News and Views
July 28, 2008
This Palo Alto Daily News article covers the class action lawsuit filed by tenants against Page Mill Properties, alleging that the rent hikes Page Mill is implementing are illegal.
July 25, 2008
Randy Shaw discusses a new National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) that is a part of the new housing bill and that would guarantee annual funding for the construction of affordable housing.
July 22, 2008
Renters are being defrauded in schemes involving vacant foreclosed properties and scam artists posing as landlords.
July 22, 2008
As a new Illinois Senator, Barack Obama cast one of the six "no" votes against a piece of legislation that would have prohibited local jurisdictions from passing local rent control ordinances.
Yesterday, we filed a complaint with the California Attorney General regarding the practices of a new tenant blacklisting website, DoNotRentTo.com and its owner, Bluechip Group LLC.
DoNotRentTo.com refers to itself as "the National Tenant Reporting Company." The site offers its "members" (anyone who pays the annual fee of $29.99) access to what it calls its "bad tenant database". The site allows any website visitor, whether a "member" or not, to make "free unlimited bad tenant postings without login."
Today's New York Times features a front page article on homeowners who rent rooms in their home to tenants as a way to defray rising housing costs in the current economy. The article discusses organizations in California, New Jersey and Vermont that specialize in matching owners and tenants in home sharing arrangements.
July 16, 2008
According to this New York Times article, more and more homeowners are renting out parts of their homes in attempts to avoid foreclosures.
Developers who planned to build condos in the Riverside area in Southern California are changing their plans and building apartments instead. This is due to the inability to sell the condos at a profit because there are too many competing single-family foreclosed homes.
July 14, 2008
According to this San Francisco Chronicle article, rents in the Bay Area are sharply rising, with the South Bay leading the rates of increase.
July 14, 2008
Police arrested two Orange County men for fraud, burglary, and illegal use of the Internet when a potential renter alerted them to a Craigslist scheme involving foreclosed properties.
July 13, 2008
San Francisco rents are still soaring, despite a weak housing market. The SF Chronicle attributes the increase in rents to the strength of the region's economy, the need for housing closer to places of work due to the high cost of gasoline, and "a lack of new rental units being built."
After paying more than $30,000 in rent, tenants of a sober-living complex in San Diego county are forced to find new housing when they lose their home to a foreclosure.
July 10, 2008
A 72 year-old long-time North Beach resident was unable to pay rent for two months after falling victim to a financial scam. He was evicted by his landlord, the non-profit Chinatown Community Development Corporation and ended up in the hospital for pneumonia after living on the streets.
July 9, 2008
Page Mill Properties has gobbled up half the rental housing stock of East Palo Alto, one of California's rent control cities. The company, and its countless subsidiaries, now own an estimated 1700 rental units after a buying spree in 2007, and they are imposing huge rent increases on their tenants. Some Page Mill tenants are facing rent increases as high as 50% in one year, not to mention questionable "utility" charges that Page Mill is imposing on tenants.
July 9, 2008
Relatives of a Kings county family who died in an apartment fire were awarded $29 million in wrongful death damages against the property management company who failed to maintain smoke alarms in the unit.
July 8, 2008
This article reports on various fraudulent real estate transactions that have contributed to the foreclosure crisis and alleges that many homes were bought and rented out with the intention of being foreclosed on.
A Santa Monica landlord couple have agreed to pay a total of $200,000 as part of a settlement with a former tenant and the city. The landlord couple led their former 82-year old rent-controlled tenant to vacate her home in order to rent the apartment at a non-rent controlled rate.
July 4, 2008
This Inland Valley Daily Sun article asserts that while the rental market in the Inland Valley is fairly stable for the time being, that may change if the supply of foreclosed homes are converted into rental units en masse.
July 4, 2008
A group of low-income Oakland tenants filed a lawsuit against the owners of California Hotel alleging that companies running the California Hotel were in violation of a 1990 agreement with the state requiring them to keep the building as available housing to very low income tenants.