Renters' Day of Action

The biggest problem in San Francisco is lack of vacancy control so that when a tenant moves out, the landlord can raise the rent to any amount. That is why the rents are so high. Rent control only exists when the tenant does not leave and stays in an apartment for at least 1 year. The Costa Hawkins Act is the anti-vacancy control law which must be repealed.

The Ellis Act, the pretext for the evictions, must be repealed. If landlords do not want to be landlords anymore, they can sell their building.

In a capitalist society, there are politicians who win most of the time. There are politicians who lose most of the time. And then there are politicians who lose all of the time. This event is typical of the later category of capitalist politician. This kind of empty gesture -- engaging in aggressive panhandling to Sacramento politicians, most of whom are either wealthy businesspeople or are wholly beholden to wealthy businesspeople -- has zero material impact on the problem -- ZERO IMPACT.

The only thing that can work is muscular collective direct action in our neighborhoods, with our fellow renters and working people, where we make the places we call home extremely uncondusive to the business activities of speculators, yuppies and landlords.

Let's start by avoiding the big mistake of pretending that gentrification and displacement are simply a "housing issue." The process of gentrification is a housing and a larger social space question and it also involves the presence of conspicuous consumption oriented bars, dining and shopping establishments that lure bourgeois types into formerly working class areas like San Francisco's Valencia Street. None of the Moderate-Reform-Strictly-Within-the-Bounds-of-the-Law crowd are going to tackle this; they willifully refuse to engage in any action that will have a real impact on these problems, because if they did they would lose their government and grant funding! These beg-the-man-with-your-cap-in-your-hand crowd of social workers and badly-paid city service administration functionaries have a 40-year-long uninterrupted losing record around the question of housing in capitalist America. We need to start from scratch here -- by talking to our neighbors, and drawing high-profile hostile attention to our class enemies, instead of pitching perpetually ignored fits at the State Capitol.

The law is bunk -- the rich will always be able to buy their way around it. Only sustained, public, collective direct action that wholly excludes petitioning elected officials and voting is going to work!

I'm interested in knowing what kind of collective action the
previous commentator approves of.