords from evicting tenants who haven’t paid the rent. I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen this first hand, more than once. We’ve always been model landlords. We know the law. We follow the law. We treat our tenants with respect. We’re diligent about making repairs. Yet when we’ve had tenants stop paying the rent, we’ve found it impossible to get rid of them without writing a big check. It was totally unfair. We were the injured party. We worked hard to provide high quality housing. We did everything right. But in the end, we had to pay the bad tenant to move out. I keep a spreadsheet to track our legal expenses and we’ve incurred over $156k just to recover possession of apartments after tenant defaults. This was a crushing blow for us. It was only 13 units. I also want to highlight the negative impact of these policies on the finances of the city: — Most obviously, the city’s expenses will go up by a lot as they try to enforce the new regulations. — Oakland assesses an annual business tax on landlords, calculated as a percentage of rents collected. But because of local rent control, the rent base is often 25% or more below market, which means the city’s tax revenues are 25% lower than they could be, which means that there isn’t enough money to fund essential services. — Even worse, Oakland has developed a bad reputation because of the hostile regulatory environment. Buildings routinely sell at valuations 20% below other Bay Area cities for this reason alone. When buildings sell, property taxes reset to the new sale price. But the property tax reassessment is significantly lower than it could be, and this also hurts funding for essential services. We’re actually going through this right now. We’re completely ed up with Oakland, We’re selling the buildings to get out of the city. They’ve been on the market for months, but there are very few buyers. We’re trying to be realistic about price, and we’ve been taking steep price reductions. But it hasn’t helped. And the main problem is the hostile regulatory environment of the city. I also want to remind the council that California already extends very significant rent control and eviction control protections. And the beauty of California rent control is that it’s enforced by the courts. The system we have now is a much more efficient way to extend essentially the same protections to renters, without placing a large and unnecessary financial burden on cities. Lastly, I want to acknowledge that Redwood City has done a commendable job of building new housing … way more than almost any other city in the Bay Area. In the long run, this is the only way to make housing more affordable. Certain cities, like SF and Oakland, have had aggressive local rent control policies for almost 50 years now and it hasn’t made housing any cheaper. Probably the opposite. Because most people are not willing to building new housing in cities that are so hostile to housingproviders. Please oppose this initiative by any means necessary. Thank you Chris Gregson19 Grand St