News and Views
November 3, 2009
November 3, 2009
A reporter covers a San Francisco Land Use Committee meeting where tenants and advocates, including Tenants Together and several Tenants Together member organizations, spoke out on behalf of extending just cause eviction protections to tenants living in post rent-controlled units.
November 3, 2009
Los Angeles Clippers owner and real estate mogul Donald Sterling has agreed to pay a record $2.725 million to settle allegations by the government that he refused to rent apartments to Hispanics, blacks and to families with children, the Justice Department announced.
November 2, 2009
The Merced Community Action Agency has released "Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program Funds." These funds may be able to help to help tenants pay rent for a limited period of time.
November 2, 2009
San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos will propose amending the city’s rent control ordinance “to protect tenants from arbitrary evictions without just cause” in apartments built after 1979.
In one of the largest non-class action housing discrimination judgements in state history a Fremont landlord was ordered to pay $242,354 in damages to a couple for refusing to consider renting them an apartment because they had a young daughter.
November 1, 2009
Under an ordinance approved by the Rosemead city council, mobile home park owners could be required to pay the costs of relocating the mobile home to a comparable park. In addition, the owners could be required to pay the difference in rent for 12 months between the old park rent and the new home.
October 31, 2009
This article looks at the story of a single-mother tenant in Visalia who faithfully paid her rent on time each month but now faces homelessness because her landlord went into foreclosure. Many of the foreclosed properties in Visalia sit vacant for long periods of time causing a serious problem of blight for the city.
October 30, 2009
Angela Blackwell, executive director for Policy Link says the federal government should offer subsidies for renters amidst the national foreclosure crisis.
October 29, 2009
According to the Clark County, Nev., district attorney's office, there is a warrant out for Walter Lembi, managing director of the financially troubled Lembi Group, San Francisco's largest landlord.
According to Santa Cruz County officials, losing rent control at Alimur Mobile Home Park could open the flood gates for similar losses at some 50 other mobile home parks in the county, many of which are home to the area's least well-off who can't afford to go anywhere else.
October 28, 2009
In this week's column, San Francisco tenant attorney Dave Crow explains what California law has to say about master tenants and the rights of sub-tenants.
GoSection8.com announced today that the number of landlords seeking Section 8 tenants has risen by 18 percent this year.
October 27, 2009
A new California law that gives poor residents the right to an attorney in civil matters such as child custody and foreclosure is being hailed as a model that could transform the nation's legal landscape.
The United Nations dispatched a Special Rapporteur the United States, including Los Angeles, to determine if lack of affordable housing was violating human rights. In NYC tenants and organizers prepped her on the issue of predatory equity.
October 26, 2009
The California Supreme Court denied a review of Palmer / Sixth Street Properties v. City of Los Angeles, an appellate court ruling that the state’s Costa Hawkins Act preempts a local inclusionary housing law in Los Angeles. Legislation is now urgently needed to reverse Palmer.
October 26, 2009
The author says city managers should take note of several recently-decided court opinions which address issues of affordable housing and rent control including Palmer/Sixth Street Properties, LP v. City of Los Angeles and Guggenheim v. City of Goleta.
October 25, 2009
The author of this piece points out the some of the biggest losers in predatory equity schemes are the members of public pension funds including those of CalPERS and CalSTRS.
October 23, 2009
CalPERS' already shaky $500 million predatory equity investment in a New York housing complex suffered a setback Thursday when a court ruled the complex illegally raised rents.