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Tenant Rights

There’s Only One State Where Falling Behind On Rent Could Mean Jail Time

March 21, 2021 Maya Miller, Ellis Simani and Benjamin Hardy, ProPublica. , , ,
Arkansas state Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville, introduced a bill Thursday that would repeal the state’s criminal “failure to vacate” statute. First enacted in 1901, the law allows landlords to seek criminal charges, which can result in jail time, for tenants who fall even a single day behind on rent and do not vacate a property within 10 days. Everywhere else in the U.S., evictions are exclusively a civil matter. The legislation comes after a ProPublica and Arkansas Nonprofit News Network article in October revealed how criminal charges brought under the statute can snowball into arrest warrants and jail time for tenants. A deputy county prosecutor who criticized the law, saying it essentially criminalizes poverty, was fired for his remarks.

Housing Justice Group Puts Power Back In Tenants’ Hands

March 10, 2021 Bryce Covert, The Appeal. , , ,
Brandy Granados’s road to activism began in November 2018 when the heater in her Kansas City, Missouri, apartment exploded. She went without heat for two months during a winter that included multiple blizzards. She continued to pay rent, she said, but in response her landlord didn’t fix the heater; instead he tried to evict her and her children.  Desperate for help, she was connected with Tara Raghuveer, an area native who had returned after graduating from college with the goal of solving residents’ housing insecurity. “I figured I could either just sit there and be mad about my situation, or I could do something about it,” Granados said.  She was able to fight off the first eviction attempt in court, but the landlord removed her to retake possession of the house. She ended up in a homeless shelter for three months. The loss of her home has left her son suffering from anxiety and trauma.

Tenants Take On The ‘City’s Worst Landlord’ With Rent Strike

December 1, 2020 Caroline Spivak, Curbed. , , ,
Standing outside the four-story brick apartment building in Crown Heights she calls home, Jemiah Johnson took her turn with the black megaphone. “This building is literally killing us!” the 26-year-old mother shouted to the small crowd of neighbors waving homemade signs scrawled with phrases like DEFEND RENT STRIKERS and TENANT POWER. “My child is waking up three or four times in the middle of the night struggling to breathe.” At the November rally, she and her fellow mask-clad tenants described a long-standing pattern of neglect and shoddy repairs: crumbling ceilings, leaky pipes, walls caked with mold, repeated desultory work that never truly fixes anything.

Emergency Urbanism

November 27, 2020 Ananya Roy, Public Books. , , ,
Los Angeles is on the brink of one of the largest mass displacements in the history of the region. As eviction courts reopen, nearly half a million renter households, concentrated in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, are at risk of expulsion through unlawful detainers, or eviction filings—UD Day is here. In a deal struck with the landlord and banker lobbies, the California legislature has put forward tenant protections that postpone some evictions, keeping tenants in a state of permanent displaceability. In a cruel hoax, such protections convert unpaid rent into debt, turning the small-claims court into yet another arena of violence against working-class communities of color.

Nearly 1,000 Homeless People Died In LA In 2020 As 93,000 Homes Sit Vacant

November 3, 2020 Alex Ferrer, Terra Graziani and Jacob Woocher, Truthout. , , ,
In many major metropolitan areas across the United States, there are far more vacant homes than people experiencing homelessness. This is true in New York City, it’s true in the Bay Area, and as our new report shows, it’s true in Los Angeles. Here, there are 93,000 vacant homes compared to just over 41,000 unhoused people. Our report, the product of a collaboration between UCLA School of Law and the community-based nonprofits Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, is perhaps the most detailed look yet at the characteristics of residential vacancies situated in the broader speculative housing market in any city in the United States.

Tenants Take On Philadelphia Gentrifier

May 6, 2020 Doris Grass, Workers.org. , ,
Philadelphia–A new and rapidly growing association of residential and commercial tenants of OCF Realty was formed to demand that OCF meet the needs of its tenants during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Since the inception of Tenants of OCF several weeks ago, members have faced a high level of harassment, intimidation and retaliation from OCF and its owner, one of Philadelphia’s top gentrifiers, Ori Feibush. A household of four tenants, who wish to remain anonymous for fear of further retaliation, reported that an OCF employee attempted to enter their home twice without notice, violating Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order while increasing the tenants’ risk of exposure to COVID-19. In one instance, an OCF employee successfully entered the house while only one tenant was home and showering.

Victory For DC Tenants In Catholic Church-Owned Buildings

July 24, 2019 By Yasmina Mrabet, Justicefirst.org , ,
Tenants across 3 separate buildings worked together to find a developer willing to purchase the buildings and ensure that the housing remains affordable. This seemed a near impossible task due to the price that the Basilica demanded, the lack of support from the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) for small building projects, the extensive lending requirements by banks, and the short Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) timeline. Yet, due to hard work, perseverance and relentless organizing...

Tenants March To Stop Giveaways To Wall Street Landlords

July 19, 2017 Aditi Katti, www.inequality.org , , , , ,
By Aditi Katti for Inequality.org - It was a brutally hot and humid day in the nation’s capital and Margie Mathers needed a cane to get up to the podium, but the Florida senior had a story she was determined to tell. “When I moved into our manufactured housing community in North Fort Myers, it was a beautiful, peaceful place,” Mathers told the crowd of around 1,000 activists who’d converged on the city for a July 13 Tenant March on Washington. “Now I have neighbors who are really struggling. They’re taking their medications every other day instead of every day and not eating the food they need to be healthy.” What changed? Her development had been purchased Equity LifeStyles Property Inc., a private equity firm specializing in developments where residents own their trailer homes but rent the land under them. This new landlord quickly jacked up Mathers’s monthly rent to $630, from $230 just four years ago. To fight back, Mathers became involved with MH Action, which is organizing owners of manufactured homes to protect the affordability and quality of their communities. This group co-sponsored the Tenant March, along with more than a dozen others, including New York Communities for Change, Community Voices Heard, People’s Action, CASA de Maryland, and the Center for Popular Democracy. Organizers reported that marchers came from 16 different states.

Portland Declares Official Housing Emergency

October 11, 2015 ShelR. King, www.blogtown.portlandmercury.com , , ,
By Shelby R. King for the Portland Mercury. Portland, OR - Portland City Council today passed an ordinance declaring an official housing emergency in the city. The commissioners unanimously voted to enact an ordinance that will temporarily remove barriers to increasing affordable housing and address Portland's homelessness problem. The emergency declaration also authorizes a proposed request to Governor Kate Brown to officially declare a state of emergency. "The tools we have now are not adequate," says Mayor Charlie Hales. "We need to be more nimble, more flexible, and swifter in our response." The declaration allows the city to temporarily use existing buildings (Hales has looked into using an old Army Reserve building) as shelters. The ordinance also allows the city to fund a pilot program to establish day storage facilities
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