Antioch – Advocates will hold a rally on at noon on Wednesday, June 22, at Delta Pines Apartments, 2301 Sycamore Drive, to demand safe and affordable housing and an immediate stop to what critics call 'exorbitant' rent increases Low-income tenants at Delta Pines Apartments and Casa Blanca Apartments, two government-subsidized affordable housing buildings, are facing potential displacement after their corporate landlord recently raised monthly rents by as much as $500.

Before the rally, an expected up to 50 participants will gather in the Lowe’s parking lot at nearby 1951 Auto Center Drive at 11:45 a.m., then walk to Delta Pines Apartments while holding signs and chanting. Residents of Delta Pines, Casa Blanca, and residents with ECRG will speak about their first-hand experiences with unaffordable rents, fears of eviction, and alleged landlord harassment.

(KRON) – Contra Costa County has seen a 35% increase in homelessness since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s impacting families. 

Kamilah Miller, 43, is a resident of Antioch and a working mother of nine. Together she and her husband opened two small businesses a few years ago to support their family. Kamilah Cares is one of their businesses, a child care center. They also had an event-planning business until 2020. Miller even got an associate’s degree in child development, “because I knew that just working a regular job would not be enough to pay rent,” she said.

Four years ago Miller and her four kids were evicted from their home and forced to live in a hotel shortly after her mother passed away, adding an incredible amount of pain to an already suffering family. Miller says the only way they were able to afford the hotel is with the profits from her husband’s event-planning business.

Organizers from the South Central local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union were descending on Exposition Park, their arms full of tablets, laptops and smartphones. It was the evening of April 13, 2021, and as senior and immigrant tenants watched on, the young volunteers connected the park to the internet via a Wi-Fi hotspot. Then the tenants did what they couldn’t do at home: They applied for pandemic rent relief from the state of California.

When low income tenants faced eviction across the state, the primary way to stave it off was through online application to the state’s Emergency Renters Assistance Program (ERAP), which was charged with distributing more than $2.6 billion in rent relief to tenants with additional funds distributed by cities and counties. However, tenant organizers say the program was never going to succeed as it was structured, in large part because applying for relief was only possible with an internet connection and an email address, blocking thousands of the most vulnerable renters in California from paying back their debts.

Hundreds of Chesapeake residents, angry at ongoing maintenance problems at the 425-unit building, have finally won a building-wide inspection, which will take approximately six weeks.  

On June 6, the Los Angeles County Health Department and Los Angeles City Code Enforcement began conducting the inspection of the Chesapeake Apartment complex, located on Obama Blvd. in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area.  

At the same time, tenants and members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment-Los Angeles (ACCE) held a press conference to call attention to the extensive maintenance problems at the building, and owner Pama V Properties president Mike Nijjar’s continued failure at properly addressing them.

California tenants have filed a lawsuit against the agency that runs the state’s COVID-19 emergency rent relief program, saying it “disproportionately harms tenants on the basis of race, color, and national origin.”

Tenant rights organizations Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy announced Monday they joined with research institute PolicyLink to sue the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), which administers the rental assistance program.

The groups claim the program has denied funding to hundreds of thousands of tenants without specific reasons or adequate opportunities to appeal. HCD has also made it more challenging for non-English-speaking tenants to communicate with program officials, the lawsuit said.

ANTIOCH – The state has been slow to pay the rental assistance it promised to tenants and landlords during the pandemic. Now thousands of Californians, including here in the Bay Area, are threatened with eviction in spite of the program that was supposed to prevent it. 

A year ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom proudly announced a program to completely reimburse landlords for the unpaid rent people owed during the pandemic.

"100 percent of your back rent, taken care of," he said at the time.

So, a lot of tenants and landlords scrambled to apply for the program, which was set to end on March 31. Kamilah Miller was one of them.

"I submitted my paperwork March 10th. I haven't heard a peep," said Miller.  "I even called just to say, hey, just want to make sure everything's in there.  And they're, like, 'It's in there.'  And that's it..."

Oakland officials on Tuesday evening capped rent increases at 3% for rent-controlled apartments, effectively preventing landlords from raising rents by 6.7% starting in July, which had been on track to be one of the highest one-year rent increases in the city’s history.

The City Council voted 6-1 for an ordinance to restrain the rent increase, with Noel Gallo voting against the proposal and Loren Taylor abstaining.

The move came amid strong support from tenants’ rights advocates who said a massive rent increase could have a catastrophic impact on a city grappling with a rising homelessness crisis as many residents try to emerge from the pandemic downturn.