{"id":26527,"date":"2025-07-23T12:53:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T16:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26527"},"modified":"2025-07-23T13:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T17:03:00","slug":"californias-proposed-ab-1414-would-deprive-lower-income-tenants-of-critical-internet-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26527\/californias-proposed-ab-1414-would-deprive-lower-income-tenants-of-critical-internet-service\/","title":{"rendered":"California&#8217;s Proposed AB 1414 Would Deprive Lower-Income Tenants of Critical Internet Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I&#8217;m from the Government, and I&#8217;m here to help.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u2019s a good reason why one of Ronald Reagan\u2019s most memorable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reaganfoundation.org\/ronald-reagan\/quotes\/the-nine-most-terrifying-words-in-the-english-language\"><strong>adages<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0remains so poignant today.<\/p>\n<p>Namely, government officials\u2019 ability to harm people whom their well-intentioned laws are meant to benefit remains a tragic and all-too-common pitfall of government activity.<\/p>\n<p>A recent illustration of that tragic paradox exists in a California proposal known as AB 1414, which if enacted would prohibit landlords from making internet service subscriptions with specific service providers part of their rental packages.<\/p>\n<p>Although any proposal that purports to increase tenant choice seems superficially positive in the abstract, the problem with AB 1414 is that it would only undermine a critical tool that makes broadband access more affordable for lower-income tenants throughout the state.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n<p>Landlords serving lower-income tenants often reach agreement with internet service providers to offer group discounted rates to their tenants.\u00a0 Accordingly, those lower-income tenants become able to access high-speed broadband at much lower rates and without such additional costs as deposits, installation fees and even credit history investigations.\u00a0 It\u2019s a big win for lower-income tenants.<\/p>\n<p>However well-intentioned, AB 1414 would undermine those beneficial accommodations.\u00a0 As a result, lower-income tenants would only suffer reduced access to high-speed internet, pay more for the service, reduce incentives for internet service providers to offer service to those customers and only widen the nation\u2019s \u201cdigital divide\u201d between upper-income and lower-income Americans.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, existing federal laws already protect tenants by banning service providers from imposing contractual provisions granting them exclusive rights to provide video services to apartment complexes.<\/p>\n<p>Accordingly, while it\u2019s in everyone\u2019s interest to close the digital divide and increase internet access for lower-income consumers, AB 1414 will only have the opposite effect.\u00a0 Hopefully California lawmakers perceive that reality in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I&#8217;m from the Government, and I&#8217;m here to help. There\u2019s a good reason why one of Ronald Reagan\u2019s most memorable adages\u00a0remains so poignant today. Namely, government officials\u2019 ability to harm people whom their well-intentioned laws are meant to benefit remains a tragic and all-too-common pitfall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5286,1388,299,308,5153,2566],"class_list":["post-26527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-ab-1414","tag-broadband","tag-california","tag-internet","tag-internet-service","tag-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26527"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26531,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26527\/revisions\/26531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}