Rent increases

Since last summer, Oakland’s been getting a lot of press for its rapid, rather unsettling housing price appreciation, particularly that of its rental market. According to Zumper’s National Rent Report for April, 2016, that appreciation has continued.

Oakland is up 1.3 percent for one beds and 0.7 percent for two beds month-over-month. “Prices are now $2,280 and $2,720, respectively. Both of these yearly percentages represent the highest of any city in the US for each respective bedroom type,” says Zumper.

Pricing out the average resident?

The Mountain View City Council's preferred plan to ameliorate the city's rental crisis was delivered a setback after failing to secure enough votes in a second reading of a tentatively approved ordinance last month. While delayed for nearly a month, the rental ordinance is expected to pass with a majority when it is reviewed again at the end of April.

The proposed ordinance, dubbed the Rental-Housing Dispute Resolution Program, creates a mandatory mediation process, if requested, for renters and landlords for any rent increases beyond a certain threshold.

The City Council approved a temporary moratorium on rent hikes to try to stop the avalanche of displacements impacting many renters throughout the city. The council voted unanimously for the moratorium after first hearing from hundreds of speakers Tuesday night and into the wee hours Wednesday.

The moratorium, a 90-day emergency ordinance that ties the annual allowable rent increase to the consumer price index, provides the city an opportunity to do outreach so tenants know and can exercise their rental rights, City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney said.

Today, tenants from 1127 Virginia Lane in Concord, Contra Costa County, are standing up to their slumlord Steven Pinza and calling a rent strike by refusing to pay 30% rent increases. Pinza has raised the rents in the last 10 months by $50.00 and refused to make necessary repairs. This rent increase already exceeds the rate of inflation, but Pinza now wants to increase rents by 27-30%. Gentrification in San Francisco and Oakland is now being felt in Concord, and the Pinza group is contributing to the housing crisis.

San Diego is becoming an increasingly difficult place to live if you look at the numbers, not the sunshine.

The average rent is San Diego is $1,618, according to a study released by Market Pointe Realty Advisors.

While high rent isn’t anything new for Southern California, the number of those leaving San Diego is a new phenomenon for one of the country’s fastest growing cities.

Between July 2014 and July of last year, roughly 9,300 more people left our county compared to the number who moved here, according to recently released Census Bureau figures.

Grade-school art teacher Melissa Jones is attending the opening of an exhibit called Roofless: Art Against Displacement at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa. It is a cold, rainy night in early January. Jones is a single mother; she and her 12-year-old son live in a one-bedroom basement flat in the nearby rural community of Forestville, for which she pays $825 per month plus utilities. She is desperate to move into a bigger place, but for many the rents in Sonoma County have become unaffordable.

Tenants and property owners packed a San Mateo church Monday night to discuss the region’s housing crisis with many sharing stories of steep rent increases and greedy landlords.

“Emails and letters from constituents triggered my need to call for this town hall,” said U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo.

She shared stories of a 74-year-old Belmont woman who had her rent increase 50 percent overnight and a Pacifica resident who makes over $100,000 a year who cannot afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment considering the increasing cost of child care.

For the past 46 years, Theola Polk has called California her home after leaving Arkansas at a time when segregation was still rampant.

At that time, threats from the Ku Klux Klan prompted her family to make the move to California, where she had family.

But now, the East Oakland resident says she is worried that her family may be displaced again by the escalating home prices and rental rates that are sweeping the Bay Area.