Chris Raudenbusch lost his rental home and just about everything he owned when a wildfire swept through his Santa Rosa neighborhood in October.
"My girlfriend was renting the house. I had just recently moved in to help her with the rent because her roommate had left," Raudenbusch said. "We grabbed, grabbed the animals and took off. We had no warning -- no nothing."
Last Tuesday we mobilized to attend the first-ever State Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee informational hearing on “The Housing Affordability Crisis: Exploring the Effects of Renter Displacement” and asked you to contact your local state representatives to demand the repeal of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.
he petition filed at the beginning of this month to introduce a form of rent stabilization in the city of Glendale hit an administrative setback last week as the city clerk’s office deemed the filing of more than 11,000 signatures invalid due to compliance issues with state election codes.
The race is on for the chance to become the home of Amazon's second headquarters.
The Greater Sacramento Economic Council announced the region's bid for Amazon's second headquarters Wednesday morning outside Golden 1 Center. Sacramento is among a number of cities -- San Diego, Houston and Minneapolis to name a few -- competing for the headquarters. Amazon says they'll hire as many as 50,000 employees with an average annual salary of more than $100,000.
Proposals are due midnight Thursday.
Steve Kalmbach was in a meeting in the conference room at his Pleasanton office when he looked through the glass windows to find a crowd of unwelcome visitors in the reception area. Some were his tenants from a Deep East Oakland neighborhood — there to protest his doubling of their rents.
“He got really angry and didn’t want to talk to us so we put fliers all around his office,” said Jorge Rojas who rents a two-bedroom house on 76th Avenue with his wife, two children and two dogs. The cops showed up and told the tenants to leave.
Stacey Falls, a science teacher at Santa Cruz High School, has been keeping a nervous eye on rents in recent years, as she’s watched friends and colleagues move away.
Falls, who sat on the high school’s hiring panel, says Santa Cruz High won’t even consider candidates who would have to relocate to Santa Cruz “because it would be too challenging.”
California’s statewide tenants’ rights organization warned on Wednesday that double-digit rent increases following recent wildfires violate Penal Code 396, the state’s anti-price gouging laws. The cap on rent increases was triggered by the Governor’s declarations of states of emergency in nine counties due to wildfires. Tenants Together is holding a webinar at 10am-11am on October 26, 2017, for media, policymakers, lawyers, and organizers on the issue. To sign up for the webinar, visit http://bit.ly/RentBan
Erin Blackwolf is a veterinary technician with two kids, two cats and a dog living in a 280-square-foot rental in Felton that costs $1,400 a month.
Since November, Blackwolf, 41, who is divorced, has been looking for a two-bedroom rental for $1,800 but landlords are wary of pets.
“I’m not willing to let my best friends go,” she said.
She looked on Craigslist, where she found scams. She posted on Facebook, trying to team up with another family, but found landlords uninterested.
“I’m paying $950 [for rent per month] there, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed [that it doesn’t go up],” said Cat Mendoza on August 26. She lives off of 44th Street in City Heights, just a couple blocks away from the “Know Your Tenants Rights/Conozca sus Derechos de Inquilino” meeting that she attended with three others.
“It’s increased from $700 [per month],” said Mendoza, 32, “and it’s comparatively lower than certain areas — but we still have a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed.”
Modesto resident Christine Thompson said it took her three or four months of searching to find her current home, a two-bedroom apartment that rents for $825 a month, is clean, in good repair and in a decent neighborhood. She and her two children have been living there since January.