When a private equity giant bought California-based grocery chain Cardenas Markets in 2022, grocery workers like Maria Vargas saw their hours slashed.
“I can’t cover my expenses anymore,” said Vargas, who, like almost a third of all renters in the country, spends more than half her paycheck on rent. When Vargas asked her employer for more hours or better wages, she was told the company couldn’t afford it. “They tell us they are limited in the hours they can give based on the amount they are making from sales,” Vargas said. “They tell us that if we don’t like it, we can find somewhere else to work.”
While Vargas and her coworkers struggle to make rent, however, government assistance meant to support housing affordability is instead enriching the supermarket’s private equity owner, Apollo Global Management. Through another tentacle of its private equity empire, the nearly $1 trillion firm has tapped billions in publicly-supported funds from the Federal Home Loan Bank System, a little-known relic of the Great Depression originally established to encourage affordable mortgage lending.
