Dean Preston to Start Statewide Tenant Organization

With tenants losing time and again at the state level, this project is long overdue. And with the rental market heating up, there is no better time. “People have talked for a long time about the work that Dean will be doing,” said Randy Shaw, Executive Director of T.H.C. and Editor of Beyond Chron. “It fills a critical and essential void for California tenants.”

Dean will launch a statewide tenant organization to "develop a network of renters, advocates and allies to protect and advance tenants’ rights. Despite a lot of good work being done at the local level,” he explained, “there is no statewide organization. Many advances at the local level are getting consistently undone by anti-tenant state legislation – and judges who are hostile to tenants’ rights.”

While San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica and other cities have done as well as they can locally, the struggle to defend affordable housing is hit with a constant brick wall of Costa-Hawkins and the Ellis Act. The real estate lobby just stalled the latest effort to pass modest Ellis Act Reform in the state legislature, and in August the state Supreme Court severely hampered a tenant’s ability to sue their landlord for wrongful evictions.

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