Anti-tenant corporate landlord group stoops to using thinly veiled hateful tropes in campaign against nonprofit fighting for rent control
LOS ANGELES (November 24, 2023) – AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has placed a full-page ad in the Jewish News of Northern California, exposing the anti-tenant California Apartment Association’s (CAA) despicable antisemitic attacks on AHF president and cofounder Michael Weinstein. CAA is using antisemitic tropes and placing deliberate emphasis on Mr. Weinstein’s Jewish last name as it attempts to smear him personally and attack the global lifesaving nonprofit he’s been running for more than 36 years.
Most recently, CAA representatives dressed as cockroaches to distribute anti-AHF propaganda as the organization itself continues to share false information online in an attempt to stop AHF’s ongoing efforts to address the escalating affordable housing and homelessness crises decimating California. AHF sponsors the Justice for Renters rent control ballot initiative which will come before voters in November 2024. As support for rent control grows, so does the vile, shameless nature of CAA’s attacks.
A recent PPIC poll shows 62% of likely California voters favor “a policy that would expand local government’s authority to enact rent control on residential property.”
The ad reads, in part, as follows:
It is a simple fact that under Michael’s leadership, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the organization he has led for 36 years, through its care and advocacy, has saved millions of lives around the globe and is the largest AIDS organization in the world.
(…)
It is equally uncontestable that AHF has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to provide housing to homeless and low-income people in response to a devastating humanitarian crisis. Yet you characterize him as a selfish, cheap, greedy slumlord and a scamming drug manipulator who is only out for himself. In other words, you are saying Michael is a modern-day shylock – an antisemitic trope if there ever was one.
(…)
There are simply no bounds to your lies and distortions. You know perfectly well that AHF uses its funds in strict adherence to federal regulations. You know further that your intent on trying to strip AHF of its non-profit status is solely to protect the obscene profits of the real estate billionaires that control CAA.
All these lies aren’t enough for you. For three different political campaigns, you only referred to him as “Weinstein,” as in “Weinstein’s Housing Freeze” and “Weinstein’s Scam.” It is an obvious political ploy to use antisemitism as a tool to whip up more votes. It’s shameful.”
