Tenant Justice Campaign: Next Moves

 

FROM MARCH UPDATE:

Tuesday March 11, the the Oakland City Council Community and Economic Development Committee decided to forward rent control recommendations to the City Council, but failed to make a specific recommendation to the council, so we are still pushing to make sure that the Tenant Justice Campaign recommendations are the ones approved. (click here for a list of our recommendations and for the history of the Tenant Justice Campaign)

Important next steps

 

  • • Petition
  • • Email your councilmembers
  • • Come to the Rally and Hearing March 18

Have you signed the petition?  Please do so here:

Our goal: for 1000 people to sign our petition in support of the Tenant Justice Campaign!
We already have almost 400 signatures. Please send out the petition to you friends, post on facebook, twitter, email!

Use this to help identify your council district: //mapgis.oaklandnet.com/councildistricts/

 

Tenant Justice Rally at Full Council Meeting

Tuesday, March 18th at 5pm we will have a rally and then head into the Oakland Council chambers to demand that the council meet the needs of the people of Oakland, rather than the landlords.  For far too long, tenants have suffered the burden of unequal laws, while landlords reap the profit.  Join us to demand that the city of Oakland stand up for the rights of tenants!

History

The Tenant Justice Campaign is an advocacy effort that we started to organize around in July 2013 when Oakland’s rent adjustment program started to put recommendations forward to change Oakland’s rent law. 

Specifically the pass through regulations: debt service and capital improvements – the pass throughs that create the largest rent increases for “rent controlled” tenants in Oakland.  It’s our only local policy fix that addresses high rents in Oakland and our recommendations will significantly change how rent increases happen – they will force landlords to petition and cap rent increases.

The Tenant Justice Campaign put forward recommendations to the rent board in September of 2013 and they finally complied all of the recommendations to go to the Oakland City Council Community and Economic Development Committee on Tues, Feb 25th.  In that meeting, the committee members postponed the decision until there was a landlord and tenant “mediation”, which happened Weds., March 5th. Nothing came out of that.
 
Tenant Justice Campaign’s proposals to modify the Rent Program’s pass-throughs of debt service and capital improvements

  •       Eliminate the owner’s Debt Service as a basis for rent increase
  •       Share the costs of Capital Improvements between tenants and owner


  •       Require owners to file petitions before passing-through Capital Improvement costs to tenants, and require notification to affected tenants of regulations governing Capital Improvements


  •       Establish a maximum cap of 10% on annual rent increases for ALL allowable increase justifications, including Capital Improvements. 


  •       Expand the present 5-year amortization period for capital improvements pass-throughs to 5, 10, 20 years to more accurately reflect the useful life of the improvements, 


  •       Ensure that Capital Improvements increases are removed from tenant’s rent on the payoff expiration date.