Blackstone’s acquisition of Tricon will accelerate the affordable housing crisis

Finance Watchdog Group: Blackstone’s Acquisition of Tricon Will Accelerate the Affordable Housing Crisis and Harm Tenants  
PESP Calls on Investors and Regulators to Reject Deal   

Following the announcement that private equity giant Blackstone plans to acquire Tricon Residential, the watchdog group Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) is calling on investors to block the deal.

Blackstone, which is already the largest landlord in the nation, and the world, announced that it planned to get even bigger by acquiring Tricon, which owns and operates 38,000 SFR properties in the U.S.

Blackstone already owns 28,000 single-family rental (SFR) homes, and if the acquisition is approved, Blackstone would be the third-largest SFR owner in the U.S. behind only Progress Residential and Invitation Homes.

Blackstone intends to purchase Tricon through a private equity fund Real Estate Partners X, in which a number of public employee pension funds have invested billions of dollars, including CalSTRS (the California State Teachers Retirement System), the North Carolina Retirement System, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund.

Citing Blackstone’s poor track record as a landlord and its role in driving up housing prices, PESP is calling on those pension funds to tell Blackstone not to invest their money in this deal unless Blackstone agrees to a set of standards that ensure strong protections for tenants and protect investors from potential headline and reputational risks rising from rent increases, evictions, and other predatory practices.

PESP is also calling on federal regulators to block the deal as it will create an anti-competitive marketplace and will harm tenants.

“This deal will harm tenants and establish an anti-competitive marketplace. It should be rejected by both investors and regulators,” said Jordan Ash, of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. “Blackstone’s poor track record as a landlord is well known and well documented. Giving them more of a market share would be disastrous and only accelerate the affordable housing crisis in this nation.”

For more information about Blackstone’s outsized role in the housing industry: https://pestakeholder.org/reports/blackstone-comes-to-collect-how-americas-largest-landlord-and-wall-streets-highest-paid-ceo-are-jacking-up-rents-and-ramping-up-evictions/