For a college student being evicted or an elderly woman faced with losing her apartment, the Legal Aid Foundation is Santa Barbara County’s safety net for anyone who can’t afford a lawyer. The nonprofit’s work was thrown into high profile upon the eviction of hundreds of tenants from among the 254 apartments at Isla Vista’s CBC & The Sweeps, with reports that they fielded dozens more calls at their Help Desk than usual after the quit notices were served on residents.

ALAMEDA, CA - The Prosecution and Public Rights Unit of the Alameda City Attorney’s Office will hold its third annual fair housing conference, which will be free and open to all members of the public.

The seminar will take place from 9 a.m. to noon April 20 in the City Council Chambers on the third floor of Alameda City Hall at 2263 Santa Clara Avenue. This year will be the first time the event will be held in-person. The seminar will be full of helpful information on federal, regional and local housing laws, including:

• tenant relocation and other hot topics
• the latest on rent laws and the end of the eviction moratorium
• introduction to fair housing laws
• disability rights
• and the new mediation program and other services offered by the Alameda City Attorney’s Office

Speakers will be Leah Simon-Weisberg (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), Nathanael Hill (the federal Housing and Urban Development Department branch chief), Gary Rhoades (Santa Monica Deputy City Attorney) and professional staff and attorneys from the Alameda City Attorney’s Office.

SACRAMENTO, CA - Hundreds of families from across California joined affordable housing advocates at the state Capitol on Monday to show their support for two legislative proposals aimed at the high cost of living in California.

The rally was organized by Housing Now, a statewide coalition of more than 150 organizations, to support Senate Bill 567, which would lower the maximum allowable rent increase to 5% and prevent landlords from evicting tenants without a legal reason, and Assembly Constitutional Amendment 10, which would add housing as a fundamental human right to the state constitution.

A proposed constitutional amendment to make housing a fundamental human right in California is moving forward in the Legislature.

Democratic leadership referred Assembly Constitutional Amendment (ACA) 10—introduced by Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco)—to the Assembly’s Housing and Community Development Committee, where it is expected to receive its first public hearing. No date had been set for the hearing as of April 25.

“Housing is indeed a human right,” Haney wrote on Twitter April 25. “Without access to housing, everything else suffers: health, safety, educational attainment, access to food and water, addiction, and jobs.”

ANTIOCH, CA — One by one Thursday they walked up to the microphone, stared into the cameras and gathered their composure. Standing beside civil rights attorneys John Burris and Ben Nisenbaum, about a half-dozen Black and Latino people shared their stories.

Filled with anger, resentment and grief, they each described encounters with the Antioch Police Department a day after their attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the city’s police force.

“It’s hard for me to get a job, because they put me on the move so much,” said Joshua Butler, a plaintiff in the lawsuit who said he and his family have been harassed by Antioch police officers since he was a teenager. “I’ve been dealing with a lot, dealing with cases, getting harassed, can’t even sleep in my own house peacefully. It’s just like the whole family, they’re being targeted. It’s like, you know, at some point there’s gotta be an end to it.”

ANTIOCH, CA - Fallout continues from a string of alleged racist and homophobic text messages shared among the Antioch Police Department.

Dozens of community members held a rally and march in protest ahead of Tuesday's special city council meeting. Demonstrators demanded immediate action and accountability as the number of police officers involved in the scandal continues to grow.

"How are we going to feel if we can not call someone when we are in danger that is actually going to help us?" said Devin Williams, who helped organize the rally.

OAKLAND, CA - In Oakland, a debate is heating up about how pandemic protections against eviction should come to a close.

Tuesday, Oakland's Community & Economic Development Committee will discuss a proposed ordinance brought forward by council President Nikki Fortunato Bas and council President Pro Tem Dan Kalb that would set up a gradual timeline for ending the city's eviction moratorium. If approved, the proposed ordinance would phase out the eviction moratorium, allowing certain evictions to resume from May through the end of August, then ending the eviction moratorium on Sept. 1.

The ordinance also seeks to make several changes to strengthen Oakland's existing just cause eviction protections.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Local tenants and activists met at Logan Heights Library with City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera to call for more tenant protections on March 25. The town hall coincided with a report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) called “Blackstone comes to collect: How America’s Largest Landlord and Wall Street’s Highest Paid CEO Are Jacking Up Rents and Ramping Up Evictions.”

The Blackstone Group is the largest private equity company in the world, with $975 Billion in assets under management (AUM). Blackstone is by far the nation’s largest landlord, owning and managing over 300,000 units of rental housing in the U.S., and many more around the world. The report shows that Blackstone bought 5,600 units in San Diego County in 2021. As units become vacant, the company raised rents in some units between 43-64% in just two years.