Eviction

The city of San Jose is closely monitoring mobile home evictions after complaints came from residents saying they are getting pushed out for minor infractions.

Last summer, Karen Carpenter got an eviction notice from the Winchester Ranch mobile home park where she has lived for six years. The reason?

“Minor clutter, some old paint cans and some weeds,” she said.

Carpenter admits that she was sick last summer and couldn’t get outside to work during her first seven day notice.

Patrick Greene could soon see his rent double.

The 70-year-old man lives with his wife, Karen, in a two-bedroom apartment in Montgomery, Alabama.

He pays $460 a month for the apartment, and the rest of his $940 rent is normally covered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Due to the stalemate in Washington, D.C., however, his landlord informed tenants that she hasn't received the government funds.

"We literally have no idea what's going to happen," Greene said, adding that he and wife live off around $1,500 a month.

Leaks, excessive debris, a lack of heat and hot water, broken front doors – rent-stabilized tenants in Greenpoint say their landlord is trying to push them out of their homes with constant construction projects that have resulted in poor and unsafe living conditions.

The construction-related issues at 97 and 99 Clay St., a cluster of four buildings with a combined 25 apartments, have prompted a mass exodus of tenants, according to George Manatos. Now, only five tenants remain.

The outstanding rent Keilani Luxmore owed on her Seattle apartment for the month of December wouldn’t buy you a cup of coffee, a gallon of gasoline or even bus fare in this city.

But Luxmore’s failure to pay $2 last month means she is facing eviction from the home she shares with her three young children, in addition to the possible loss of the federal Section 8 voucher that covers most of her rent.

It could also result in a return to a homeless shelter for Luxmore and her children, ages 3 and under.

On a brisk morning in mid-December, Valencia Hicks was running late to the Fulton County courthouse in hopes of avoiding eviction.

The 43-year-old mother had been forced out of her home the year before, a process that had uprooted her family from their apartment in East Point, Georgia. At her new brick split-level, Hicks decided not to pay her $995 monthly rent because her landlord hadn’t adequately fixed broken appliances, preventing the family from enjoying affordable home-cooked meals. The landlord, in turn, filed for eviction.

Fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the US housing market is anything but fair. In stark contrast to the racially and economically integrated neighborhoods envisioned by 1960s-era reformers, the United States housing market today is characterized by striking inequality: precipitously rising rents accompanied by high rates of eviction and homelessness in US cities, along with exploding luxury construction marketed to the wealthy.

Beginning in January, landlords who rent three or more units in unincorporated Marin will be required to have a “just cause” for evicting tenants.

The Marin County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ordinance that creates the new requirement. Supervisors did so after years of lobbying by housing advocates who called for them to take more effective action to address the critical shortage of affordable housing in Marin.

“I am supportive of the ordinance as drafted; I think it’s been very carefully crafted,” said Supervisor Katie Rice.

A planned tenant housing relief measure was put on hold by city officials Tuesday in the face of potential litigation.

The Santa Cruz City Council had scheduled a special meeting with two items on its agenda this week, scrambling to fit in some final legislative acts prior to the term expiration for three of seven members this month. Both a proposed 90-day minimum eviction notice requirement from landlords and lengthier decision on rules to ease development of homeowners’ secondary granny flats, however, were taken off the agenda after brief public comment for each.

A settlement agreement is expected as soon as next month in a years-long legal dispute over a landlord’s attempt to evict tenants living illegally in units designated for office space, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

Residents living at 1049 Market St. received eviction notices in 2013 from the building’s owner, who had received a notice of violation for allowing tenants to live in units designated as commercial space only, as had been the practice for years.