Students, residents, and PESP staff tell UC regents how PE investments harm affordable housing

The University of California (UC) has invested billions of dollars from its endowment and its staff retirement plan with private equity-owned landlords. These landlords own apartments, student housing, subsidized affordable housing, single-family rental homes, and manufactured home parks.  In November and January, students, residents, and PESP staff made public comments at the UC Regents meetings at UCLA about the UC’s investments with two of those landlords – Blackstone and Brookfield – as well as about the UC’s investments with another private equity company, Thoma Bravo, which owns the algorithmic rent setting software RealPage.

Brookfield

The UC has invested with the private equity firm Brookfield, which is in talks to acquire Yes! Communities, one of the largest owners of manufactured home parks in the U.S, with approximately 266 parks in its portfolio, with over 77,000 total home sites. Residents and PESP staff asked the regents not to make any future investments with Brookfield until the company agrees to meet with residents and commit to a basic set of standards that will improve conditions for residents.

In January, Yes! Communities residents told regents about the problems they have been experiencing. Anna Allen, a resident of Yes’s Fremont Grove in Illinois said, “Yes Communities is making our lives miserable,” and told the regents about the large increases in lot rent she has to pay. Abbie Pedrotte, a resident of Yes’s Lawndale Estates in Michigan, told the regents how Yes’s practices have negatively impacted her life. “Their constantly raising rent prices puts myself and my other fixed-income neighbors at serious risk of homelessness. The rent just keeps going up, but no improvements have been made.” Abbie added that to Yes, “we aren’t human beings, we’re mere dollar signs, and neither our rights nor quality of life seems to matter at all.”

Jordan Ash, PESP’s housing director, told the regents how manufactured home residents have “reported rent increases of as much as 100% after private equity-owned landlords took over their parks, as well as egregious maintenance issues.” He noted that residents such as Anna and Abbie are already experiencing serious problems and won’t be able to withstand conditions worsening under a new private equity owner.

Brookfield currently owns over 200 apartment buildings with about 60,000 total apartment units and 40 manufactured home parks with almost 10,000 home sites, according to CoStar.

Thoma Bravo and RealPage

Michael Fenne, PESP’s senior policy coordinator, said that the UC has invested $1.3 billion with Thoma Bravo, which owns the algorithmic property management software company RealPage. “Since 2022, RealPage has been the subject of bans in major cities, class action lawsuits, and state lawsuits due to allegations of facilitating price collusion among competing landlords through using an algorithm to provide rental price recommendations. These allegations eventually led to a Department of Justice lawsuit with eight states serving as co-plaintiffs, including California.”

“We are asking you to halt all investments with Thoma Bravo,” Fenne told the regents, “until RealPage removes the rental price sharing component of its software.”

Blackstone

Several UCLA students criticized the UC’s huge investments with Blackstone, while students, workers, and the community struggle to afford housing.

Tai Ge Min spoke on behalf of over 20 organizations that are part of the UC Divest Coalition at UCLA, which is urging the UC to divest from Blackstone.  Min noted that Blackstone “is the largest corporate landlord in the world” and “owns over 300,000 properties across the U.S. and spends millions lobbying against policies such as rent control.” Min noted that Blackstone has acquired American Campus Communities, which owns student housing at UC Berkeley, Irvine, and Riverside.

Ella Hanson told the regents, “I am so tired of working multiple jobs, 50 hours a week, with 4 hours of sleep a night, to pay my rent and afford an education here.I am so tired of watching my coworkers and friends and the people I share this community with, struggle and suffer, and I am so angry knowing that the UC has $8.9 billion invested in Blackstone, a private equity firm, that makes their money off of displacing people, the housing crisis locally in California.”

Several of the students criticized the University for investing $4.5 billion in 2023 to bailout BREIT (the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust).

Another student, Evan, noted that Blackstone had promised the University an 11.25% annual return on its investment. Evan read an investment analyst report that as of February 2025, the UC’s annualized return was just 1.3%. To reach the 11.25% hurdle, BREIT would need to produce a cumulative total return of +84% from March 2025 to December 2028, or +17.3% annualized. For reference, BREIT has only had one year where its total return was more than 12.3%.”[1]  “To what extent are you fulfilling your fiduciary duty to this university through not only investing in LA’s affordable housing crisis but a failing fund.”

Amy Cohen, told the regents, “Just last year the student housing situation at UCLA got worse. We’re seeing dorms that 8 students were in, now that 10 students are in. And the cost of housing around the UCLA campus is incredibly high, personally I live of campus with my 3 roomates and we’re paying $1,000 per month each for rent. So many students I know are struggling with this, and workers as well. When I worked in the dining hall, so many of my colleagues lived so far away and had to commute so many hours every single day, because they could not afford to live near this university.”

“I am incredibly angry that this university invested $8.9 billion in Blackstone, a firm that, as folks mentioned, is fueling the housing crisis,” Cohen continued. “I am here to urge you to divest from Blackstone and meet with the students and workers of this university.”

In 2024, PESP issued a report documenting how Blackstone “contributed to and profits from California’s broken housing system.”

[1] https://chiltoncapital.com/2025/04/01/turning-up-the-heat-on-breit-april-2025/#:~:text=UC%20Investments%20Update&text=As%20of%20February%202025%2C%20UC,%2C%20or%20+17.3%25%20annualized.