Etoria Cheeks teaches math at a public high school in San Francisco, explaining algebra and statistics to teenagers. But it’s the math behind her housing predicament that simply doesn’t add up.
In a shocking indication of just how bad San Francisco’s teacher housing situation is, Cheeks is homeless. She’s a professional with a teaching credential and master’s degree in one of the richest cities in the world who cannot find housing.
Concord, CA—On Tuesday, May 2nd, the city of Concord plans to approve the implementation of a rent mediation program. Mediation is non-binding, so unlimited rent increases will continue to be legal. Tenants and their allies oppose the mediation program because these programs are ineffective at stopping rent gouging.
Rent control advocates failed to win over Concord’s City Council last year, but a proposed ordinance designed to keep rent hikes below 10 percent is picking up traction in the suburban city of about 125,000 people.
Auctioning off an apartment to the highest bidder may sound like a nightmare to those struggling to find a home in Los Angeles' tight rental market.
But landlords and property managers can do exactly that with the help of digital tools from tech startups. Companies like Rentberry, Biddwell and the L.A.-based Property Connect have created websites and mobile apps that allow prospective tenants to place bids on apartments.
In immigrant-heavy neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, community groups have seen a marked uptick in landlords exploiting immigration fears to threaten tenants since the election. Unscrupulous landlords who threaten to call immigration authorities on undocumented tenants are not a new phenomenon, but, as first reported at CityLab, there appears to be a growing trend across California of landlords capitalizing on immigration fears to illegally raise rents or evict tenants.
Shirley Gibson’s client was in jeopardy. A mother of three living in San Mateo County in California, the woman had obtained a restraining order against her children’s father for domestic abuse. Her landlord took the opportunity to demand that she sign a new, higher lease. She pleaded with him to let her take the document to an attorney.
“Legally, a victim of domestic violence isn’t required to agree to new lease terms or agree to pay more rent, just because they’re a victim,” says Gibson, directing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County.
The cost to rent an apartment in Southern California continues to rise and tenants at one apartment complex in Boyle Heights fought back on Wednesday.
More than 20 tenants said they received a letter from Crescent Canyon Management informing them that their rent would be increasing effective April 1.
"We're trying to understand how someone can go and deliver a notice for an $800 rent increase and then run away and hide and not talk about it," Elizabeth Blaney with the Los Angeles Tenants Union said.
Did they raise the rent?
If you live in a Long Beach apartment or rental home, the answer just might be an emphatic, “Yes!”
According to Apartment List, a San Francisco-based online group that analyzes trends in rental housing, Long Beach last month cracked its list of the 10 large U.S. cities with the steepest rent increases over the past year.
Corona officials could pursue voluntary rent control for trailer parks in an effort to help elderly and impoverished residents facing 30 percent rent hikes over two years. The City Council is expected to have an April 26 study session after individual members tried for a year to find a compromise between those living at Corona La Linda Mobile Home Park, where most residents are low-income Latinos, and Kort & Scott Financial Group in Anaheim, which bought the trailer park in June 2015.
San Diego is the second worst market for renters in the country. That’s the word from Forbes’ 2017 ranking of 46 metropolitan areas, where only Miami is worse.
Analysts factored in San Diego’s monthly apartment rent ($1,748), vacancy rate (3.1 percent), annual rent increase (4.8 percent) and the portion of income spent on rent (30 percent).
In fact, six regions in California — San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside-San Bernardino, Oakland and Sacramento — ranked among the 10 worst.