LOS ANGELES, California - Tenant rights organizations gathered Wednesday afternoon on USC’s campus to express their outrage with the university’s building plans for upcoming expansion projects. The protest started at the S Vermont Ave and Downey Way intersection and ended at Doheny Memorial Library.

In attendance were representatives from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Eastside LEADS, Inner City Struggle, Legacy LA and ACCE Action.

The protestors wrote and posted an eviction notice to USC President Carol Folt. They delivered it to Rene Pak instead, chief of staff in Folt’s office. The eviction notice stated: “YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that effective THIRTY (30) DAYS from the date of service on you of this notice; the tenancy of the premises known as the USC Health Science Campus and South L.A. Campus is terminated, at which time you are required to vacate and surrender possession of the premises.”

The notice demands fair union contracts for shuttle bus drivers and maintenance workers, various community benefit agreements, support of legacy businesses and defunding USC’s Department of Public Safety (DPS).

LOS ANGELES, California - Protestors mobilized at Viterbi today and marched throughout campus to Bovard Auditorium. They called attention to the increasing presence of wealthy investors building and buying homes at the expense of local residence.

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, led the protest. Sergio Vargas is the co-director of ACCE.

Sergio Vargas: They’re building this three, four story buildings where they’re charging $1,000 per bed, which is unfair for the students. It’s unfair for the community. And it’s created a lot of chaos for our people, our folks are being taken out of their communities so they can make space for students who are going to come here are going to be here for maybe three months, six months, a year, and they’re going to be gone. They truly do not care about this area and the historic community that has been here for years.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, California - The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved removing immigration requirements and raised income eligibility limitations for the county’s basic healthcare program.

The amended policy aims to assist 10,500 uninsured people by providing access to general care, mental health, specialist medical care, and emergency and inpatient treatments within the county’s healthcare network and community clinics.

Supervisor John Gioia described the healthcare expansion as a corrective measure for a “mistake.” During the 2009 recession, the county added legal status as a requirement to qualify for its public healthcare. This measure would rescind that requirement.

“We are creating equity by removing the barrier we placed in 2009 on undocumented [people] when they were kicked off the program,” said Gioia during the board meeting.

LOS ANGELES, California - Al grito de “viviendas asequibles, ahora” y con conmovedores testimonios de desamparadas que afortunadamente ya pudieron dejar las calles, líderes sindicales, trabajadores, funcionarios de la ciudad de Los Ángeles celebraron el primer aniversario de la entrada en vigor de la Medida ULA, que ha permitido hasta la fecha la recaudación de 215 millones de dólares que están siendo utilizados para la construcción de viviendas accesibles y para el programa de ayuda a los inquilinos con problemas para pagar la renta.

En lo anterior coincidieron el director de United to House LA, Joe Donlin, los concejales Hugo Soto Martínez y Bob Blumenfield, la presidenta del Comité de Supervisión Ciudadana de la ULA, Michelle Espinosa Coulter, la presidenta del Sindicato de Profesores de Los Ángeles, Gloria Martínez, durante el acto de celebración que se realizó el pasado jueves, 4 de Abril en Santa Mónica/Vermont Metro Plaza ubicado a un lado del edificio de apartamentos asequibles de 187 unidades que se está construyendo con fondos obtenidos a través de la Medida ULA.

Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders reintroduced the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which would enable the spending of a much-needed $230 billion to weatherize, electrify, and repair all public housing.

For over fifty years now, the federal government has grossly neglected and slashed the budget of our nation’s public housing stock. Government programs have actively privatized and demolished public housing. Policymakers, through the “war on drugs,” have subjected public housing residents to racist criminalization and overpolicing.

Public housing remains a critical source of deeply affordable housing for the lowest-income families. Yet, in the midst of growing houselessness, we lose fifteen thousand of these precious homes every year to decay and lack of repair. Instead of allocating direct public funding for affordable housing, we rely on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC), a scheme offering tax breaks to Wall Street investors, which diverts public money toward their profit-skimming. Meanwhile, policymakers’ decisions to gut our public housing directly fueled the explosion of mass homelessness we’ve seen across the United States since the 1980s.

“Blackstone and corporate landlords like them are worsening the housing crisis, as they seek to extract maximum profits for their investors. We need to stop allowing these big corporate landlords to buy up our neighborhoods,” says Amy Schur, campaign director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. “Instead, we should publicly fund housing that is off the private, speculative market.”

NEWPORT BEACH, California - Muchos propietarios que ofrecen viviendas nuevas para personas de bajos ingresos en California no podrán aumentar el alquiler de sus inquilinos en más del 10% anual, según una regla impuesta esta semana por un comité estatal.

El límite, aprobado el miércoles por el Comité de Asignación de Créditos Fiscales de California, afecta a todos los desarrollos futuros construidos con la ayuda de Créditos Fiscales para Viviendas de Bajos Ingresos. California otorga créditos federales y estatales para construir alrededor de 20,000 nuevas unidades al año; El programa es la principal fuente de financiación gubernamental para que los promotores privados construyan viviendas asequibles. 

La regla es similar a una ley estatal de 2019 para otros inquilinos: restringe los aumentos anuales al 5% más la inflación o al 10%, lo que sea menor.

NEWPORT BEACH, California - Many landlords providing new low-income housing in California won’t be able to increase the rent on their tenants by more than 10% per year, under a rule imposed this week by a state committee.

The cap, passed Wednesday by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, affects all future developments built with the help of Low Income Housing Tax Credits. California awards the federal and state credits to build about 20,000 new units a year; the program is the primary government funding source for private developers to build affordable housing. 

The rule is similar to a 2019 state law for other tenants — restricting annual increases to either 5% plus inflation, or 10%, whichever is lower.

ANTIOCH, CA - El Concejo de la Ciudad de Antioch ordenó el martes al personal a redactar una ordenanza de desalojo por causa justa que tenga como objetivo fortalecer las protecciones para los inquilinos más allá de las leyes estatales actuales.

Los defensores de la ordenanza dicen que podría proteger a los inquilinos de desalojos sin causa y prevenir que algunas familias se queden sin hogar.

Organizaciones de defensa de los inquilinos y políticas y de igualdad racial como ACCE Action, Rising Juntos, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Monument Impact y Movement Legal, junto con residentes y líderes religiosos de Antioch, han estado presionando por una ordenanza que proteja a los inquilinos de desalojos sin causa, como renovaciones para evadir las prohibiciones de aumento de alquiler a los inquilinos de larga data.