What was the goal of Measure H?

Measure H was introduced as a citizen ballot measure in the November 2022 election to amend the City Charter of Pasadena. Once passed and approved in December 2022, the Measure was incorporated into the City Charter as Chapter 18.

The Pasadena Tenants Union (PTU) was the main force in creating the measure and supporting the passage. Who actually wrote the measure is unclear but in a December 2022 interview published on a website called jacobin.com, a supporter is quoted saying that the PTU drafted the law in 2018 and then redrafted it as a charter amendment prior to the ballot initiative in 2022.

One organizer, Bee Rooney, is quoted “we are specifically implementing protections for tenants trying to organize against their landlords” and Jane Panangaden is quoted “This gives tenants a way to threaten their landlord. Landlords already have a way to threaten tenants by fu#$% with their housing. Now tenants can also use the legal system to threaten the landlord.”

Jane is later quoted in a way that gets to an interesting place. “Our next step is to heighten the antagonism between us and the landlords.” and “We couldn’t bring out the antagonism effectively during the campaign because we knew that it could jeopardize our electoral success. Now that we’ve won, we need to ramp up that kind of political education.”

As a dedicated socialist, Bee Rooney also is quoted with a more complete view of her goals:

'“We have no illusions about the nature of our political systems. Because of that, we know that this measure passing is just creating a tool that we will use to build toward a future revolution.”

Ryan Bell is now the Chairman of the Rental Housing Board and is quoted in a way that clarifies that he is not looking for any equity or fairness in rental housing. “We were being cautious because we needed to win an election and try to alienate as few people as possible while still being clear about what we were demanding. Now, we can clearly uplift these contradictions and really emphasize to tenants that your landlord is not your economic ally. They are extracting value from you.”

He follows that up with this:

“What I really want to tell developers and landlords during the campaign was that our eventual goal is to convert that housing into public housing….Our fight has to extent to public housing to ensure that these people can’t hold their ownership as leverage over us when we demand justice.”

The full text and article can be found here - https://jacobin.com/2022/12/pasadena-tenants-union-rent-control-measure-h-organizing

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