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Oakland tenants to Rent Board: don't give landlords free ride

by Mike Lee
Tenant input needed on criteria for rent increases.
Oakland tenants have a chance to reduce the rate that rents go up by
speaking up to the Oakland Rent Adjustment Board as it untangles the
distinction between maintenance (not passed through to increase
tenant rent) and capital improvements (can be passed through).

Some points you can make:

The Rent Program has allowed owners to stick tenants with the cost of nearly
anything by slapping a "capital improvement" label on it. The definition needs
to be tightened to minimize what qualifies as a capital improvement.

Seismic retrofits are maintenance not capital improvements; San Francisco and
Berkeley do not allow them to be passed to tenants, neither should Oakland.

A majority of Oaklanders are renters. The positions of the Oakland Tenants Union
deserve correspondingly greater weight than the small percent who are landlords.

Owners are compensated for capital improvements by the increase in
property value so it makes no sense to let them double their money by
passing them through to tenants.

Painting and reroofing are always maintenance, not a capital improvement.
The city website must be corrected to remove painting as a capital improvement.

The Rent Board meeting is Thursday September 11 7PM at
Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 1, One Frank Ogawa Plaza, near Broadway & 14th.
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/hcd/o/RentAdjustment/index.htm

Rent Board members are:
Michael Bowie mab1472 [at] yahoo.com
Ramona Chang mlsbook [at] yahoo.com
Noah Frigault noah.frigault [at] sfgov.org
Edward Lai edward.lai9 [at] gmail.com
Benjamin Scott bscott [at] adventpropertiesinc.com
Tyfahra Singleton tyfahra [at] gopublicschools.org
Beverly Williams Beverly.Williams [at] ceb.ucla.edu

For more info: Oakland Tenants Union http://www.oaklandtenantsunion.org
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