BAY AREA, CA - When California lawmakers passed a rent cap four years ago to protect tenants from large and frequent rent hikes, they exempted hundreds of thousands of units reserved for some of the state’s poorest renters.

Low-income housing, after all, is usually built with public subsidies that already impose rent ceilings on developers and property owners. Some are already managed or overseen by local public housing agencies.

But California also has more than 350,000 privately owned low-income housing units — built with the help of federal tax credits — exempted from the state’s rent cap. Residents of some of those units have seen their rents soar despite being the exact demographic the law sought to protect.

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