who is equity residential?
Equity Residential or “EQR” is one of the biggest landlords in the United States, owning 84,648 apartment units across the country. The enterprise is worth $36 billion dollars and its CEO made $11,359,954 in 2024.
As a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), EQR’s central goal is to provide profits to investors, not housing to all of us.
While their investor presentations are glossy, there is a darker reality under the surface….
DID YOU KNOW?
🏚️ EQR is an eviction machine!
Equity Residential is the largest landlord in Los Angeles and that city’s top evictor. Research has shown that they are disproportionately evicting Black tenants.
📈 They are constantly raising rent, often illegally!
EQR uses junk fees and algorithmic price fixing to raise rents in violation of rent control and anti-trust protections. They have also been criticized by tenant organizers for profiteering in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires. The company is among the landlords an analysis by The Rent Brigade found most frequently attempting to illegally price gouge in the county.
⚠️ Law-breaking appears to be a core part of EQR’s business model.
Now that tenants are talking to one another and sharing our stories, we realize that EQR regularly uses illegal practices that violate consumer protections, tenants’ rights under EQR’s own contracts, and anti-trust regulations.
These violations include systematic use of junk fees like RUBS to skirt rent control, deceptive business practices like luring tenants with one price and charging another, widespread habitability problems (leaking pipes, mold, broken elevators…), and using algorithms to fix prices in advance of anti-trust law.
“They spend our rent fighting laws that protect tenants!”
— FORMER TENANT
YES that’s right! They use profits from our rent payments to fight legislation that would keep rent down!
Since 2018 they have spent $30 million dollars in California alone to fight rent control - in other words, legislation that would help keep rent prices down.
