Hundreds of students, workers, tenants participate at 7 UC campuses; claim UC is major shareholder in $3.5B controversial private equity investment trust that’s been linked to state’s housing affordability Crisis
On Valentine’s Day, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, students, the University of California’s (UC) union of low-wage frontline service and patient care workers – members of AFSCME Local 3299 – alongside Blackstone tenants and community members with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) called on UC Chancellors to “Break up with Blackstone” and invest in affordable housing. The global Wall Street private equity firm Blackstone has become the largest landlord in America and has been accused of worsening high housing costs and evictions.
Actions were held across the state in seven locations on the campuses of UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego. The renewed call to divest from Blackstone follows the announcement of its $3.5 billion acquisition of Tricon Residential Inc. UC invested $4.5 billion in Blackstone’s BREIT in 2023 to boost investor confidence amid a wave of shareholder redemptions.
Blackstone went on an aggressive buying spree in 2021 and 2022, expanding its residential real estate empire, and adding over 200,000 housing units to its portfolio, including 5,600 naturally occurring affordable housing units in the San Diego area. ACCE released a report earlier this year with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project showing that Blackstone had raised rents in some units in San Diego between 43% – 64% in two years. Even before its announced acquisition of Tricon Residential, Blackstone owned more than 300,000 housing units, including a majority stake in the nation’s largest provider of student housing. As California becomes increasingly unaffordable, throwing more families into homelessness, Blackstone’s aggressiveness as one of the largest landlords in the state in hiking up rents for its thousands of units only adds to the problem.
UC acknowledged last year that its staff vacancy rate had tripled under the weight of California’s housing affordability crisis since the start of the COVID Pandemic, but has thus far failed to act on calls from students and workers to divest from Blackstone and invest in more affordable housing. The University currently houses just 38% of its students in places that cost 30% more, on average than comparable campus communities nationwide. Recent news reports have chronicled the struggles of UC’s low-wage service and patient care workers being forced to commute several hours or sleep in their cars to maintain their employment.
AFSCME Local 3299 represents more than 33,000 Service and Patient Care Technical workers at UC’s 10 campuses, 5 medical centers, numerous clinics, research laboratories, and UC Law, SF.
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action is a grassroots, member-led, statewide community organization working with more than 16,000 members across California. ACCE is dedicated to raising the voices of everyday Californians, neighborhood by neighborhood, to fight for the policies and programs we need to improve our communities and create a brighter future.
Leave a Reply