Housing Rights Advocates Call on Billionaire Landlord Geoffrey Palmer to Stop Putting Profits Above People

A coalition of tenants' rights advocates that include Housing Is A Human Right (HHR), the housing advocacy division of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), will stage a socially-distant protest calling out the predatory housing practices of Geoffrey Palmer, a billionaire landlord. He owns and manages more than 11,000 apartments in Southern California.

Palmer has a notorious reputation within the housing space. He was named "Downtown L.A.'s Worst Developer" after winning a 2007 lawsuit that overturned L.A.'s zoning requirements for including affordable housing in new developments ? known as "inclusionary housing." Housing activists hold up inclusionary housing as a critical tool to ensure that luxury-housing developers build affordable housing during California's housing affordability crisis. And in 2019, Palmer was hit with a class-action lawsuit that charged him with wrongly keeping millions of dollars in rental security deposits from thousands of tenants in Southern California.

Like many corporate landlords and developers, Palmer has spent millions of dollars to prevent efforts to protect renters in California.

The SOCIALLY-DISTANT PROTEST will start at 8:30 a.m. and run until 10:00 a.m. in Beverly Hills.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Ruthie Thomas, Communications Director, Housing Is A Human Right [email protected] (310) 663-4159 cell
Jacquie Burbank, Western Grassroots Director, Housing Is A Human Right (HHR) [email protected] (323) 208-1505 cell

"California's housing affordability and homeless crises have only been compounded by COVID-19, as millions of people face financial uncertainty," said Rene Moya, Housing Is A Human Right and Proposition 21 Campaign Director. "Now more than ever, we need people to come together to help solve the issues that burden our neighbors and communities. Let's call out predatory landlords like Palmer, who continue to fight against every effort to keep families in their homes."

AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent non-profit of Housing Is A Human Right and Healthy Housing Foundation, has long addressed public health emergencies -- from the AIDS epidemic to the Ebola crisis to California's homeless crisis. AHF will do everything it can to help the vulnerable during this difficult time.