SACRAMENTO, CA - When local Sacramento government officials hold public hearings over climate change plans, dozens of residents often show up and share their perspectives.

It isn’t a coincidence that many speakers start public comments by introducing themselves as members or volunteers with activist organizations.

Groups rally people to speak at meetings through a variety of strategies, from building relationships over time to making social media posts. But whether they ask volunteers to comment on environmental, housing or other issues, organizers say they have similar goals: to empower people to participate in local government, share personal testimonies with decision-makers and build movements.

ANTIOCH, CA - Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe held a ceremony and press conference on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, to sign and celebrate the passing of the City’s anti-tenant harassment and retaliation ordinance.

He was joined by representatives of the organizations which lobbied the council to approve the ordinance which finally passed 3-1 in August, including David Sharples of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action and Rhea Laughlin of Rising Juntos, Rev. Millie Phillips of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), and Judith Ortiz of Monument Impact, as well as. (See ORDINANCE NO. 2232-C-S PROHIBITING RETALIATION AGAINST AND HARASSMENT OF RESIDENTIAL TENANTS).

LOS ANGELES, CA - This past weekend, tenant advocates, labor unions, workers, and renters from across LA marched in downtown to demand good wages, better employee benefits, and housing security.

Yvonne Wheeler, president of the LA County Federation of Labor (LACFL), was at the march, emphasizing the issues of tenant evictions and increased homelessness. She believes the housing and labor movements are fighting the same battles.

“We're in a homeless pandemic, where working people are collecting paychecks … but they still can't afford to pay the rent, let alone live in the city where they work,” Wheeler says. “And so when we see the inequality … when we see that these tenants are living in deplorable conditions, we know that we have to ally with one another, and fight this fight together. Because we are the community – we're not separate and apart.”

CONTRA COSTA, CA (TIMESTAMP 13:19) : More than 2,300 people are unhoused across Contra Contra county this is according to the latest county statistics, and today students at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg hosted a panel of East Contra Costa county leaders talking about what is being done to tackle issues around housing. 

LOS ANGELES, CA - Cientos de inquilinos, trabajadores, organizadores y miembros de la comunidad marcharon este sábado en el centro de Los Ángeles para protestar por los altos precios del alquiler de la vivienda y los salarios estancados que hacen casi imposible para muchos angelinos que les alcance el dinero.

“Las rentas están muy pinche caras, y los salarios están muy pinche bajos. Exigimos sueldos que alcancen y viviendas accesibles”, dijo María Guadalupe López, quien llegó a Los Ángeles a los cuatro años, es indocumentada y coordinadora de la Campaña Keep LA Housed.

SAN PABLO, CA - Más de 50 residentes de la ciudad de San Pablo salieron a las calles para pedirle a los líderes de la ciudad que aprueben una ordenanza de estabilización de alquileres para que no tengan que enfrentarse a incrementos de rentas que llegan hasta un diez por ciento. 

SAN PABLO, CA - Over 50 residents of San Pablo took to the streets to demand their local City Council pass Rent Control. 

PITTSBURG, CA - Tenant activists in Pittsburg are pushing for the passage of a rent stabilization ordinance to help address the growing homelessness and housing. Devin Williams, the organizer of March for Rent Control and Nicole Arrington, who is a tenant in Pittsburg joined us on The Nine to discuss the issues.

PITTSBURG, CA - Pittsburg CA renter & ACCE member Christian Copeland was interviewed about her challenges as a renter in Pittsburg, about the Pittsburg "March for Rent Control" and why she is organizing for change. (TIMESTAMP 22:33)  

SACRAMENTO, CA - The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed that county government was failing to keep renters safe from harassment before four out of five of the elected officials declined to vote Tuesday on a proposed tenant anti-harassment ordinance, ensuring the measure would die.

The board decided to put on a future workshop about tenant protection resources in the county.

Supervisor Patrick Kennedy, who proposed the ordinance, said he was inspired to do so after visiting a large apartment complex and seeing the mostly immigrant tenants paying “upwards of $2,000 a month to live in squalor.” While he was at the complex meeting with his constituents, he said, “I witnessed, myself, harassment.”

SACRAMENTO, CA - The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday declined to move forward with a proposal aiming to strengthen renters’ protections from harassment by landlords.

The decision came about a month after a similar tenant anti-harassment ordinance failed to get enough support from a Sacramento City Council committee.

If passed, the proposal would create county rules prohibiting landlords from threatening tenants with physical harm, refusing to accept rent payments, removing housing services to try to cause tenants to move and retaliating against renters for asserting their rights under the ordinance.

David versus Goliath might be a stretch. In one corner is the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a progressive activist group. In the other is the California Apartment Association (CAA), a property owner organization. ACCE is alleging the CAA is blocking local and statewide solutions to the housing crisis, e.g., tenant protection policies and eviction moratoriums.

ACCE recently released a report titled “From Housing Providers to Drivers of Homelessness: How the California Apartment Association’s Wall Street leadership spent at least $233 million to block housing solutions.”

Here are this report’s highlights.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Tenant rights groups have been sounding the alarm about an impending post-pandemic eviction crisis. In Los Angeles, that day has come — putting hundreds of thousands of tenants at risk of losing their housing and compelling some to fight back.

LOS ANGELES, CA - The Los Angeles City Council passed a $150-million spending plan for funds raised by Measure ULA on Tuesday, marking the first time funds will be specifically allocated since Angelenos passed the tax in November.

The expenditure plan will be directed to six programs: short-term emergency rental assistance, eviction defense, tenant outreach and education, direct cash assistance for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, tenant protections, and affordable housing production.

“This is the largest source of revenue, that’s going to be consistent, that this city has access to for these uses ever,” said Councilmember Nithya Raman. “It’s really transformative for Los Angeles.”

ANTIOCH, CA - In yet another move to strengthen tenant protections, the Antioch City Council has approved new rules to help ensure against landlord retaliation and harassment.

The new rules will address landlord threats of rent increases when tenants request repairs, improper landlord towing of vehicles, landlord verbal abuse and psychological harm, while protecting tenants’ rights to organize and requiring notices from the landlord be given in a tenant’s spoken language, City Attorney Thomas Lloyd Smith said.

The action comes after more than a year of tenants and supporters advocating for help.

The council approved a similar ordinance in July. However, that version did not get the votes needed for a second reading to pass, with Councilwoman Monica Wilson absent, Councilman Mike Barbanica recusing himself and Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock dissenting.

On Tuesday, though, after hearing more than two hours of public comments and discussion, the City Council voted 3-1 to approve the latest version of rules, with Ogorchock dissenting and Barbanica again recusing himself due to his real estate work.

OAKLAND, CA - Oakland’s 2024 election is over a year from now, but candidates have already started to emerge in several important races. As of this week, candidates have filed papers or declared their intention to run for City Attorney and two City Council seats.

Up for grabs next year are the District 1, 3, 5, 7, and At-Large City Council seats and City Attorney. (Four school board seats are also in play and we’ll cover those in another post.)

The Oaklandside has compiled a brief round-up of these early announcements, and we’ll provide much more coverage as the campaign season kicks into full gear next year. Do you know of a candidate or something else we left out? Let us know and we’ll update this post.

SACRAMENTO, CA - A proposal to create more housing in Sacramento must succeed if the city ever hopes to solve the pervasive issues of homelessness that daily affects every resident — yet it may be two votes short of passing at the full city council.

The Sacramento Forward proposal would put a fundraising measure on the 2024 ballot, extend the Tenant Protection Program, implement support programs such as emergency rent assistance and increase developer fees. Among other housing and tenant protection goals, it would also adopt the Sacramento Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would require any tenant building listed for sale to be sold to the tenant or eligible community group if they can meet the initial listing price.

The proposal is already supported by the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, the Sacramento Community Land Trust, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and SEIU 1021, and it recently gained the support of City Councilmembers Caity Maple, Katie Valenzuela and Mayor Pro Tem Mai Vang at last Tuesday’s Law and Legislation Committee meeting.

ANTIOCH, CA - Nine current and former police officers in the East Bay face federal charges after a raid Thursday by the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The FBI's roundup of officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments come after an 18-month investigation into an alleged criminal network.

"Today is a dark day in our city's history, as people trusted to uphold the law, allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI. As our city absorbs this tragic news, we must come together as one," Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe said in a statement. "Today's actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process."

SACRAMENTO, CA - It's back to square one for the city of Sacramento, which was looking for ways to protect tenants from being harassed by their landlords.

Some council members on Tuesday took up the controversial issue concerning protecting tenants from harassing landlords. But the tenant anti-harassment ordinance, called TAHO, stopped short of leaving the law and legislation committee and going to the full city council for consideration.

Renters said they need more protection.

"They try to throw me in the street," Jesus Figueroa said. "Rent for the same apartment was $2,900 when I'm paying $1,800."

Renters shared stories with the Sacramento Law and Legislation Council Committee about their run-ins with landlords. The group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment packed the chambers.

OAKLAND, CA - The apartments were supposed to be among the city’s affordable solutions for elderly, low-income residents — some lifelong Oaklanders, others immigrants — who couldn’t afford to live elsewhere.

Now, tenants say the Northgate Terrace apartments in the city’s small Koreatown district have effectively become slums — riddled with infestations, bad security, broken water heaters and absentee property managers. They are calling on the Oakland Housing Authority to conduct regular inspections and wrangle more regular maintenance out of The Related Companies, a national company that manages the property.

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.”