LOS ANGELES, CA - This afternoon the L.A. City Council approved new protections for renters. The new tenant protections are anticipated to take effect by February 1, when temporary pandemic eviction restrictions are set to expire.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, one of the council’s most dedicated renter advocates in recent years and very much the main architect of today’s ordinance, termed today’s vote “the most significant since the institution of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance.”

SAN DIEGO - The University of California Regents Committee on Investments discussed the performance of the UC’s portfolio of investments on Jan. 17, which currently sits at $157 billion in assets as of Jan. 15.

The Council of UC Faculty Associations joined with UC unions to call for the UC’s divestment from Blackstone. Members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) spoke at the public comment session of the Jan. 17 Regents meeting in support of divestment.

LOS ANGELES, CA - El Concejo de Los Ángeles se prepara para votar a favor de nuevas protecciones para los inquilinos en la ciudad de Los Ángeles en momentos en los que los grupos que abogan por sus derechos piden que se extienda una vez más la moratoria de desalojos o se adopte una nueva.

Entre las principales protecciones propuestas para los inquilinos destaca una ordenanza que prohíbe poner fin al alquiler de una vivienda sin una causa justa, no solo para aquellos protegidos por el Control de Renta o por el estado de California.

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Gavin Newsom will unveil the new state budget Tuesday.

The governor had previously announced that the state would have a surplus of funding, but the state is now in a deficit, in part because of the economic downturn.

On Monday, activists staged a protest, calling on higher taxation, which they say would allow for a more robust state budget.

ESTATAL - California retrasará algunos compromisos de gastos, revertirá los pasos recientes para apuntalar su salud fiscal y cambiará las fuentes de financiamiento para limitar los recortes que debe hacer para cerrar un déficit presupuestario proyectado de $22,500 millones, dijo hoy el gobernador Gavin Newsom.

El déficit, ligeramente inferior a los $24 mil millones que los analistas financieros de la Legislatura estimaron en noviembre, no impedirá que el estado cumpla sus ambiciones de transformar la educación, la falta de vivienda, la asequibilidad de la vivienda y la atención médica, insistió el gobernador demócrata.

STATEWIDE - California will delay some spending commitments, reverse recent steps to shore up its fiscal health and shift funding sources to limit the cuts it must make to close a projected $22.5 billion budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom said today.

The shortfall, slightly less than the $24 billion that financial analysts for the Legislature estimated in November, will not prevent the state from fulfilling its ambitions of transforming education, homelessness, housing affordability and health care, the Democratic governor insisted.

SACRAMENTO - California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveils his 2023-24 budget today, a blueprint that is expected to address a widely anticipated shortfall of as much as $24 billion.

The governor faces the unenviable task of determining where to cut and how deeply to draw down “rainy day” savings to make everything pencil out this summer.

As Newsom grapples with the budget, protesters gathered Monday in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego to wage a literal tug-of-war to get the governor’s attention.

Over the next few days, very different events will take place in downtown Sacramento.

Today, Gov. Gavin Newsom is set to march to the state Capitol with a group of ticketed supporters before being sworn into office for his second term, according to an invitation enclosed in a late December campaign email. About 1,000 people are expected to attend the inauguration, a permit approved by the California Highway Patrol shows.

But Newsom may be facing criticism of his own. On Monday, an alliance of labor and community groups calling itself California Common Good is set to hold “street theater actions” — complete with 10-foot-tall puppets of Newsom and California billionaires — in Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles.

OAKLAND, CA - The November election has given Oakland a batch of elected officials who, on the whole, may be the friendliest to renters’ issues of any set of city leaders in recent memory. 

Mayor-elect Sheng Thao is a renter herself, and a majority of city councilmembers either have substantial track records of passing tenant protections or have campaigned on the promise to support them.

But voters in one pivotal county race rejected a well-known renter advocate, leaving less clarity about the direction of housing policy at the county level, which could impact Oakland. 

LOS ANGELES, CA - On December 3, several hundred attendees participated in the first People’s Assembly organized by the Los Angeles Tenants Union since the pandemic exacerbated the housing crisis in Los Angeles. The union-wide assembly was held in the Student Union building at the Los Angeles City College.

The Assembly represented local chapters of the LATU, including: Baldwin-Leimert-Crenshaw, East Hollywood, Union de Vecinos from the Eastside, Lincoln Heights, South Central, Flower Drive, MacArthur Park, Vermont y Beverly (VyBe), and more. Each local presented their unique struggles, their tenants organizing tactics and tangible solutions for LA’s housing crisis. 

SAN DIEGO, CA - About a dozen activists with the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) stormed the lobby of a downtown office building Friday morning demanding to speak to a PR representative of the real estate corporation Blackstone.

The group says the corporate landlord is threatening to evict low-income renters.

“Our main message was to demand that Blackstone, this multibillion-dollar corporate landlord, stop evicting families here in San Diego county,” said Sarah Guzman with ACCE.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Frustrated by the Los Angeles Housing Department’s (LAHD) decision not to place the Chesapeake Apartment complex into the Rent Escrow Account Program (REAP), residents held a protest and press conference at LAHD’s offices on Friday to call out the department’s failure to hold the complex’s owner, billionaire slumlord Mike Nijjar, accountable for its dilapidated and unsafe conditions.

Starting this week, California renters can use a new online tool to check their eligibility for state and local rent protections based on their ZIP code. The idea is to make it easy to figure out how much your landlord can legally raise your rent each year, since rent caps vary from city to city. No need to read through your local rent control ordinance — now renters can just follow a simple set of prompts at tenantprotections.org and get an answer.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Mayor Todd Gloria and City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera released a proposed framework aimed at providing greater local protections for tenants.

The framework incorporates input from residents, tenant advocates and rental housing providers gathered over the last month, following the City Council's Oct. 31 tenant protection workshop.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Mayor Todd Gloria and City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera on Tuesday announced a proposal to enhance tenant protections in the city.

They unveiled a framework with a series of proposed changes including just-cause eviction protections for tenants, more required relocation assistance following no-fault evictions and additional time for seniors and San Diegans with disabilities to find new homes after receiving a no-fault eviction notice.

You’ve decided to move to a new place. You scour the typical rental websites, browsing various options within your budget. Once you’ve decided on a place, you initiate the beginning of a new relationship—between landlord and tenant—through signing a lease.

While this legal contract is the foundation of the rent relationship, it’s often not simple to navigate.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Maintenance workers installed new vinyl in Ruth Perez’s one bedroom apartment over floorboards that sag under foot. They put a new drain pipe in a sink that still clogs. They screwed new cabinet hinges into rotted wood. And they haven’t yet bothered to replace the stained carpet, or the heavy wooden closet doors that keep coming off their tracks.

“It’s just back-to-back issues,” said Perez’s 23-year-old son, Yonathan, who lives with his mom and two younger siblings. “They fix one problem and then another one comes up. We don’t feel comfortable in our own home.”

SACRAMENTO, CA - In the first chaotic months of the pandemic, as the Newsom administration shut down most of the state’s economy, leaders assured working people that if they did their part to contain the virus by staying home, then the income they lost wouldn’t lead to getting evicted or becoming homeless.

Now, nearly three years later, tens of thousands of tenants from Sacramento to San Diego are heading into Thanksgiving with a complete sense of betrayal on that front.

SAN DIEGO, CA - Tenants and advocates staged a sit-in protest at the San Diego County Housing and Community Development Services building on Tuesday, calling on county officials to address issues with the defunct COVID rent relief program that left thousands of renters in the region facing eviction.

The county’s emergency rental assistance (ERA) program was part of statewide efforts to relieve the impact of economic hardship during the pandemic. Now, several months after the program ended back in March, tenants are still struggling.

Ballot measures in the U.S. to build more affordable housing and protect tenants from soaring rent increases were plentiful and fared well in last week’s midterm elections, a sign of growing angst over record-high rents exacerbated by inflation and a dearth of homes.

SAN DIEGO, CA - It’s no secret that San Diego and all of California has an affordable housing crisis. Rents in the region are near all-time highs and inflation is affecting the cost of everyday necessities.

ACCE San Diego director Jose Lopez said that’s pushing many San Diegans over the edge.

SANTA CRUZ, CA - More than 400 university scholars, students, community organizers, foundation representatives, artists, and activists came together in late October for a one-of-a-kind event to build collaborative partnerships for community-engaged research and meaningful social change at the UC Santa Cruz conference: All-In: Co-creating Knowledge for Justice.

ANTIOCH, CA - El apartamento de Kim Carlson se ha inundado con heces humanas varias veces, la plomería nunca se reparó en el complejo de viviendas de bajos ingresos al que llama hogar en el suburbio de Antioch, en el área de la bahía de San Francisco.

ANTIOCH, CA — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.