On Valentine’s Day, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, students, the University of California’s (UC) union of low-wage frontline service and patient care workers – members of AFSCME Local 3299 – alongside Blackstone tenants and community members with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) called on UC Chancellors to “Break up with Blackstone” and invest in affordable housing. The global Wall Street private equity firm Blackstone has become the largest landlord in America and has been accused of worsening high housing costs and evictions.

Actions were held across the state in seven locations on the campuses of UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego. The renewed call to divest from Blackstone follows the announcement of its $3.5 billion acquisition of Tricon Residential Inc. UC invested $4.5 billion in Blackstone’s BREIT in 2023 to boost investor confidence amid a wave of shareholder redemptions.

LOS ANGELES, California - In celebration of Valentine’s Day, 75 UC employees and community members demanded the University to “break up” with and divest from Blackstone outside the chancellor’s office in Murphy Hall.

The workers – who are represented by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 – alleged that the University’s ties to Blackstone prevent the UC from being an “ethical landlord,” and they urged the UC Regents to invest in affordable housing, divest from Blackstone and bargain a fair new contract for the union.

AFSCME Local 3299, which represents service, patient care technical and skilled craft workers employed by the University, held simultaneous actions Wednesday on eight UC campuses. Workers at UCLA, alongside members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, began their march to the chancellor’s office at 11:45 a.m. as the UC Board of Regents met at the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center a short walk away.

Union members marched in unison, chanting slogans such as “Break up with Blackstone,” “No housing, no peace,” and “UCLA, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.”

Once they arrived inside Murphy Hall, union and community members delivered handwritten “breakup letters” to Chancellor Gene Block and the regents with the union’s demands. They also posted a sign on the wall that read, “University of CA, invest in the housing we need, not Blackstone’s greed.”

“We’re struggling beyond any point that we can understand,” said senior custodian Enrique Rosas in a speech. “Yet we show up every day. We show up every single day, Monday through Friday, doing our job – and do they care? No.”

LOS ANGELES—Blackstone’s planned acquisition of the single-family rental company Tricon Residential will further exacerbate the housing affordability crisis and harm tenants and workers, according to UNITE HERE Local 11, AFSCME Local 3299, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP).

As Blackstone seeks to grow as a landlord, workers at its hotel properties struggle to afford rent. Workers at the Blackstone-owned Fairfield LAX/El Segundo, Aloft LAX/El Segundo and Sheraton Phoenix went on strike last year and continue to fight for a contract that will provide living wages, affordable benefits, and adequate staffing. While 29 hotels have settled agreements that will enable workers to survive in Southern California, Blackstone’s hotels have failed to do so.

Apenas comenzó febrero y California ha sido azotada por lluvias torrenciales y fuertes vientos gracias a un río atmosférico que trae miles de millones de galones de agua evaporada desde el Océano Pacífico hasta la Costa Oeste. Este sistema meteorológico ha dejado cientos de miles de californianos sin luz y muchos ahora tienen que hacer frente, una vez más, a las inundaciones en sus casas o a las pertenencias destruidas por las filtraciones de agua de lluvia.

La buena noticia: Si usted es inquilino y su vivienda ha sufrido daños, el arrendador tiene obligaciones estatales con usted, independientemente de si tiene un contrato de alquiler o no.

La mala noticia: Puede resultar que algunos arrendatarios tarden en reparar los daños en su casa y otros pueden hasta negar esta responsabilidad.

Por eso, KQED habló con Leah Simon-Weisberg, directora legal del grupo de inquilinos Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), para entender mejor qué derechos un inquilino tiene durante y después una tormenta y también cómo puede comunicarse con su arrendador.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Blackstone’s planned acquisition of the single-family rental company Tricon Residential will further exacerbate the housing affordability crisis and harm tenants and workers, according to UNITE HERE Local 11, AFSCME Local 3299, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP).

As Blackstone seeks to grow as a landlord, workers at its hotel properties struggle to afford rent. Workers at the Blackstone-owned Fairfield LAX/El Segundo, Aloft LAX/El Segundo and Sheraton Phoenix went on strike last year and continue to fight for a contract that will provide living wages, affordable benefits, and adequate staffing. While 29 hotels have settled agreements that will enable workers to survive in Southern California, Blackstone’s hotels have failed to do so.

The $1 trillion private equity giant Blackstone—which is already the largest landlord in the U.S. —announced on January 19 that it planned to get even bigger by acquiring Tricon, which owns and operates 38,000 single family rental properties in the U.S, including properties in California and Arizona.

SACRAMENTO, CA - As California’s 2024 legislative session begins, the California Working Families Party (CA WFP) is launching a three-pronged poster campaign today to denounce the strong influence that Big Oil still retains over California politics. The panels denounce three Democratic lawmakers who took money out of fossil fuels and voted for the industry’s agenda. These lawmakers illustrate how big oil companies retain power in Sacramento, as nearly two-thirds of fossil fuel donations went to Democratic state lawmakers last year.

Despite California’s bold steps to hold polluters accountable, from suing big oil companies for the climate damage they’ve caused to passing laws requiring big companies to disclose their carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, only a handful of Democratic state lawmakers can block action on climate and consumer protections. Analysis by the California Working Families Party reveals that these Democrats consistently support the interests of big oil, often in conflict with their voters’ progressive voting history.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Mayor Todd Gloria will deliver his fourth State of the City Address Wednesday, addressing the city's ongoing issues, such as homelessness, housing affordability, infrastructure and public safety . . .

Gloria has continued to change to a punitive tack on the homelessness issue, joining with City Councilman Stephen Whitburn in pushing for the Unsafe Camping Ordinance, which the council passed 5-4 in June.

The proposal is intended to ban tent encampments at all times in certain sensitive areas -- parks, canyons and near schools, transit stations and homeless shelters -- regardless of shelter capacity. Signs have gone up across the city, effectively criminalizing homelessness in large swaths of the city.

Barbara Pinto, a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, compared the proposal during public comment "to pouring water on a drowning man."

Pinto urged the council to focus on providing more affordable housing. Others suggested the council either table the proposal or scrap the plan altogether and craft a new one. More than a few opponents urged the council to go with 2019 community action plan to tackle homelessness.

BAY AREA - Invitation Homes, the nation’s largest owner of single-family rentals, will pay $3.7 million to settle allegations it illegally hiked rent for hundreds of California tenants, state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced.

The attorney general’s office says the company — which is also the single largest owner of residential property in the Bay Area — raised rents between October 2019 and December 2022 on 1,900 homes in California beyond the amounts allowed by the Tenant Protection Act. That state law, passed in 2019, caps annual rent increases to 5%, plus a percentage change in the cost of living, up to 10%.

“Californians are facing a housing crisis of epic proportion. California has laws in place to protect tenants from sudden, large rent increases, and landlords need to be diligent in ensuring that they abide by those laws,” Bonta said in a statement on Monday. “The settlement announced today should serve as a reminder to landlords in California to familiarize themselves with the law and protections put in place to keep homes accessible to Californians.”