8/2 Tenant/Housing News- Alameda Mass Evictions & More

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MORE MASS EVICTIONS IN ALAMEDA

The latest in tenant/housing news shows that low-income renters across the nation are taking a beating from the forces of gentrification.

LA County takes a $13.4 cut in their Section 8 program, West Oakland & Just Cause rallies against a massive gentrification project, 400 families in Alameda at 433 Buena Vista Ave, face mass evictions due to gentrification, and in Clearwater Florida 233 families face mass evictions because of a Hope IV gentrification scheme to get rid of low-income housing in that area.

Word came in last week about the mass evictions in Alameda, and the question arose as to whether the Section 8 renters were to receive 60 day notices or 90 day notices to make the mass evictions legal. It's 90 day notices for the Section 8 renters, and the notice removes the unit from the Section 8 market permenantly and the rents may not be raised for the next 2 to 3 years in that unit. That is unless the laws have changed again recently, and these laws were there to keep greedy landlords from evicting to raise the rents.

Mass eviction are wrong whether they are legal or not, or sanctioned by the City or not, and the sooner that people learn to unite and refuse to move when faced with the tyranny of corporate greed the sooner that "WE THE PEOPLE" can regain control over our lives again...

Roll Back The Rents...

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LA County to cut housing aid because of funding shortfall

Associated Press Posted on Sun, Aug. 01, 2004

LOS ANGELES - County officials plan to cut rental assistance for low-income families because of a $13.4 million shortfall in federal funding for subsidized housing.

As a result, some residents who rely on Section 8 may pay higher rents or lose their housing.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/9295894.htm

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‘There is history here, Black History!’

West Oakland rallies against massive gentrification project at Wood Street Train Station

By Tiny/PoorNewsNetwork

http://www.sfbayview.com/072804/blackhistory072804.shtml

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Renovations boot Island families
Sections: More Local News
By Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER
ALAMEDA -- While developers gave catered tours of $900,000 homes in the new Bayport development this week, hundreds of poor families across the street were receiving notices to vacate their low-rent apartments. -- 7/31/2004

Article Last Updated: Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 4:09:57 AM PST

Residents of ramshackle complex get eviction notices

By Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER

ALAMEDA -- While developers gave catered tours of $900,000 homes in the new Bayport development this week, hundreds of poor families across the street were receiving notices to vacate their low-rent apartments.

Fifteen Group, owner of Harbor Bay Island Apartments, is getting ready to renovate the 640-unit Buena Vista Avenue complex, notorious for a high volume of police calls, fires and vandalism.

As many as 400 families, about half of whom receive federal Section 8 housing subsidies, found eviction notices taped to their doors this week.

Most were given between 30 to 90 days to vacate the apartments. Others were told they will have to leave when their leases expire.

Renovations are expected to take place over the next year, possibly longer, according to sources.

"They're just forcing my hand," said Jay Ashley, a 76-year-old semi-retired insurance agent who moved to the complex 10 years ago and has watched the place steadily decline. He was told this week he has 60 days to leave.

"I planned to move anyway," Ashley said Thursday, leaning over a paint-chipped balcony smoking a cigarette. The property was never maintained properly, he said, gesturing toward the stained blue carpet under his feet.

"It's been so bad. ... The police are here almost daily. They haven't been here today." he said, looking out over a grassy courtyard, patchy from too much sun. "But the day is still young."

Tenants huddled in hallways, grousing and speculating about why they are being suddenly forced to leave.

A property manager at the complex re-

fused to comment on the evictions, saying only that renters were notified as per the terms of their contracts. Calls to the real estate corporation's headquarters were unreturned.

"These people are being shafted," said Lisa Salminen, whose sister Dianna Engstrom and her family were given 60 days to go. The family moved into the complex July 1; their green suitcases and boxes were still unpacked in the living room.

"Why did they let us move in?" asked Engstrom, a waitress at TGI Friday's in Oakland, who had to load up on extra shifts to afford the $1,200 security deposit.

The row of yellow apartment buildings stretches for blocks along Atlantic Avenue, where developers Catellus Corp. and Warmington Homes are putting 485 new homes on former Navy land.

Engstrom said she and her husband pay $950 for two bedrooms. They chose the apartment, she said, because they have poor credit, not because it was their first choice.

Alameda Assistant City Manager Paul Benoit said Friday the city is working with the property owners to find a more "humanistic" solution to the renovations than mass evictions.

"Yeah, we'd like to see the facility upgraded, but at the same time ... there's got to be a

better way," Benoit said.

Alameda Vice Mayor Tony Daysog, who grew up on Alameda's West End and has lived there most of his life, said the Harbor Bay Island evictions are a clear case of gentrification -- "with an ugly face," he added.

"This is an exercise in greed at the expense of all those families there," Daysog said.

It has been almost 10 years since the U.S. Navy departed the West End of Alameda, and the character of the area is clearly changing.

The city will pour more than $1.5 million into a renovation project on nearby Webster Street that promises to line it with new streetlights, landscaping, and ultimately new storefronts.

Redevelopers at City Hall are also behind the West End Neighborhood Improvement project, which is engaging residents in plans to spend about $400,000 to clean up streets in the interior of the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, developers are spending billions to convert former Navy brown fields into sparkling new communities .

"I think the West End will benefit from all the new homes," Daysog said.

But the neighborhood is big enough to accommodate housing for low-income and working class families, he said, "not just pricey homes."

Contact Susan McDonough at smcdonough [at] angnewspapers.com .

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Janette Neuwahl
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
July 31, 2004


Officials say the Section 8 vouchers to help uprooted Jasmine Courts tenants relocate won't be in until the middle of the school year.

CLEARWATER - Barbara White is getting ready to move. But she doesn't know where her new address will be, nor when she'll get there.

Last December, officials with the Clearwater Housing Authority unveiled a plan to demolish the small, outdated beige houses that span the Jasmine Courts neighborhood and replace them with a new, mixed-income housing development.

But now White and the 233 other families in Jasmine Courts, a public housing complex, are still waiting for the relocation vouchers that will help pay for their new homes.

In March, White's 7-year-old daughter, Damoniesha, was hit by a car, forcing White to quit her job so she could drive Damoniesha to a series of doctor's appointments to treat her head injuries. Then White had a car accident, paralyzing the main method of transportation for her and her three daughters.

"It's going to be pretty hard to find a home on short notice like that - I thought it would be better, but I guess we've got to do what we've got to do," said White, 27, a single mom. "I've already been looking for houses, but they aren't going to wait for me to get my Section 8 voucher."

The demolition will use federal tax dollars granted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development; construction of the new development will be funded by tax credits, bonds and loans.

Although the Clearwater Housing Authority had planned to relocate the residents before August - when school starts for the neighborhood's more than 600 children - commissioners learned Friday at a monthly board meeting that families still living in Jasmine Courts may have to wait until well into the school year before relocation vouchers are available.

"We're waiting for the Section 8 vouchers still, so unfortunately (relocation) is going to happen during the school year," said Jacqueline Rivera, director of the Clearwater Housing Authority.

The Section 8 relocation vouchers are part of the $2.5-million grant the housing authority received in June from HUD to demolish Jasmine Courts, located on Tanglewood Drive off Drew Street. The grant money will also be used to relocate the more than 200 families living in the East Clearwater neighborhood.

Plans drawn up by the housing authority aim to redevelop the 284-unit complex into a community with rental apartments, townhomes and single-family homes that will help former public housing residents become self-sufficient, Rivera said.

The housing authority is waiting until it gets the vouchers before starting the relocation process, so that residents have the money in hand to find a new place, Rivera said. Once they get the vouchers, Rivera expects the relocation process to take about six months.

Still, some residents wish they had more notice on when the move needs to occur. Jessie Jenkins, 34, also lives at Jasmine Courts with her three sons and two daughters. Jenkins said she thinks it will be especially hard for her to find a place to go because she needs a house with four or five bedrooms.

"It's extremely hard to find a place like that and as long as they linger with this, the ones I saw will be gone," she said.

Rivera said 80 percent of the residents living at Jasmine Courts have applied for a Section 8 voucher. And while Jenkins may be able to come up with enough money to move out before she receives the HUD vouchers, White said Damoniesha's constant medical appointments leave her with little time to look for a new job. She said it's difficult to make any plans to move until the vouchers arrive.

"I'm not mad at the housing authority, I'm just kind of clueless when I keep hearing this and that," White said.

Armando Fana, field office director at HUD's Miami bureau said the vouchers were still pending authorization by the agency as of Friday. Rivera said the department is moving slowly, but as soon as the vouchers arrive, the Clearwater Housing Authority will jumpstart relocation by bringing in a company they have chosen to work individually with residents.

Janette Neuwahl can be reached at jneuwahl [at] sptimes.com or (727) 445-4163.

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Click below for more on the mass evictions taking place in Alameda and update on City Council meeting...

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/08/1691005.php