WASHINGTON, D.C. — Advocates from Stand Up Nashville (SUN) joined more than 100 tenant activists in Washington, D.C. Tuesday to fight for housing equity and eviction protection for renters nationally.

The activists imposed on the National Multifamily Housing Council's (NMHC) annual fall conference which is one of the nation's largest annual gatherings of corporate landlords. Renters and advocates called on lawmakers to dismiss real estate lobby money and stop opposing essential tenant protections at the behalf of real estate groups and developers.

SACRAMENTO, CA - Lourdes Diaz Gomez and her two young grandchildren have been baking in their south Sacramento apartment. They lived with a broken air conditioner in an apartment managed by Stanford Properties for over three months, including last week’s record-breaking heat wave.

That isn’t the only problem at Hampton Park Apartments, according to tenant activists with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

LOS ANGELES, CA - El jueves por la mañana un grupo de inquilinos acompañados de estudiantes activistas del colegio Occidental se reunieron frente a la vivienda de un inquilino quien acusa a su arrendataria de acoso.

El grupo indicó que este es un claro ejemplo por el cual la ciudad de Los Ángeles debe implementar la Ordenanza contra el Acoso de Inquilinos (TAHO) que fue aprobada el año pasado pero hasta ahora no ha podido ser utilizada por supuestamente no tener fondos.

OAKLAND, CA - When Maria Montes de Oca and her family moved into their apartment in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland fourteen years ago, there were already problems. The apartment clearly hadn’t been maintained; the carpet was stained and damaged, and neither the stove nor the fridge worked. Later on, there were cockroach infestation and mold issues. When Maria tried to get the landlord, Calvin Wong, to carry out repairs or fumigate, he would ignore her requests or tell her he’d use her security deposit to pay for it — a practice that’s illegal in California.

ANTIOCH, CA — Antioch tenants struggling to pay their bills could see some relief as a result of rent stabilization protections the City Council approved Tuesday.

The protections came on a split vote, with Mayor Pro Tem Mike Barbanica and Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock dissenting, after dozens of residents and advocates crowded City Hall, many carrying signs and sporting yellow or purple shirts representing some of the 15 nonprofit groups that supported capping annual rent increases for tenants.

The Antioch City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday to keep rent affordable, while also making sure landlords are held accountable.

Anita Mendoza and her neighbors at the Porto Apartments in San Pablo can finally relax a little: Their landlord recently abandoned the eviction notices he taped to tenants’ doors late last year.

When Rachel Orozco moved to the Miramar Imperial Beach Mobile Home and RV Park more than a year ago, she considered herself lucky. Her family lived nearby and the rent was cheap.  

The nearly five-acre piece of land, a mere half-mile from the Pacific Ocean, is home to about 100 people, most of whom live in mobile homes. It wasn’t much — a plot of dirt and some concrete — but Orozco, 32, was proud of it. She’d carved out a little space for her and her nine-year-old son.  

The park is one of the last affordable housing options for seniors, vets and other low-income folks in the area but it’s also increasingly difficult to hold onto because of an onerous policy. 

BERKELEY, Calif. (CN) — The city of Berkeley joins a growing list of California cities planning to ask voters whether property owners with vacant homes should be taxed to relieve unprecedented pressure on the housing market.

San Francisco, Napa, Santa Cruz and other cities all rank high in desirability and median rent rates, and are moving forward with vacancy tax measures to address a worsening housing availability crisis. Voters this November will weigh claims the strategy will free up revenue to create more affordable housing and push more units onto the strained market amid widespread home bidding wars. 

LOS ANGELES - A woman who was evicted from her home alleges her landlord harassed her and removed her toilet.

Ana Elsa Hernandez, 72, has lived in her rented garage for seven years. The unit was previously cited as substandard by the LA City Housing Department.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action launched a new tool Thursday designed to help tenants report problems with their rental units directly to Sacramento code enforcement. Organizers developed the online portal, they said, using the same checklist code enforcement officers and landlords use when inspecting units.

The tool allows renters to submit their contact information, responses to questions about a variety of characteristics of the property — from electricity, to water, to pests — and upload pictures of the unit. Those responses are then sent to the city and to ACCE Action, organizers said.

SACRAMENTO - The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment developed the online tenant tool to help tenants document repair requests.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — After a six-year battle and nearly two and a half years without paying rent, tenants of a 14-unit apartment building in Oakland have claimed victory over their landlord. Instead of tenants being evicted, their landlord is no longer involved.

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles renters who have been relying on the city’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium for the last two years could see changes, with several city councilors signaling an intent July 27 to discuss refining or possibly ending the moratorium.

Antioch took a step this week toward helping tenants facing large rent hikes by agreeing to craft rules to stabilize rents and add other protections.

Though no action was taken at a special meeting this week, council members directed staff to draft a rent stabilization ordinance — capping yearly rent increases — and bring it back for a vote next month.

On this episode of “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias and the Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon talk to a tenant and landlord about evictions and rent relief more than two years into the pandemic and after billions in spending.

There’s a surprising gap in California‘s rent cap law that renters everywhere need to know about.

When California lawmakers passed the state rent increase cap, AB 1482, in 2019, they called it “statewide.” But “statewide” does not mean it applies to every apartment or renter. Some tenants are finding out the hard way: with a shocking letter from their landlord.

Already, tenants across California might have gotten a notice posted to their doors promising a big rent increase come Aug. 1. And there will be something familiar to blame: inflation.

Landlords will be allowed to boost the rent on millions of apartments statewide by as much as 10% starting next month. It’s the maximum allowable annual increase under a state law passed a few years ago that was designed to protect tenants from being pushed out of their homes due to exorbitant rent hikes.

As a community advocate, Joe Delgado has learned to expect dysfunction from the city of Los Angeles.

For months, he and others with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment have been trying to get help for hundreds of Black and Latino tenants living in slum-like conditions at the Chesapeake Apartments, a sprawling complex in the heart of the L.A. City Council’s 10th District.

“They’ve identified potentially 160 units that have lead exposure where kids are living,” Delgado told me. “And there has not been any action taken to come and do blood testing to make sure these kids don’t have permanent brain damage.”

California is demanding that thousands of tenants and landlords who were approved for emergency rental assistance during the pandemic return the money — often months after it has been spent — sometimes for vague or unspecified reasons.

California está exigiendo que miles de inquilinos y propietarios a los que se les aprobó una asistencia de emergencia para la renta durante la pandemia devuelvan el dinero —a menudo meses después de haberlo gastado—, a veces por razones vagas o no especificadas.

In April, Juan Carlos Cruz Mora received an eviction notice from his landlord that alleged he caused property damage and dirty, unsafe living conditions in the Sacramento suburb duplex he had called home for the last 10 years. He had only five days to file a response in court.

Mora, who blamed his landlord for those issues, tried to file an answer with the court himself but feared a mistake could land him, his wife, and his two young children on the street. He said he paid a lawyer $1,000 to help.

“With one word I could lose the case,” he said in Spanish.

In April, Juan Carlos Cruz Mora received an eviction notice from his landlord that alleged he caused property damage and dirty, unsafe living conditions in the Sacramento suburb duplex he had called home for the last 10 years. He had only five days to file a response in court.

Mora, who blamed his landlord for those issues, tried to file an answer with the court himself but feared a mistake could land him, his wife, and his two young children on the street. He said he paid a lawyer $1,000 to help.

“With one word I could lose the case,” he said in Spanish.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued recent legal guidance in response to a rise in illegal eviction lockouts along with a call for law enforcement to intervene.

Nearly 1.5 million renters in California are at risk of eviction. In San Diego County, the Legal Aid Society said it is seeing a surge of people who have been evicted by their landlords illegally.

About six weeks after a Sacramento woman called the city to report code violations at her rental home, she came home to find a letter taped to her door.

Yanika Gilbert, 39, and her nephew, 15, had just three days to get out of the south Sacramento house or the landlord would file eviction paperwork at the courthouse, the letter said. With nowhere to go, the pair did not leave.

The eviction is now underway. If they have to go, Gilbert said she will not only become homeless, but also could lose custody of her nephew Dimitris Gilbert, who’s been in her care for the last decade.