Barbara Green has been served several notices of eviction from her San Diego apartment. "I was totally stressed before I got help. I didn’t know what I was going to do," she said.

The single mom of three said she was caught up on her rent, but added that her landlord wants to give the family the boot using a loophole in eviction law: renovations. "The landlord is just greedy, and he’s never made proper renovations the whole seven years that I’ve been here. He just wanted to make more money," she said.

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, stepped in to help Green. And she's getting more help from the city of San Diego, through a temporary extension of eviction protections that close a renovation loophole.

But representatives for landlords say the ordinance adds an unnecessary burden for people who want to sell their properties, or who waited to do renovations because of the pandemic.

CHULA VISTA, Calif. – After hours of heated debate, Chula Vista city leaders will take even more time to vote on new rules impacting rental homes.

On Tuesday, Chula Vista City Council voted to postpone taking action on a new tenant protection ordinance. Mayor Mary Casillas Salas believes the measure would fight “no-fault” evictions and lend help to families getting priced out in the tight housing market.

More than 50 speakers signed up to state their case before the council with two very different sides emerging, largely split between tenants and local landlords.

“We’re low income, so where are we going to go?” Dora Parra said. “I got two weeks. I’ve been at this residence 17 years.”

A few years ago, residents of Siesta RV park in Imperial Beach caught a lucky break when plans to sell the land to a developer fell through.

Now, after a surprise change of ownership in January, residents say they are struggling anew. Rents are going up for many, utility bills seem inflated but there's no one to call for answers, and some tenants - and their trailers - are forced to move out every six months for 48 hours.

On the Siesta website, lots are said to rent from $800 to $1600. According to Andy Hall, Imperial Beach city manager, there are mobile home slips and recreational vehicle slips. The latter can be used only if there is no permanent residency. Thus the required rotations.

The state’s most powerful landlord group, the California Apartment Association, on Thursday sued Alameda County to end its broad eviction moratorium.

The suit marks the latest step toward dismantling COVID-19 protections for tenants, as health risks have diminished and many state and local programs and efforts have expired.

The Alameda County moratorium, enacted in March 2020, is one of the few surviving protections in the state. It essentially bans all evictions, either for nonpayment or other reasons, to keep renters from being displaced during the health crisis. Los Angeles also has a moratorium in place, and has been sued by the local landlord association.

Los Angeles tenant groups are suing California’s housing department, alleging that the state’s decision to wind down its rent relief program on April 1 unlawfully cut off applicants waiting for funds and put them at risk of eviction.

California’s Housing and Community Development Department stopped taking new rent relief applications at the end of March. It also denied requests from April onward. The program had previously distributed relief for “prospective” rent that applicants couldn’t pay.

Los Angeles, CA – The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is being sued by tenants’ rights groups Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE Action) and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) over its failure to provide the full amount of rental assistance intended by the law establishing the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), putting tenants at increased risk of eviction and homelessness. ACCE and SAJE are represented by Western Center on Law & Poverty, Public Counsel, and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

As people waited for HCD’s often onerous system to process applications, HCD abruptly stopped accepting applications on March 31, 2022, cutting off people in need of assistance after that point even when they qualify for but have not yet received their full 18 months of rental assistance. Specifically, the suit says HCD is not providing assistance for prospective rent or expenses incurred after March 31, 2022, even for eligible households that submitted an ERAP application before applications closed.

This means applicants who were unable to pay April rent or beyond could still face eviction even if HCD approves their application, thereby defeating ERAP’s goal of preventing eviction and stabilizing households.

After being closed for more than two years due to COVID-19, Los Angeles City Hall has reopened to the public.

However, the reopening has brought mixed feelings to those wanting to participate in civic engagement.

While some visitors were excited to talk to City Council members face-to-face, several others believe the decision to strip away virtual public comment is a big problem.

"People have jobs; they can't just come in here to do one public comment when people already got used to being able to do that over the phone, at their work or at their home where they're safe," said Sergio Vargas, the lead organizer for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

The public was able to return to meeting at the Los Angeles City Council chambers Wednesday for the first time since March 2020. 

With COVID restrictions lifted, the council has allowed members of the public to return in person and has also ended the ability for people to comment remotely which some people say should still be an option.

Adam Smith of West L.A. spoke at the meeting saying "good to be back in the room," but added:

"I do think it's really troubling that, accessibility-wise, people can't call in and give public comment anymore. ... Accessibility has always been an issue at these meetings, and folks that are disparately impacted by the policies coming out of this room have trouble coming in to give public comment on a weekday morning."

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — With COVID-19 restrictions now lifted, the public was allowed into the Los Angeles City Council chambers during the body's meeting Wednesday for the first time since March 2020 — but with people no longer able to comment remotely, most of those who spoke urged council members to reverse that decision.

Adam Smith of West L.A. was the first to speak at the meeting Wednesday, and told council members that it's "good to be back in the room." But he added:

"I do think it's really troubling that, accessibility-wise, people can't call in and give public comment anymore. ... Accessibility has always been an issue at these meetings, and folks that are disparately impacted by the policies coming out of this room have trouble coming in to give public comment on a weekday morning."

El público podrá ingresar a las cámaras del Concejo Municipal de Los Ángeles durante la reunión del Concejo Municipal de este miércoles por primera vez desde que COVID-19 cerró el Ayuntamiento al público en marzo de 2020.

Sin embargo, las personas ya no podrán brindar comentarios públicos si participan en la reunión a distancia.

El Concejo Municipal tuvo reuniones virtuales por teleconferencia durante el primer año de la pandemia, y las reuniones en persona continuaron para los miembros del consejo en junio de 2021 antes de regresar brevemente a un formato remoto en enero debido a la rápida propagación de la variante Omicron.

Sin embargo, desde marzo de 2020, el público tiene prohibido ingresar a las cámaras y ha podido hacer comentarios públicos llamando a las reuniones. Con las reuniones abiertas al público, las personas ya no podrán dar comentarios públicos de forma remota, según la agenda de la reunión del miércoles.

For nearly 26 months, tourists, residents and other visitors have regularly approached the doors of Los Angeles City Hall, only to be waved off by police officers at the building’s Main Street entrance.

On Wednesday, the building will finally reopen to the public. But security will be more restrictive than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this year, code enforcement officials at the city of Los Angeles cleared the Chesapeake Apartments in South L.A. after a required inspection that was supposed to ensure its rental units were habitable. The complex has 425 apartments and takes up multiple city blocks.

But the city’s clean bill of health belied the numerous problems with mold, sewage leaks, faulty smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and other issues that tenants say have plagued the massive complex for years. Beyond that, a 2020 investigation in LAist found Chesapeake Apartments’ owner has been accused by tenants and multiple government agencies of allowing similar conditions across a more than $1-billion real estate empire that’s centered in Southern California.

Da Vina Teasley paid the rent regularly at her Richmond home for two decades before COVID-19 hit.

The pandemic took away her job, sent her to the hospital for a week, and now threatens to leave her family homeless. Teasley applied for $40,000 in rental assistance in December for the first time, and was rejected by the state program for “inconsistent or unverifiable information.”

Despite repeated calls to the state by Teasley and her attorney at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, they haven’t been able figure out what more documentation the state needs.

Activists with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) joined tenants recently to call on the California Attorney General to intervene and hold a landlord accountable for allegedly allowing slum conditions and endangering the health and safety of residents.

Residents of the apartment building on Obama Boulevard in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area say they live with black mold, faulty heaters and broken pipes that spew raw sewage.

“These conditions cannot continue to go on like this. People are going to the hospital,’’ said Zerita Jones, who lives at the property, in a statement provided by ACCE.

David Zimmerman had big plans when he moved into a four-bedroom house in North Park. He would split the $2,500 monthly rent three ways with roommates and take full advantage of the backyard — starting a garden, hosting parties, maybe even raising chickens.

Zimmerman only had a verbal agreement to live there, but he said the property owner was his friend’s mom. He said he didn’t think twice about it because she made him feel part of the family.

Inquilinos de un complejo de apartamentos de 400 unidades en el sur de Los Ángeles protestaron  contra el propietario quien, según ellos, se niega a abordar las condiciones inhumanas en las que viven.

KTLA 5 - South Los Angeles tenants were protesting apartment conditions on Thursday that they say are making them sick.

Sabrina Dolan is convinced that her apartment is poisoning her.

Black, mold-like spots dot the windowsill in her living room. They appear on her bedroom windows along with signs of termites. The spots also cover a corner of her bathroom, and no amount of scrubbing can make them go away.

Recently, she’s been coughing up chunks of thick, dark mucus.

And no matter how many times she says she complains to her landlord at the South Los Angeles apartment she shares with her fiancé, nothing ever gets repaired.

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Activists with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment joined tenants today to call on the California Attorney General to intervene and hold a landlord accountable for allegedly allowing slum conditions and endangering the health and safety of residents.

Residents of the apartment building on Obama Boulevard in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area say they live with black mold, faulty heaters and broken pipes that spew raw sewage.

"These conditions cannot continue to go on like this. People are going to the hospital,'' said Zerita Jones, who lives at the property, in a statement provided by ACCE.

In December 2020, three months after his family received an eviction notice from their landlord, Gabriel Guzman felt a bitter mix of sorrow and anger as he and his wife, Elena Porras, gathered with friends at their Chula Vista, California, home to pack up their belongings. They had two days before sheriff’s deputies might arrive to lock them out of the white-paneled, single-story, three-bedroom house they’d rented for just over a year. Guzman himself had been living in Chula Vista since 2000. After serving in the Marines at Camp Pendleton and then as a reservist, he worked as a property manager for over a decade—first with mom-and-pop real estate firms and later with larger ones. 

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) — The undocumented community and supporters are calling on Contra Costa County officials to expand a program that provided vital healthcare to thousands amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2015, the county passed the Contra Costa CARES program, a healthcare program for uninsured adults living in Contra Costa County. The program has been able to provide much-needed healthcare to more than 8,000 undocumented individuals. Since the inception of the program, primary care services have been provided to thousands, with more than 33,000 visits to date.

“Because of CARES, I was able to remove the tumors in my breast before they became life-threatening,” said CARES recipient, Ana Gonzalez. “I am in the fight for CARES because when we are healthy we can work and give to our community – today for me, tomorrow for you.” 

LA TIMES - Public school districts across California have been facing plummeting enrollment for five years, a trend spurred by pandemic struggles, falling birth rates, out-of-state migration, among other factors.

Because funding for California public schools is based on student attendance, districts may soon be facing big budget shortfalls, if they aren’t already — although legislative discussions are underway to possibly ease the hit. One way districts are addressing this problem, however, is by shuttering schools with dwindling student enrollment. In February, Oakland school board members voted to close seven of the city’s public schools by 2024. Some L.A. Unified schools also face uncertain futures.

LOS ANGELES TIMES — A week before California's eviction moratorium was scheduled to expire, top Democrats in the Legislature announced a proposal on Thursday to extend COVID-19 pandemic protections for tenants by another three months so the state can finish sending out rent relief payments.

Assembly Bill 2179 would move the date on which landlords may initiate eviction proceedings from April 1 to July 1, as long as an application is submitted by March 31 to a rent relief program. Democratic legislative leaders said the extension would give applicants more time to receive the help and avoid losing their homes.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of California renters facing eviction next week could get another three months of protection under a bill top legislative leaders endorsed on Thursday.

The federal government sent billions of dollars to the states to help people who fell behind on their rent payments during the pandemic. California’s program will pay for 100% of people’s unpaid rent if they meet certain income requirements.

Only 16% of nearly half a million renters who applied for rent relief from the state of California have been paid, according to a new analysis released today. And the clock is ticking: Under state law, landlords will be able to evict tenants who failed to pay rent by April 1.

Of more than 488,000 households who applied for assistance since the program launched in March 2021, about 180,000 were approved. Four percent were denied, and more than half of applicants are still awaiting a response, according to the study, produced by the National Equity Atlas, Housing Now and the Western Center on Law & Poverty using state data. 

OAKLAND, CA - A group of local landlords filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday seeking to overturn Oakland and Alameda County’s current eviction bans, which were triggered by the start of the pandemic . . .

The action came after the landlords’ attorney, Andrew Zacks, sent a letter to the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in January warning the legal challenge was coming. The suit is part of a broader push by property owners’ groups across the state to end local eviction bans.

LOS ANGELES - A principios del 2020 Verónica Arias y su familia habían recibido una orden de su arrendatario que la renta de su apartamento aumentaría por más de $300. Sin embargo, la pandemia del Covid-19 detuvo el proceso por dos años el cual expiró hasta este año y pronto recibirán otra carta notificando en cuanto aumentará su renta.

La familia de cuatro actualmente paga $997 en el apartamento localizado en Los Ángeles.

“Este es un edificio de bajos recursos y uno paga dependiendo de cuánto gana el inquilino”, dijo Arias, de 51 años.

LOS ANGELES - A tan solo dos meses de que haya expirado la moratoria de desalojos en California y a medida que las infecciones del covid-19 aumentan en medio de la variante ómicron, activistas y defensores de inquilinos reportan un aumento en los casos de desalojo.

Esto está ocurriendo inclusive en lugares como la ciudad y el condado de Los Ángeles, los cuales cuentan con protecciones para evitar que las familias se queden sin un techo donde dormir.

The place with the highest rate of evictions in the Bay Area during the pandemic wasn't a big city like Oakland or San Francisco — instead it was a suburb that has been radically transformed by housing crisis after housing crisis. Antioch, a working-class town on the outskirts of the Bay, has seen an influx of Black and Brown folks pushed from more expensive cities in search of a place they can afford.

In our first episode of Season 2 of Sold Out, we visit a neighborhood in Antioch with a high concentration of evictions. We’ll hear from renters, activists and politicians to find out how a lack of affordable housing is remaking the suburbs, not just in the Bay Area but across the country.

BAY AREA - At her apartment down the street from San Pablo City Hall, Anita Mendoza wondered if the eviction lawsuit she was served last month will push her out of her home of 28 years.

In downtown Palo Alto, middle school teacher Mohamed Chakmakchi worried that his 7-year-old would have to go live with family if he was forced out of his two-bedroom rental.

Sacramento Bee - Sacramento limits the amount rent can be increased — but the details can be tricky.

If you’re protected under Sacramento’s Tenant Protection Program, your landlord can only raise rent 9% once annually.

That’s 5% plus the consumer price index figure for April. The maximum is adjusted annually but cannot exceed 10%.

And the program, which protects tenants by establishing limits in rent increases and limitations on unwarranted evictions, only protects multi-family homes built before Feb. 1, 1995 — excluding newer buildings.

“It’s absolutely vital for renters to be informed about their rights and the protections that are set in place because many individuals, especially non-English speakers, tend to not really be able to understand jargon...which often leads to self evictions,” said Luis Fernando Anguiano Quiroz, the statewide communications associate of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

SILICON VALLEY - Should local governments step in to prevent renters from being displaced when California’s aging rental stock needs to be renovated?

The San Pablo City Council spent hours debating that question Tuesday night after a group of residents and advocates implored it to intervene in the pending eviction of several tenants from an apartment building built in 1967.

One of those tenants,  Anita Mendoza, has lived in the 14-unit apartment complex at 2235 Church Lane for 28 years. She pays $450 for the one-bedroom unit where she raised her daughter, who eventually moved back home while going to school.

The 55-year-old caretaker for seniors and children in the area recognizes her rent is much lower than what market-rate units in San Pablo and the rest of the Bay Area fetch. And she’s grateful for that.

“I have been a loyal and respective tenant for several years,” said Mendoza, one of only seven households still left in the building. “I have single-handedly raised my daughter here and made relationships.”

But Mendoza’s time at the Porto Apartments may be limited, as she and her neighbors face a nearly $1,000 rent hike.

EAST BAY TIMES - Antioch may extend some tenant protections, many of which were first enacted during the pandemic and are set to expire.

After listening to a long stream of renters, housing advocates and others urging the city to extend the tenant protections, the City Council on Tuesday directed staff to draft potential laws that would continue the safeguards.

With moratoriums ending and positive COVID-19 cases still high, renters facing evictions and rent increases asked the council to enact an ordinance that would control rents, protect tenants from landlord harassment and require a just-cause provision for evictions . . .

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which led the charge, said the goal was to curb rising homelessness and protect tenants, who make up a third of Antioch’s residents, many paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

“If the City Council passes the three ordinances proposed, my family will finally be able to sleep without the threat of homelessness looming over our heads,” Carmen Ponce, an Antioch renter and Alliance member, said in a statement.

NBC Bay Area - As the pandemic rages on, eviction protections have dried up for millions of Californians, including the longtime residents of a San Pablo apartment complex now being kicked out by their new landlord who says he needs to renovate the building.

In December, tenants received eviction notices stating they had to be gone by January 15 because their units needed major repairs.

But the tenants and their attorney say the landlord is using a legal loophole to get them out, so he can bring in new tenants willing to pay market rate rent.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Under new ownership, the historic Downtown Barclay Hotel will undergo renovations and be converted into single-room-occupancy, affordable housing for formerly unhoused and low-income individuals.

The Los Angeles-based nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation acquired the property in October. It will renovate the 158-unit hotel into affordable housing units.

AHF and the organization’s housing subsidiary, Healthy Housing Foundation, hosted a holiday-themed ceremony late December, formally rededicating the hotel and unveiling a plaque officially solidifying the future intended use of the long-standing, historic property.

This hotel marks AHF’s 11th property on its list of affordable, single-room-occupancy buildings throughout LA. The organization now has 1,183 units, with some being in Downtown, like The King Edward and The Baltimore hotels, all centered around housing individuals and families in need.

LA  OPINION - El año 2021, el segundo año de la pandemia de covid-19, se caracterizó por la inestabilidad en la vivienda y el acoso de arrendadores contra inquilinos.

“Si bien el gobierno ha ayudado a los inquilinos afectados por covid-19 con el pago de hasta 18 meses de renta, el proceso para obtener la ayuda puede tardar meses, y en ese tiempo son víctimas de un acoso terrible por parte del dueño de la vivienda”, dice Lupita González, organizadora comunitaria de la Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), una organización que ayuda y educa a los inquilinos para evitar el desalojo.

New proposals would shake up Bay Area real estate market

East Bay Times - As the Bay Area grasps for new ways to quell its affordable housing shortage, several cities are considering controversial policies that would give some tenants a shot at buying their homes — a move that’s sharply dividing property owners and renters.

To prevent big-pocketed investors from scooping up homes, raising rents and forcing tenants out, East Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley are eyeing ordinances that would give renters, nonprofits or the city first dibs on some sales. Known as opportunity to purchase acts, the ordinances have been heralded by tenant rights advocates as a way to give renters a leg up in the overheated housing market. But the idea faces strong opposition from some landlords and real estate groups who argue they represent an unconscionable interference in the rights of property owners.

KPIX - As cities search for ways to keep housing within people’s financial reach, a new tool is being considered that may give tenants and housing advocates more muscle in buying properties. Some landlords say it removes their rights as owners.

For more than two years, the people who live at an apartment complex on 29th Avenue, in Oakland, have been staging a rent strike against their landlord. They’ve held marches and protests and on Friday, they won. The property owner agreed to sell the building to the city’s Community Land Trust to become permanent affordable housing.

San Jose Mercury News - After more than two years of protesting, rallying and withholding rent payments, a group of Oakland tenants has scored a major victory in the fight to take control of their building.

The property owner has agreed to sell the 14-unit building on 29th Avenue in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood for $3.3 million, according to the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the tenants’ rights group working with the renters. The building will be purchased by the Oakland Community Land Trust — a nonprofit that buys market-rate properties and converts them into affordable housing.

It’s a big milestone for the tenants involved, and it comes as efforts to give renters more control over their homes are picking up speed. Community land trusts are building momentum throughout the Bay Area as a potential way to preserve affordable housing in a market where prices continue to spiral out of control. At the same time, Oakland and other Bay Area cities are eyeing new ordinances that would give tenants the opportunity to buy their buildings before they go on the market.

LA Times - Tenants of an apartment complex in Baldwin Hills traveled to Orange County last week to protest alleged unfair treatment from a Costa Mesa property management company whose staff they claim has harassed residents and threatened to evict them.

A group amassed during a Dec. 9 demonstration outside the Red Hill Avenue regional office of FPI Management, which manages nearly 150,000 units nationwide, including a handful of Orange County properties and the 4063 Nicolet Ave. apartments in Los Angeles.

That’s where residents, primarily people of color, maintain FPI has attempted to evict them from their homes in an effort to raise rents while neglecting to maintain the units.

Constituent support of AB 1199 could be critical in breaking Wall Street’s stranglehold on the region’s rental market

Sacramento News & Review - Last week, housing and poverty advocates descended on the San Francisco offices of Blackstone Group, a controversial real estate player that’s the largest corporate landlord in Sacramento County. Tenants were demanding that Blackstone stop rent-gouging while at the time allegedly deferring heath and safety repairs in many of its California units.

A number of nonprofits are also continuing to fight in Sacramento for the passage of AB 1199, a bill aimed at holding private equity profiteers like Blackstone accountable for their behavior during the 2008 financial collapse – and now during the pandemic.

The recent action at Blackstone’s San Francisco headquarters was one of several protests targeting the company on Dec. 9, including tenants converging on its property management firm in Los Angeles, FPI. Blackstone famously bought-up tens of thousands of homes in the region that were under water on their mortgages during the financial meltdown at the end of the Bush administration, absorbing them into an ever-expanding blob of rental properties on the north state’s map. Numerous houses in Placer and Yolo counties are part of the picture, while Blackstone has also earned the distinction of becoming the largest private property owner in Sacramento County, second only to the county government itself.

KQED - The past few years have been long and stressful for Dahbia Benakli.

At the end of 2019, she got divorced. With no one to help take care of her two young daughters, she was forced to quit her job as a preschool teacher. Her father helped her buy a car so she could drive for Uber and DoorDash to make rent.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and ride-hailing work dried up. Together with unemployment insurance, Benakli was making just over $2,000 a month — almost half of which she was using to pay the rent for the one-bedroom Walnut Creek apartment she’s lived in for the last 10 years.

KPBS - A group of mostly low-income tenants and their advocates staged a protest Thursday in Mission Valley to call attention to what they say are predatory practices by the New York-based real estate behemoth Blackstone, which this year paid more than $1 billion for nearly 6,000 San Diego area rental units.

Blackstone tenants who took part in the protest said the company is raising rents and not making good on promises to renovate rundown properties. They are demanding, among other things, that the company not raise rents until California’s COVID state of emergency — which was extended to March 2022 —is lifted and to keep increases at 3% or less thereafter.

“We’re not being respected as tenants, the issues are not being taken care of and the home that was once beautiful that we were living in is now embarrassing, somewhat, to bring family and friends,” said Kathleen, a tenant of a Blackstone-owned apartment complex in La Mesa, who didn’t want to provide her last name for fear of reprisals.

SFist - Wedgewood, the real estate investment firm that is best known locally for their role in a standoff with a group of homeless Oakland mothers two years ago, has reportedly reached a $3.5 million settlement with the state of California over its eviction practices statewide.

An operation with national reach, Wedgewood's core business involves residential real estate speculation and house flipping — or, as they describe it on their website, "the purchase, revitalization and resale of single-family residences throughout the United States." One of those purchases back in 2017 was a home at 2928 Magnolia Street in West Oakland, which housing activists decided to make an example of after Wedgewood sat on the property and left it vacant for two years amid a regional housing and homelessness crisis.

In November 2019, several homeless mothers and their children moved in and occupied the property, launching an effort they called Moms 4 Housing that was meant to highlight the role that real estate speculation plays in our housing crisis. About seven weeks of legal wrangling ensued in which Wedgewood sought to have the squatters removed, and meanwhile the story gained national attention and the mothers had widespread support across Oakland and beyond.

Sacramento Bee - 

A refugee from Mexico and her family are facing eviction from their Sacramento home on the day before Thanksgiving.

“My biggest worry is where am I going to have my grandchildren living,” Eduviges Garcia, 48, said Monday through a translator. “Them becoming homeless makes me really anxious.”

Garcia’s three grandchildren, including a 6-month old and two 5-year-olds, have been living with her in the Mangan Park home, along with her two daughters, her daughter’s partner and her own partner.

San Diego Union-Tribune - Garcia is the policy director at the Environmental Health Coalition and lives in Chula Vista. López is the director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment-San Diego. He lives in Imperial Beach.

One in three San Diegans are Latino. One in four San Diegans eligible to vote are Latino.

Yet in the last 50 years, Nora Vargas is the only Latino candidate elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

You read that right. One Latino leader in five decades.

Go back a full century — 100 years — and that number skyrockets up to ... two.

It’s a stark and shameful history of political disenfranchisement for a cross-border region that prides itself as home to a vibrant, growing Latino community.

And it’s time to end this injustice by including a majority Latino district in San Diego County’s 2021 redistricting plan. In fact, this is required by the federal Voting Rights Act.

Richmond Confidential - These days Clara Realageno sleeps in her car.

In the morning she packs up her things — a pillow, blankets, a suitcase and some toiletries — and drops them off at a friend’s house so they don’t get stolen while she’s at work.

It’s been five months since Realageno’s landlord evicted her by changing the locks to her studio in Richmond. With nowhere else to go, Realageno now spends most nights in her backseat.

In September, Realageno sued her former landlords, Gabriel and Ibeth Lopez, in Contra Costa County Superior Court, alleging the lock-out was the culmination of months of harassment, threats and intimidation.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. 

MEDIA CONTACT: 

Sylvia Moore, 213-804-4679, [email protected]

New Study from Social Justice Group ACCE-San Diego Finds Stronger Tenant Protections Most Effective in Preventing No Fault Evictions in San Diego County

SAN DIEGO (November 2, 2021) - Eviction moratoriums and strong just cause tenant protections were most effective at decreasing “no fault” evictions and the number of deaths from COVID-19 in San Diego County, according to a new study, Tenant Protections in San Diego County, released today by Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment-San Diego (ACCE-San Diego). The study used data contributed by Legal Aid Society of San Diego (LASSD). With the end of California and San Diego County eviction moratoriums in September, it is now more important than ever for cities to pass strong local tenant protections to avoid a new wave of evictions and homelessness, and a rise in new COVID-19 infections.

La Opinion - Desde el sur de Los Ángeles activistas e inquilinos pidieron el jueves a los propietarios de viviendas de renta que detengan el acoso. También solicitaron al ayuntamiento de la ciudad a que hagan cumplir la ordenanza contra las prácticas que llevan a las personas a ser expulsadas de sus hogares.

El grupo se reunió frente al hogar de Yadira Plancarte, una miembro de la Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE),  quien ha vivido en el 4132 San Pedro Street por 11 años. Plancarte dijo que en el 2019 el edificio de cuatro unidades cambió de propietario y este nuevo llegó con reglamentos extremos.

“Nos dio un contrato del cual no estábamos de acuerdo y ahí comenzó el acoso”, dijo Plancarte, quien es madre soltera.

FOX 2 KTVU - Two members of the Antioch City Council held a press conference Monday, urging Mayor Lamar Thorpe to include a proposed tenant anti-harassment ordinance and an ordinance requiring just cause for evictions into the next city council agenda.   

Vice Mayor Monica Wilson and council member Tamisha Torres-Walker said the ordinances are necessary to protect low-income renters and historically marginalized communities who are susceptible to harassment, retaliation and evictions during the ongoing pandemic.   

Sacramento Bee - As California’s coronavirus eviction moratorium ends Friday, state officials and community advocates are urging renters to apply now for help from a housing and utility assistance fund that could give them cash to catch up on bills.

The state has billions of dollars to spend from money allocated through a federal pandemic relief law. People who receive support from the program also get extend eviction protections through March.

“Tenants who owe back rent or who will have trouble paying rent on the first of the month should not wait to apply for rent relief,” Department of Housing and Community Development Department Director Gustavo Velasquez said in a press release this week. “The sooner they apply for rent relief, the sooner they will be protected from eviction for non-payment of rent.”

Dahbia Benakli speaks to supporters at a protest in front of her landlord's Walnut Creek home

NBC Bay Area - Dahbia Benakli gave up her job as a preschool teacher when Covid hit. She had nobody to watch her kids.

The Algerian immigrant and single mom turned to the gig economy, driving for Door Dash and bringing her two young children along for the ride.

“I don’t want to face anything like an eviction, being in the streets or in the car,” Benakli said.

But despite cobbling enough money each month to pay the rent, and a county moratorium banning most evictions during the pandemic, an eviction is exactly what Benakli and her neighbors are now facing.

Los Angeles Times - Some California eviction protections expire this week, but low-income tenants who are behind on their rent can continue to hold on to their housing by applying for a state rent relief program, officials said Monday.

State law adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic protects low-income tenants from eviction if they pay at least 25% of their rent, but that safeguard is set to end Thursday. Still, state officials note that a program that pays 100% of back and future rent for low-income tenants will continue accepting applications after Thursday until it doles out all of the $5.2 billion available from the federal government.

The state tenant law approved this year also blocks landlords through March 31, 2022 from getting a court order for eviction in cases in which tenants have completed a rental assistance application.

Spectrum News 1 - Over the last few years, 69-year-old Ines Alcazar has become closer than ever with her neighbor Teresa Soto.

Soto has lived in a rent-controlled neighborhood on Flower Drive between USC and the 110 freeway for 28 years, Alcazar for the last 50. 

“This place is my home, my community, my life,” Alcazar said.

It's a home and life they’re trying to protect because Alcazar — who is retired and on a fixed income — and Soto — a single mother of three with a disabled child — have started seeing signs that their days on Flower Drive may be limited.

CalMatters - By Christina Livingston, Luis Sanchez, Special to CalMatters

In the weeks leading up to California’s recall election, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned voters that the Republican-led effort was about turning California into Texas or Florida.

Republicans in those two states have made COVID-19 a political issue and, in the process, contributed to unprecedented spikes in COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. When Texas outlawed abortion, the governor’s appeal and his message became more urgent and the stakes very real. 

But, the defeat of the recall showed that California could follow the playbook for multi-racial democracy carved out by organizers in another Southern state, Georgia. With that same playbook, we defeated a right-wing attack meant to roll back the progress we are making in California. In his victory speech, Newsom stated that our values were on the ballot and named economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice as “values where California has made so much progress.”

Sacramento Bee - Hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom crushed the effort to oust him from office, he said it was time to “get back to work.”

California’s left-leaning advocacy organizations are ready with a list of ideas. They want Newsom to refocus on health care, police accountability and climate change.

They waited to press the governor harder until the election was over, and now they say it’s time to regroup. Their organizations helped deliver him a victory, after all.

Alma Quiñonez, miembra de ACCE Los Ángeles, comparte su historia de como fue afectada por COVID-19, y como el Programa Ayuda Con La Renta de COVID-19 le ayudará a ella y a miles de familias a permanecer alojadas.

Los Angeles, CA - Aproximadamente 4,000 propietarios ya han recibido los fondos.

Spectrum News 1 - LOS ANGELES (CNS) — A federal appeals court panel Wednesday upheld the city of Los Angeles' COVID-19 eviction moratorium, rejecting an effort by Southern California's largest landlord organization to reverse the restriction.

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles sued the city on June 11, 2020, challenging the eviction ban, prohibitions on late fees and interest on unpaid rent and moratorium on annual rent increases.

U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson in November issued an order keeping in place the citywide ordinances designed to protect tenants during the public health crisis. AAGLA, which consists of 55,000 rental property owners and managers, appealed the decision in December.

A woman holds a sign during an outdoor protest in New York City on August 6, 2020.

Truthout - As the eviction moratorium sputters uncertainly onward, a new genre of news article has emerged from the chaos: the woes of the so-called “mom-and-pop landlord.” These landlords — individuals with just a handful of rental properties — are hard-pressed to keep up mortgages and maintenance due to their inability to collect rent during the COVID crisis. Most landlords featured in such stories agree that ending the moratorium is the answer . . .

As Mangal’s situation suggests, the plight of the small landlord is complicated. It is true that the so-called mom-and-pop landlords are feeling the squeeze, though not to the extent they like to pretend. At worst, these beleaguered landlords will lose their rental properties, while those they evict stand to lose housing, a financially stable future and even their lives as the Delta variant surges. Yet landlord complaints are not entirely unfounded. As mom and pops begin to exit the rental market, large corporate entities are already swooping in to buy up the excess stock, which threatens to funnel wealth into the pockets of the ultra-rich, put further pressure on remaining small landlords to sell and create worse conditions for tenants down the road.

San Diego Union-Tribune - San Diego County renters are still protected from eviction until early October, but a stricter local law is expiring.

On Sunday, the San Diego County eviction moratorium, which was tougher than state and federal laws, will end. The local ban was controversial in preventing homeowners from moving back into properties if they had a renter and triggered an unsuccessful lawsuit.

Starting Monday, San Diego landlords could send 60-day eviction notices to renters if they intend to move back in or make significant repairs to their property. It also might be easier to get rid of problem tenants.

The Guardian - California’s ambitious program to provide rent relief to every low-income tenant struggling during the pandemic has been plagued by delays and challenges, and some renters who are waiting for the aid to arrive say they are now facing eviction threats.

California officials have been working since March to distribute funds to landlords whose tenants fell behind on rent during the pandemic, and in June authorities promised that the state would pay off the entirety of the rent debt of qualifying tenants. But the program has been slow to roll out, with eligible tenants across the state having difficulties applying while others say they’ve had to wait months for funds.

Activists and members with the Hillside Villa Tenants Association of Chinatown march from City Hall to LAPD headquarters to demand the city fund the purchase of their 124-unit building in order to stop evictions on Thursday, April 8, 2021. 

San Gabriel Valley Tribune - An ordinance aimed at preventing landlords from harassing tenants went into effect on Friday, Aug. 6, after being adopted by the Los Angeles City Council by a 13-0 vote.

The ordinance approved June 23 when two council members were absent and signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti prevents landlords from harassing tenants by eliminating services, withholding repairs, refusing to accept rent payments or taking other retaliatory actions.

Tenant leaders organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment gathered outside City Hall Friday morning to celebrate the ordinance going into effect. The alliance had been organizing to put pressure on council members to pass the ordinance, which had been stalled in committee.

“The anti-harassment ordinance had been in limbo for over four years in the housing committee. During the pandemic, the Stay Housed Coalition and ACCE saw an uptick in cases of landlord harassment, so ACCE along with other organizers decided to come together to fight for a just tenant anti-harassment ordinance,” an ACCE representative said Friday.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. 

MEDIA CONTACT: 

Sylvia Moore, 213-804-4679, [email protected]

Tenant Leaders, Advocates and City Councilmembers on Friday Mark First Day of Anti-Harassment Ordinance Enforcement at Los Angeles City Hall 

Tenant Leaders Also Urge Improvements to the Ordinance to Further Protect Renters From Abuse

LOS ANGELES (August 6, 2021) - Hailing a new citywide anti-harassment ordinance as a major victory in the fight for strong tenant protections, tenants’ rights advocates and attorneys representing tenants gathered at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday to mark the first day the city’s new anti-harassment ordinance goes into effect. 

KPBS - Local leaders and tenants rights advocates gathered in National City on Tuesday to demand that Conrad Prebys Foundation stop the sale of it’s nearly 6,000 apartment units to the private equity firm Blackstone.

Anne Marine McKellob has called Golden Tree Apartments on Ave A her home for the past three years. It’s one of the 66 buildings the foundation is selling to Blackstone for over $1 billion. McKellob worries about what will happen when Blackstone takes over.

“I am pretty much afraid that we got to move out,” said McKellob. “They aren’t in favor of us, they are in favor of themselves and growing their money higher.”

San Diego Union-Tribune - San Diego County has a strict eviction ban, but local attorneys and tenants’ rights advocates say they are still seeing a number of tenants forced from their homes, especially low-income families.

Tenants of a Chula Vista apartment complex are among those who recently found themselves being evicted from their homes in an apparent violation of those laws.

On May 15, Luis Castro, a former restaurant server who lost his job because of the pandemic shutdown, and other tenants at an apartment complex on Smith Avenue were told to vacate their units within 60 days.

“I’ve been here for 12 years and I don’t know where I would go. This is unfair; this is displacing families,” Castro said.

Times of San Diego - By the end of this week, eligible tenants in the San Diego region will start seeing 100% of past-due rents erased from the beginning of the pandemic through the end of September. 

A new state law that extends eviction protections also allows local agencies to cover all back rent due for low-income tenants impacted by COVID-19. 

This comes after news organizations across the state, including inewsource, reported low participation rates for rental and utility assistance programs, which left millions of dollars unspent.

East Bay Times - Clara Luz Realageno was at work at the end of May when she received a notification on her phone that there was movement detected by security cameras she had installed just days earlier.

The camera monitor on her phone showed that it was her landlord. He was entering her home and changing the locks, barring her from returning to the studio she had rented for four years.

“I left for work; I had no idea I would be coming back to nothing,” she said through a translator in a recent interview.

Realageno didn’t expect to be locked out of her house that day, but her landlord’s violation wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, his pattern of harassment toward her in recent weeks was what prompted her to buy and install the two security cameras inside her home.

San Francisco Chronicle - Richmond officials will soon consider a plan that could allow undocumented residents to vote in local elections, citing their lack of a public voice despite the “significant contributions” they make to the community and its economy.

The City Council is expected to vote this month on a first step: directing the city attorney to conduct a sweeping review of the city’s charter along with legal research to determine whether it can allow noncitizens to participate in local elections, such as school board contests.

LA Times - California tenants will be protected from evictions for another three months, and those with low incomes will have all of their past-due rent paid by the state, under a bill signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The governor acted just hours after both houses of the Legislature approved the bill extending the eviction protections through Sept. 30. Lawmakers cited urgency stemming from the expiration of previous protections that was set for Wednesday.

“California will significantly increase cash assistance to low-income tenants and small landlords under the state’s $5.2 billion rent relief program, making it the largest and most comprehensive COVID rental protection and rent relief program of any state in the nation,” said a statement by Newsom’s office.

San Francisco Chronicle - California will shield struggling tenants from eviction for at least three more months and attempt to pay off all of the rent lower-income residents missed during the coronavirus pandemic under a deal announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers.

The plan, which emerged after weeks of tense negotiations with renter advocates and property owner groups, would extend through the end of September the state’s moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent due to the pandemic.

Lower-income tenants who qualify for a state rental aid program — those who earn 80% or less of the median income in their county and were financially affected by COVID-19 — would be protected from eviction for an additional six months. From October through next March, those residents would receive extra time to apply for rent relief if a property owner attempts to evict them.

NBC 4 - Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders from both the state Senate and Assembly agreed Friday on a proposed extension of the statewide eviction moratorium, through Sept. 30.

The eviction moratorium — put in place in March 2020 as an emergency measure related to the COVID-19 pandemic — was set to expire June 30, just five days after the agreement was announced.

Newsom and legislative leaders also agreed on paying 100% of back-rent owed by tenants who struggled to make rent payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, in an increase of relief funding.

A bill largely ignored by the media may be California’s last chance to avoid disaster for tenants

Sacramento News & Review - With California’s long-feared eviction reckoning on the horizon, corporate landlords have already used loopholes to throw tenants onto the streets throughout the COVID crisis, as one Sacramento woman recently learned when she and her three sons were ejected from their apartment after the oldest boy got shot four times while walking on the grounds. The disabled teen barely survived that attack, and an official notice from managers at the complex shows they used the shooting as justification to evict not only him, but his mom and 12-and-9-year-old brothers – smack in the middle of the pandemic.

The family is now homeless.

The complex maintains that it acted appropriately on behalf of other residents.  

Given the extent to which rental companies have already flouted the mission behind California’s current displacement efforts, the question of what those entities will do once the state’s eviction moratorium expires June 30 – and the federal moratorium a month after that – has housing advocates fearing the worst, particularly if Gov. Gavin Newsom is not able to pull off the last-ditch compromise he’s reportedly been working on.

FOX 11 - The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday adopted an ordinance aimed at preventing landlords from harassing tenants by eliminating services, withholding repairs, refusing to accept rent payments and more.

The ordinance passed on a 13-0 vote, with two members absent. It will next go to Mayor Eric Garcetti for approval.

"I am pleased that the City Council passed the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance. This means that for the first time in Los Angeles, city law defines and codifies illegal harassment activities, providing an affirmative defense for tenants in eviction cases when landlords engage in actions constituting harassment while strengthening civil penalties," Councilman Gil Cedillo, who chairs the Housing Committee, said in a statement after the vote.

The rent forgiveness program would pay landlords all of what they are owed while simultaneously giving tenants a clean slate

The Guardian - California is pursuing an ambitious plan to pay off the entirety of unpaid rent from low-income tenants who fell behind during the pandemic, in what could constitute the largest ever rent relief program in the US.

The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is negotiating with legislators and said the $5.2bn plan would pay landlords all of what they are owed while giving renters a clean slate.

If successful, the rent forgiveness plan would amount to an extraordinary form of aid in the largest state in the US, which has suffered from a major housing crisis and severe economic inequality long before Covid-19.

KTVU FOX 2 - The State of California and its counties are considering extending the moratorium on evictions in hopes of staving off flooding the streets, parks and lots with unimaginable new homeless. It's already had a huge impact on the young Californians of our future.

California's COVID anti-eviction moratorium ends on June 30. Experts say, 900,000 California households, up to 15% of renters, are behind on their rent each owing about $8,000, according to the Federal Reserve. 

If that tragic eviction tsunami comes, the pandemic will have hurt the children most of all and their parents know it. 

"They got scared, they got stressed out; we didn't have anywhere else to go," said Jorge, the son of a renter in Bay Point. 

PBS NewsHour/Associated Press - Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate.

Left unsettled is whether California will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30, a pandemic-related order that was meant to be temporary but is proving difficult to undo.

Federal eviction protections also are set to expire on June 30. California had passed its own protections that applied to more people.

San Jose Mercury News - After widespread criticism from tenants and landlords, state officials said Thursday they plan to streamline applications and step-up outreach efforts to more quickly deliver $2.6 billion in emergency rental assistance.

Despite nearly 200,000 applications requesting $543 million to cover unpaid rent, just $40 million has been distributed across California, according to state data. Advocacy groups continued to sound alarms, saying the state needs to accelerate the distribution of relief checks or risk a wave of evictions when a state moratorium expires June 30.

“I’m worried about eviction. All day, every day,” said renter Patricia Mendoza, a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. “The vast majority of tenants and landlords have not received rent relief.”

City News Service - The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday strengthened aspects of a draft tenant harassment ordinance, including through an expanded definition of harassment, and directed the City Attorney's Office to incorporate the revisions and bring the measure back for final approval.

The draft ordinance defines tenant harassment in several ways, including reducing or eliminating housing services, such as parking; failing to perform necessary repairs and maintenance; abusing the right to access a rental unit; threatening a tenant with physical harm; misrepresenting to a tenant that he or she is required to vacate the unit; refusing to accept rent payments; and inquiring about a tenant's immigration status.

The City Council amended the definition to include tactics like coercing a tenant to vacate with offers of payment; failing to perform necessary repairs on time as required by federal, state, county or local housing, health or safety laws; failing to minimize exposure to noise, dust, lead, paint, asbestos and other harmful building materials; and interfering with the comfort, peace or quiet of a tenant.

ABC 7 - Residential neighborhoods around USC look different than they did just a few years ago. Residents say that's because of companies like Tripalink, which are building housing for USC students - disrupting the makeup of Exposition Park.

Community members marched to Tripalink's office Thursday to demand a halt to all construction projects in the area. According to the group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Tripalink is expanding at a rapid rate. 

Protesters also want their councilmember, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, to put up a fight instead of working with Tripalink, and bring affordable housing to the area.

"I am so disappointed in Marqueece Harris-Dawson because he's turned his back on us," said Beverly Roberts, who lives in Exposition Park.

KPBS - More than two months ago, the San Diego region was awarded $211 million in state and federal funds to help landlords and low-income tenants who were financially impacted by the pandemic.

But only 2% of that money has been sent to eligible households, according to data obtained by inewsource in mid-May. Some are just now receiving updates about the status of their applications and many others are still waiting, housing advocates say.

The two-month turnaround to process applications and send payments to eligible households has been a problem for struggling tenants who are left in the dark. The state of California is also holding local agencies to a Sept. 30 deadline to commit 65% of the available funding.

San Francisco Chronicle - Dozens of tenants in Oakland filed a class-action lawsuit and four multi-plaintiff lawsuits late Tuesday against Mosser Capital, a San Francisco real estate investment company, alleging illegal utility gouging and harassment, attorneys said.

The allegations include driving up existing rents by imposing new utility fees, unlawful entry into units, refusal to make repairs and charging tenants for necessary repairs.

San Jose Mercury News - Oakland tenants in four different apartment buildings are trying to put a stop to what they say has been an ongoing campaign of harassment and legal violations from their corporate landlord, filing five lawsuits this week against the property owner.

The tenants say Mosser Companies, a property company that owns buildings in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, has shut off their utilities, created unsafe living conditions, slapped them with illegal fines and fees, and harassed them in an effort to get them to leave their rent-controlled apartments.

Just like companies charged with creating hostile work environments, Mosser has created “hostile living conditions,” said Ethan Silverstein, an attorney with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tenants. “Now, we are asking the courts to put a stop to it.”

KPBS - A small coalition of activists gathered at San Diego City Hall today to protest Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposal to increase the police budget by nearly $19 million.

...

Gennea Wall, a member of the San Diego chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said more money should be going to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.

“Focus on youth services, so children can succeed academically and creatively,” Wall said. “Whatever space they want to go into, you have to have those programs.”

Community land trusts struggle to compete in red-hot market

San Jose Mercury News - After more than three years of fighting for his East Oakland home, Rafael Luna is exhausted.

Campaigning against rent hikes that could have priced them out of their apartment building, Luna and his neighbors passed out fliers at the building owner’s office, protested outside the owner’s mother’s house and even had two run-ins with the police. This month, the tenants finally are celebrating a major milestone — a local community land trust bought the building and will convert it into affordable housing.

But he says it’s a bittersweet victory and one that opens another chapter of waiting and uncertainty.

“I don’t know if it’s worth staying here,” said Luna, a 49-year-old electrician. “It’s so much stress.”

Community land trusts – nonprofits that buy market-rate properties and then rent or sell them back to residents as permanently affordable housing – are sweeping the Bay Area, promising a new solution to the region’s low-income housing shortage. New land trusts recently formed in San Jose and on the Peninsula, and Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose are considering ordinances that could make it easier for the groups to snap up homes.

CalMatters - When she was in grad school to become a therapist, Merika Reagan sketched out her future with a friend. They would each start their own practice, buy homes and raise their families in Oakland.

Her classmate, who could count on her family’s financial support, achieved the dream.

But Reagan struggled to find a job that checked her school’s internship requirements and still paid the rent. Her parents, who stayed in senior housing and later passed away, left no savings. She never finished her degree, bought a home or started a family — and she has a clear explanation for why their paths diverged.

“The difference is, she is white and I am Black,” said Reagan, now 46. “That did not happen for me because of generational poverty. Because of being Black, because of being a descendant of slavery, because of stolen wealth.”

LA Times - To the editor: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement of $5 billion to help cover 100% of rent debt is a huge blessing to tenants like me and thousands of others who have suffered job and income loss. (“Newsom proposes additional $600 stimulus checks and $5 billion toward rental assistance,” May 10)

Now, the governor needs to follow President Biden’s lead and let tenants access these funds even if their landlords do not participate in the state’s relief program. Otherwise, a program that keeps only some renters housed will harm California’s long-term recovery.

Plumas News - At the April 28 meeting of Portola City Council, multiple members of the community spoke regarding concerns over potential future evictions as the state moves toward re-opening.

San Diego Union-Tribune - San Diego leaders adopted a countywide temporary rent cap late Tuesday and new rules to make evictions more difficult for landlords during the pandemic.

The new ordinance takes effect in early June and lasts until sometime in August. Landlords under the new law can no longer evict tenants for “just cause” reasons, such as lease violations, and can only be removed if they are an “imminent health or safety threat.” This makes it one of the strictest anti-eviction laws in the state.

It also blocks a homeowner from moving back into their property and kicking a renter out, which is allowed now by law.

KPBS - San Diego County on Tuesday became the first border county in the nation to establish a program to provide free legal representation to people facing deportation.

In a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors approved the Immigrant Rights Legal Defense Program, a one-year, $5-million pilot program that will provide free legal counsel for deportation cases.

“Our justice system should be based on facts and laws not on access to wealth and resources,” says Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who brought this proposal to the Board. She says this initiative is about making sure immigrants get “their fair day in court.”

CalMatters - With two months to go before a statewide eviction moratorium expired in January, lawmakers, lobbyists and the governor’s staff were already deep into negotiations on an extension. They reached it just days before the deadline, providing six more months of a ban on eviction. 

Now, with two months left before that extension itself expires on June 30, there is no proposed legislation on giving renters more time before the moratorium ends, and lawmakers expressed uncertainty that there would be. 

“It remains to be seen if there’s appetite in Sacramento to extend the protections past June 30,” said David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat who wrote the original eviction moratorium legislation. “But I don’t think any of my colleagues have an interest in seeing a wave of mass evictions.”

ABC 10 San Diego - Eviction protections across San Diego County could be getting a lot stronger.

On Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors will consider an ordinance that would place further limits on when a landlord can force a tenant to leave amid the pandemic.

107,000 San Diegans remain out of work more than a year into the Coronavirus outbreak.

Those who can't make the rent because of financial hardship are already protected from eviction through June 30, under state law.

East Bay Times - In response to troubling reports of landlords harassing or threatening their tenants, the Richmond City Council voted Tuesday to kickstart a process to create an anti-harassment law to protect renters.

The City Council directed the city attorney’s office to come back in about a month with an ordinance that would specifically lay out what constitutes “harassment” and ban it under city law.

Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin, who brought the idea to the council along with Councilmember Melvin Willis, pointed to Oakland’s tenant anti-harassment law as a model to follow.

News 5 Cleveland - People have fallen behind on their rent during the pandemic.

In addition to the $19 billion rent debt, new data from PolicyLink shows that nearly 6 million households are behind on rent. The data stems from a partnership that aims to not only eliminate that debt but to spark change.

San Diego resident Genea Wall joined forces with tenants' rights advocates who fight eviction. ACCE, or The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, shared their protest video with us. They're working to protect people like Genea, who they believe are falling victim to loopholes in rent relief laws.

CalMatters - When Blanca Esthela Trejo, 46, lies down to sleep, what feels like shards of glass stab her back and cut into her lungs — a lingering effect of COVID-19.

“I’d like to be crouched down, hunched over all the time, because the pain is too much,” she said.

But Trejo is foregoing medical treatment because she has put paying the rent on her Salinas apartment above all else — to keep a roof over her three children’s heads.

A state law passed in January extended eviction protections for tenants through June 30, as long as tenants show they lost their income due to COVID-19 and pay a quarter of what they owe.

LA Times - At the tenant clinics hosted by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, about 90% of renters who show up seeking help say they’re being harassed by their landlords.

Their stories have a familiar refrain, advocates say. A new owner buys a rent-controlled building and wants to clear out the existing tenants in order to raise the rents. Sometimes the property management company offers cash to get longtime tenants to move out, but the offer is accompanied by intimidation or retaliation. Rent checks are refused. Needed repairs ignored. Baseless eviction cases are filed.

It’s a concerted campaign to get tenants to move out. These actions are often illegal, but there’s little enforcement. Tenants can try to sue their landlord for harassment, but there are a limited number of legal aid lawyers available. Plus, the penalties for harassment are so low that it can be hard to find an attorney willing to take the case.

LA Daily News - Los Angeles Councilwoman Nithya Raman proposed a set of amendments Tuesday to the draft Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance, which the City Council Housing Committee is scheduled to discuss on Wednesday.

“Tenant harassment is a pernicious problem that contributes to gentrification, displacement, and homelessness in Los Angeles, and this law represents an important step in the right direction,” Raman said.

“The amendments I am offering are to ensure that the law reflects the many forms of harassment that our office regularly hears about from tenants and tenants groups, and that the proscribed remedies are sufficient to ensure adequate legal representation and deter such unlawful behavior from occurring in the first place.”