One morning in February, tenants of an East Oakland fourplex, along with about a dozen activists, drove in several cars to an office park near San Jose to confront their landlord, David Lawver, about recent rent hikes of more than $1,000 per month.

East Oakland residents took local officials on a “trash tour” of the city last weekend to highlight the differences in public services delivered to different parts of the city.

Residents in an apartment complex in Concord claim they are being pushed out by poor living conditions and high rent increases. On Monday, KRON4 spoke with the affected families who took their concerns to City Hall. They are families who say they’re living in poor conditions, facing no-cause evictions and unfair rent increases. Stopping by City Hall in Concord, they dropped off papers to have city inspectors tour their apartments and force their landlord to make repairs to problems that the tenants say have long been ignored.

A ballot initiative to lift California’s statewide restrictions on rent control has hit a key milestone, with 25 percent of the signatures it needs to qualify for the November ballot, the California Secretary of State’s office confirmed. Organizers vowed to take their fight directly to the voters after a bill to repeal the restrictions died in its first committee hearing this year at a raucous January meeting attended by over 1,000 people on both sides of the contentious issue.

"All you have to do is say rent control and you don't even have to ask them to sign the petition now, they want to sign the petition now," Ava Nadal said. It's all part of a larger effort to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Housing Act, a California law on the books for more than 20 years, which limits where local governments can enact rent control.

Renita Barbee, 52, has begun packing up the belongings in her rented South Los Angeles home. She was trying hard to hold her composure as she told her story the other day. But at times, her eyes filled. “When I found this place, I fell in love,” said Barbee, who moved into the three-bedroom, two-bath brown stucco home four years ago with her husband, daughter and mother

A wealthy Piedmont investor snapped up single-family homes during the foreclosure crisis that ravaged Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods. For years he barely raised rents, then he doubled them at once, sparking tenant protests.