SACRAMENTO, CA - Some Sacramento city council members are putting forward a suite of policy proposals designed to prevent more people in the region from becoming homeless.

“This is not a problem we can continue to ignore,” Council member Katie Valenzuela said during a press conference announcing the program Tuesday morning. “We can't continue to focus just on triaging our homelessness crisis … This is what moving upstream looks like.”

The package, which will be announced with more details next week, is called “Sacramento Forward,” and is a joint project of Valenzuela and her colleagues on city council, members Caity Maple and Mai Vang. In addition to various local legislation, it includes a 2024 ballot initiative that would create a pot of money to help fund affordable housing units and emergency support for renters.

OAKLAND, CA - After the Alameda County eviction moratorium expired, eviction cases exploded. After three years where lawsuit numbers never reached above 100 a month, there were 557 filings in May.

Now, the three cities that kept eviction bans in place longer—Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro—are sunsetting their policies too, and another spike is expected.

“The question was, are we going to get hit with a tsunami?” said Judge Victoria Kolakowski. “And we have been.”

But she said a “gigantic flood” would be a more apt metaphor. For every one case resolved in her courtroom, dozens more are being filed.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Thousands of Los Angeles residents who live in rent-controlled dwellings have accused their landlords of trying to drive them out in order to charge higher rents to new tenants.

Two years ago, the city passed a sweeping law to bar tenant harassment practices such as falsely telling renters they must move, refusing repairs, and threatening physical harm or deportation. But with the city government lacking sufficient money or staff to enforce the law, reports of such coercion are still pervasive, and the city remains in a housing crisis in which rents and homelessness continue to soar.

ANTIOCH, CA - Antioch is strengthening its tenant protections with new rules against landlord retaliation and harassment.

After hearing more than three hours of public comments and debate on the matter, the City Council voted 3-1 on Tuesday, with Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock dissenting and Councilman Mike Barbanica, a real estate agent/broker, recusing himself.

“Antioch is not the first city to propose anti-harassment protections,” proponent Ethan Silverstein, an attorney with the tenant advocate group ACCE Institute, told the council. “These protections are becoming more and more popular. Even Sacramento is considering one.”

PHILADELPHIA, PI - Lowell Faison has seen the housing affordability crisis push poor renters to the brink.

Some renters, the 75-year-old said Saturday outside of City Hall, have been forced tens of miles outside city limits in search of cheaper rents. Others, Faison said, lost their housing entirely during the fog of the pandemic.

He wasn’t talking about Philadelphia. Faison is from Charlotte, N.C., but was in Philadelphia on Saturday, joining an estimated 2,000 protesters — many of them also from out of state — to express their concern for what they see as a national crisis reaching its breaking point.

“When it comes to housing, local governments have to step up,” Faison said. “There’s no question about it.”

SACRAMENTO, CA - Carol Eckstrom dragged out a chair and staged a sit-in, just a few months after her stroke. In a way, she got what she asked for: The manager of her Sacramento mobile home park had finally hired contractors to fix the bulge in her walkway.

But it would cost her $500.

OAKLAND, CA - After months of debate, Oakland’s eviction moratorium expired on Saturday, July 15. The move comes after Alameda County ended its public health emergency and its own eviction moratorium back in April. Oakland had been one of the last remaining cities in the country with this type of protection for tenants, along with San Francisco and Berkeley.

In the rest of Alameda County, evictions spiked after the county’s moratorium was lifted, rising to above pre-pandemic highs. With the majority of Oakland residents renting their homes, and the city having a higher percentage of renters compared to the county as a whole (PDF), many advocates fear that this change will lead to an even greater wave of evictions.

SACRAMENTO, CA - Sacramento is ranked as one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., but the outsized impact of the housing crisis on Black citizens tracks closely – and unsettlingly – with national rates . . .

City leaders are aware of equity issues and the risks of displacement due to gentrification, having recognized both in their 2021-2029 Housing Element Plan. But critics argue that displacement patterns due to other factors, including harassment fueled by discrimination, are often left out of the conversation and play a larger role in the region’s rise in homelessness than local leaders are acknowledging. Housing advocates worry this creates a gap in understanding among both the public and local leaders of where specific patterns exists.

The pattern demonstrated in the following stories raise questions on that front – and how alleged cases of discrimination impact housing stability.