The movie "Jaws" came out in 1975. I liked this image for a 1977 rent control poster, drawn by Vicki Morgan. In a year of vicious smears by landlords and the conservatives, at least this poster fought back.
The landlords turned out to be highly successful sharks, exploiting a massive campaign spending advantage. They scared tenants into voting against rent control. The pro-tenant rent control initiatives lost in April 1977 by a very large margin. Most observers would have concluded that rent control was now dead in Berkeley.
All that would change a year later, thanks to unintended consequences from Proposition 13, the conservative Jarvis-Gann state initiative that drastically cut property taxes (and resurrected rent control).
