Rats left to breed unchecked. Heat and electricity cut off. Landlords demanding to see tenants’ IDs. Those are only a few of the tenant harassment tactics detailed in a new report that chronicles one of New York’s more insidious problems: predatory equity.
Every Tuesday, Frances Moore collects a loaf of bread from Sweet Adeline Bakeshop for her food giveaway at Driver Plaza in North Oakland. Last week, though, the longtime community organizer also delivered a letter imploring her neighbor and landlord, a bakeshop employee, not to evict her from her nearby home of more than eight years.
One by one, Frances Moore has watched friends and neighbors move into cars, tents and encampments. Many in crisis often turn to the 62-year-old Oakland woman, who provides free meals to the homeless, but she has found it increasingly difficult to hear their stories of displacement.
That’s because she knows she could soon be next.
Marin landlords will now be required to enter into mediation with their tenants if they increase rents more than 5 percent within a 12-month period.
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ordinance imposing the new requirement. The mediation requirement also will be triggered if a landlord reduces services to a tenant, if that service reduction is equivalent to more than a 5 percent rent hike. Landlords will be required to notify their tenants of the new ordinance by Feb. 12.
Adrian Bonilla lived in a shared house in this Silicon Valley town with his wife and two grandchildren until earlier this year, when the rent for their bedroom jumped to $1,200 from $900 a month. Mr. Bonilla attributed that rise to Facebook, which is based nearby and was growing.
So Mr. Bonilla, a 43-year-old mechanic and Uber driver, bought a 1991 recreational vehicle and joined a family-oriented R.V. community on a quiet cul-de-sac. They lived there until last week, when Mr. Bonilla received an eviction notice.
Rent rates have spiked across so much of Bedford-Stuyvesant that even non-attorneys are finding a way to profit off evictions.
Richard Cabello, who spent 26 years working in real estate, claims to have launched the first business dedicated solely to helping landlords navigate and expedite the eviction process. His firm Quick Evic’s revenue has exploded since Cabello launched it out of a suitcase in 2015.
The Los Angeles City Council has shown only lukewarm support for Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposed “linkage fees,” which would be funded by developers and earmarked for low-income housing. But even as the policy has stalled on a citywide level (it was finally green-lit by a key committee in August), a coalition of advocates has been steadily working on other ways to create developer incentives and get more affordable homes built in South Central L.A.
Political compromise, like beauty, lies very much in the eye of the beholder. That was made excruciatingly clear late last week, when a special task force made up of landlord and tenant representatives voted in favor of a handful of measures designed to provide greater protection to renters living in the City of Santa Barbara. Although the final vote was unanimous, there’s still deep disagreement among the factions about just how much the landlords gave up and how much the tenants stand to gain.
Sonoma County is experiencing a second wave of fire victims: renters.
Many are being evicted because their homes are now needed by the landlords, for themselves or someone else to live in.
"It would have been easier if everything was just gone, and we started over," Jeff Larcher told KTVU, in the Santa Rosa house he has rented for 12 years.
Larcher, his wife and two children, must vacate the 3 bedroom home by January 5.
Last January, a woman in Lakewood, Ohio, ran to her neighbor’s house, bleeding from her face with a broken nose and concussion from a vicious attack by her boyfriend. With her neighbor’s help, she called the police, who took her to the hospital. Three days later, the city wrote the woman’s landlord: “Your tenant had a visitor over to the residence where he assaulted her. He was charged with felonious assault. This activity qualifies the property as a nuisance.”