LOS ANGELES, CA - Trouble at the small apartment on Vernon Avenue had been brewing for months by the time things came to a head this spring.

For Kevin Diaz Lopez, his housing problems began around October. That’s when his brother and two nephews moved out from the one-bedroom South Los Angeles apartment they all shared, moving to be closer to work in the Long Beach area.

That left Diaz, who works in a packing warehouse, stuck with $1,600 monthly in rent. By January, he was falling behind.

No rental agreement
Diaz says he promised the manager he’d pay within a few days. But he says when he came home one day, he’d been locked out. Some of his things were sitting outside. A neighbor called police, along with a tenant rights group, and Diaz was allowed back in.

But the message he got from the manager was this: “That I was not on the (rental) contract,” Diaz said in Spanish, “and I could not be here.”

ANTIOCH, California - Some people in Antioch are worried about losing an important transit option and are fighting back against a plan to close the Antioch-Pittsburg Amtrak station.

"The last time it came it was like here and gone," said April Hill, carrying her friends suitcase to the Antioch train platform.

Hill has come by the Amtrak station to send a visiting friend back home towards the San Joaquin Valley. She knows it probably won't be long before Antioch says farewell to its downtown train station.

The plan is to open another stop to the east in downtown Oakley, and when that is open the Antioch stop will be decommissioned. Hill says it has already been scaled back to the bare minimum.

"Yeah, they have gotten rid of the benches and ticketing kiosk," Hill explained. " I mean it wasn't, like, really nice before, but now it's even emptier."

ANTIOCH, California - Community advocates have rallied at the Antioch Amtrak train station calling for officials to reverse their decision to close it.

The San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, the body that oversees intercity passenger rail service, voted in March 2023 to close the train station amid concerns of vandalism, safety issues, fare evasion and unhoused individuals using the area for shelter. When the new station in Oakley opens in August 2025, the Antioch station is simultaneously set to close.

S.L. Floyd, housing board commissioner for the city of Pittsburg, showed his support during the rally, noting that many of his city’s residents also depend on Amtrak, which connects Antioch to not only workplace destinations in the west but also locations throughout the nation.

“This is a much-needed measure because we’re encouraging people to get out of their cars to take public transportation,” Floyd said. “Even though they’re building a new station in Oakley, we still need the resources and the public support here because many people cannot afford a personal automobile, so they really lean on public transportation.”

ANTIOCH, CA - Community members this week had a few choice words for Amtrak, which they chanted again and again: “Don’t drop our stop! Don’t drop our stop!”

With Antioch’s downtown train platform slated to close next year in favor of an Oakley stop, a group of residents and activists on Wednesday afternoon urged leaders to do whatever it takes to keep it open.

“This is really important to us because our community relies on this transportation to get to and from everywhere,” Tachina Garrett, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action chair, told the dozens gathered near the platform. “This is not a low-income problem. This is a problem for the community; this train services veterans, senior citizens, students, youth and working families.”

SACRAMENTO, CA - They showed up at City Hall from across Sacramento. Ilene Toney, down from south Natomas. April Ybarra, whose daughters attend Hiram Johnson High School; and parent-teacher Vanessa Cudabac, who made the trip from New Technology High School, both from south Sacramento.

Inside, Sacramento City Council leaders were about to discuss the fate of RydeFreeRT — the pioneering mass transit program that ferries thousands of Sacramento kids to schools, work, venues and activities across the city each year for free — and whether it would survive potential budget cuts to help right the city’s $66 million deficit. The annual investment is funded by a city Measure U tax increase approved in 2018.

The city’s $1 million contribution to the program, credited with substantially boosting youth ridership and school attendance among the city’s Black and brown students, would end as part of a slate of proposed budget cuts.

SAN DIEGO, CA - I never thought that having a child would cause me to become homeless. I was pregnant and working full-time at a minimum-wage job when my daughter was born. My job refused me paid parental leave, and as a single parent without the income to afford costly child care, I was forced to stay home to care for my infant child. This cost me my income and my ability to pay rent.

Within months, my landlord threatened to call the sheriff to evict me. My daughters and I became homeless. We didn’t even own a car to sleep in. For months, I stayed with friends, until we found an emergency women’s shelter.

When the women’s shelter told us after a year that we needed to leave to make room for other families, I was pushed back into the nightmare of trying to find housing we could afford. Between a security deposit and first and last month’s rent, I was being asked to come up with nearly $10,000 to find a home. Working minimum wage as a single parent doesn’t afford me the ability to have that kind of savings.

By a miracle, we finally found an apartment. It was a stretch financially, but for the last seven years, my daughters and I have been stable. Finally — no more shelters. No more couch surfing.

But in 2021, things changed.

SACRAMENTO, CA - California Gov. Gavin Newsom is sponsoring a bill that would push cities to take homeless residents into account when crafting their housing goals.

But would this legislation actually result in more affordable housing? There are concerns the state is not providing enough money to get it built.

Cities have struggled to meet their state-mandated goalposts when it comes to permitting low-income units. Some advocates say planning is an empty promise without more money to build the housing.

“Gov. Newsom continues to ignore the elephant in the room — that local jurisdictions cannot meet their housing goals at lower income levels without significant additional public funding,” said Amy Schur of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment in a statement.

PITTSBURG, CA - Pittsburg renters fed up with high rents and the lack of tenant protections have moved a step closer to getting new rules on this November’s ballot.

Backed by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, housing advocates on Wednesday turned in the more than 4,000 signatures needed to bring rent stabilization, just cause evictions and tenant protection rules before voters. Election officials have 30 days to verify the signatures.

“We did it,” Richmond City Councilman and ACCE member Melvin Willis told the small group gathered in front of City Hall. “Now, with all these signatures, we are going to be able to get this on the ballot and folks who didn’t have rental protections, eviction protections before ….they have a chance to actually assert the right not to be taken advantage of by people who are just looking at their housing as another price up in the stock market.”