top
East Bay
East Bay
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Join the March 10 effort to repeal the extreme Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

by Lynda Carson (tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com)
Mark your calendars now to attend the Petition Campaign Kick-Off next Saturday, March 10, 10:00am -12:00pm -- at the BART / Fruitvale Village Plaza (btw International & E 12st), near the Fruitvale BART Station in East Oakland!
Join the March 10 effort to repeal the extreme Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

By Lynda Carson - March 5, 2018

Oakland - Tenant activists are urging you to join the effort to repeal the extreme Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

Mark your calendars now to attend the Petition Campaign Kick-Off next Saturday, March 10, 10:00am -12:00pm -- at the BART / Fruitvale Village Plaza (btw International & E 12st), near the Fruitvale BART Station in East Oakland. Hosted by Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).

Reportedly, signature gatherers working to overturn the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act, have collected and turned in a quarter of the signatures needed to qualify the AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACT for the November ballot in 2018.

Efforts to collect signatures for the AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACT, are also taking place in Los Angeles, and Sacramento.

Additionally, efforts by activists to place rent control and just cause eviction protections on the ballot are presently occurring in various cities including Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Pasadena, and Inglewood. The City of Commerce has adopted an emergency rent control ordinance that has been in effect since August 2017.

Why the extreme Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act has to be repealed?

The extreme Costa-Hawkins Act harms renters in housing units of all sizes because it restricts local reasonable rent control measures. Repealing the Costa-Hawkins Act would allow local governments to regulate and set the rents for single-family homes, individually owned condominiums and townhouses. Repealing the Costa-Hawkins Act would also allow all rent control ordinances to block or restrict all rental property owners from setting the rent at so-called market rates once a tenant moves out and a new tenant moves in, a policy known as vacancy decontrol. Additionally, the extreme Costa-Hawkins Act prohibits local governments from regulating the price of rents on rental units built after 1995, which is extremely unreasonable to tenants.

Oakland Has The Fastest Pace For Gentrification In The Bay Area

Oakland has the fastest pace for gentrification in the Bay Area, and repealing the Costa-Hawkins Act would stabilize communities, help to slow down the process of gentrification, evictions, and the exodus of people being forced out of their housing, and the Bay Area.

According to Zumper.com, Oakland is presently listed as number 7, regarding the most expensive cities to live in across the country. Rent Cafe claims that the average rent in Oakland is presently $2,455 per month. Landlords are often charging Rolls Royce prices in buildings with slum-like conditions in ghetto areas of Oakland.

The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which has to be repealed, is directly responsible for driving up the rents and harming millions of renters in the Bay Area, and California. Since Assembly Bill 1506 (repeal of Costa-Hawkins) failed to advance to the Assembly Floor recently due to corrupt politicians in the pocket of landlords, realtors, developers, the California Apartment Association and California Association of Realtors, it will be up to the renters, housing activists, and organizations to collect enough signatures to bring the AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACT to the voters.

Activists are urging as many people as possible to support the AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACT in the effort to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act.

Activists already have been urging people to join the weekly signature gathering events held in Oakland each Saturday from 10:00 AM till 12:00 PM, at the local ACCE Action office located at 2501 International Blvd.

According To Tenant Activists:

The Housing Crisis is getting out of hand! Families are being pushed out of our community and onto the streets. We can't just keep waiting, we must act now!

On Saturday, March 10, join us as we kick off the campaign in the Bay Area for the Affordable Housing Act — a proposed ballot initiative that that will give our cities and counties the power to adopt rent control necessary to address the state’s housing affordability crisis by repealing the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

This Kick Off Event will be the first of many! Come learn more about repealing Costa-Hawkins and then we'll hit the streets to gather signatures for the Affordable Housing Act!


Tenants, Tenant Advocates, Housing Organizers, Allies 

This year, after 23 years, we have a huge opportunity to blunt the Bay Area housing crisis by curbing sky-high rent increases and forced displacements ... IF the Initiative to repeal the horrendous Costa-Hawkins Housing Act makes the November ballot.
 
The Costa-Hawkins Housing Act, ( CA Civil Code Section 1954.50) was passed by the state legislature in 1995 by the real estate lobby to prevent California cities from protecting tenants against unlimited rent increases and forced involuntary displacement.  

1)   Costa-Hawkins prohibits local rent laws from protections against unlimited increases in rented houses or condominiums, or from forced displacement due to unaffordable rent. 

2)   Costa Hawkins prohibits "vacancy control" -- meaning whenever a landlord evicts a tenant or when a rental unit becomes vacant, the landlord can raise the rent as high as the market will allow. 

3)   Costa-Hawkins prohibits local rent laws from protecting tenants in new buildings or buildings built after 1982 from unlimited huge rent increases. Cities like Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco cannot extend rent protections to rental units built after their original rent law was established.  In Oakland, this means that rent protections cannot be extended to apartments built since January 1983.     

We must act now !

For the November 2018 ballot, the deadline for collection of 585,000 signatures statewide is May.
 
Join the Bay Area Initiative Campaign to Repeal the Costa-Hawkins Anti-Tenant Law.
 
There is no time to waste.  Do not let the deadline pass without your signature !

Please sign, and sign-up now ! 

REPEAL COSTA-HAWKINS !
 
For more information, Call (510) 269-4692 & Visit the 'Repeal Costa-Hawkins Event Page': https://www.facebook.com/events/200590310687150/?active_tab=about


Existing California cities enforcing rent control on apartments include:

• Berkeley


• Beverly Hills


• East Palo Alto


• Hayward


• Los Angeles


• Los Gatos


• Mountain View


• Oakland


• Palm Springs


• Richmond


• San Francisco


• San Jose


• Santa Monica


• West Hollywood

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
Add Your Comments
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$255.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network