Meet Kelly, this summer's organizing intern, who quintupled tenant meeting attendance

Hello! My name is Kelly and I was this summer's Community Organizing Intern at Tenants Together. I came to California from the other side of the country, New York to be precise, and this summer I found myself with the honor of working at Tenants Together. Growing up, my upbringing took place in rural suburbia, surrounded by farms. It was not until my family took a train from Penn Station that I encountered a real city. I was fascinated by New York, there were so many people and things to look at, and I was happily overwhelmed. That is, until a man walked up to my mother and asked her to buy him some chicken. I don’t remember much else about the trip, whether she bought the chicken, what the train was like.

By the end of the day, I was still thinking about this interaction. I couldn’t believe that people struggled with things like having enough food to eat. From then on, I have continued to be shocked by the struggles that some people go through. I thought, well then, I’ll try to change it (I was rather optimistic). What better way to make a change than organizing. I didn’t know that such a thing existed when I started college, but I had decided that I wanted to be a community organizer.

So how does a girl from rural upstate New York end up in the California Bay Area working with housing rights? 

It was a series of lucky coincidences. I have family who live in the Bay Area, and I did not think that my home town, which by all rights is nothing more than a post office, held the same opportunities that a fully formed city would in terms of my organizing goals. So, I began applying to every non-profit that I could find in the Bay area. I had a number of options on my plate, but Tenants Together jumped out at me from the beginning of my search because I worked with housing rights groups in the Bronx, where I go to college, for several years now.

When Tenants Together contacted me and I had a chance to talk to the Tenants Together team, I could not imagine working with anyone else. Having seen the struggles people experience in the Bronx, it seemed right to round out my education by seeing how the struggles varied across the country.

Tenants Together put me to work right away. 

TT interns practice the rap together before doorknocking. Kelly at left.

On my first day I was making phone calls, asking people to call their local representatives, and learning the ins and outs of NationBuilder (a platform used by Tenants Together to store and organize data). This turned out to be better than an extensive orientation, than spending lots of time training at the front end. Training as I worked, learning as I went along worked better for me, and more applicable to what I was doing. What I was learning were often life lessons, anything from Spanish pronunciation to driving with a slightly distracted director. More than anything else, easily the most important of my lessons were those I learned while out door knocking.

This summer has been full of wonderful experiences, memories I will cherish and continue to learn from as I grow, but my favorite of these was the day of “the big meeting”. I have taken to calling it this in my head, but in reality, it was simply Tenants Together July monthly meeting in Concord (East Contra Costa County). It happens every month, but for the month of July, I was tasked with outreach, calling and talking to people to increase turnout at the meeting. The goal was to double the turnout from the previous month’s meeting, which was 7 people. My boss Guillermo and I had been talking, calling, and door knocking, targeting certain areas for issues they had been experiencing.

The day of the big meeting

On this particular day, July 22nd to be specific, we had gone out to Concord to remind people about the meeting and ask if they needed rides to get to the meeting. I was unofficially in charge of talking to the Algerian population, as with their small amount of English and my small amount of French, we could cobble together a language in which we could communicate relatively easily. Guillermo was talking to the Spanish speakers in the building, so I went to talk to Samia. She had just had a child, now about 5 days old. We had been talking for weeks, and now the baby had finally arrived. She invited me in, introduced me to the baby, and plied me with questions and cookies for the better part of 20 minutes. Another Algerian woman too would not take no for an answer when she invited me in to share cake with her and her husband. It seemed that everyone I spoke to that day invited me into their homes with smiles and friendship.

One of the little residents of a Concord, CA apartment building with a severe bedbug infestation.

I realized I was building relationships with these people. We had jokes, asked about changes in each other’s lives, suggested solutions from our own experiences. I was of course a representative of Tenants Together, useful for housing rights questions, but I was also becoming a friend. From everything I have learned, and more importantly everything I have seen in my studies, it is the relationships between people that provide a support system. This is so important in creating power, and building up power in numbers is the real way that people can affect change. Following this logic then, relationships are power. I am no where near in a position to call myself an organizer, however that was the first time when I started to believe that I could be one. Now, so as not to leave you curious, I should mention that compared to the 7 people who had attended the previous month’s meeting, this meeting boasted a population of around 35 people, not counting the gaggle of very excited children running about in the hallway outside.

That day, July 22nd was a learning experience in so many ways. Things like successfully navigating a part of town I had never been in before to discovering how much having food and rides can affect turnout at a meeting were noted. Even how the distribution of pens can affect the atmosphere in a room. My whole summer has been full of such moments.

A positive, comfortable and fun environment to work in, putting a lot of emphasis on my education

I need to thank all of the members of the Tenants Together team for their guidance and patience. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all of the other interns and volunteers, who made coming to work fun for me. Working in the office with Aimee and Aileen taught me not only how to deal with tenants rights issues, but also how to be a good teacher (learning by their example). Dean provided a sense of direction and goals that were attainable, and Leah reminded me the significance of details that I had often overlooked in favor of the bigger picture. And of course, my boss Guillermo, who not only guided me through the ins and outs of working as an organizer, but who went out of his way to teach the theory behind the actions we were taking. He insisted I take online courses through the New Organizing Institute, which seemed to parallel the work I was doing in Concord. More than that, he provided a positive, comfortable and fun environment to work in, putting a lot of emphasis on my education, because he believed in what I was learning.

I do not know if I will ever be able to thank Tenants Together enough for what they have done for me. They have shown me what it is to make change and opened my eyes to some serious issues in the world. Who knows, maybe this is my calling, maybe not, but I can say with absolute certainty that I have been changed by this experience. I like to believe for good.

City Manager Learns a Tough Lesson: Don’t Mess with Rent Control!

Equity Residential (EQR) owns over half the rent control housing in the city of East Palo Alto (EPA).  Headed by anti-rent control zealot Sam Zell, EQR has enjoyed a cozy relationship with East Palo Alto’s City Manger through which EQR has been able to interfere with the work of the rent program staff.  The situation became so unbearable that EPA’s widely respected Rent Program Administrator Carol Lamont resigned in protest in May of this year.

TT issued a Public Records Act request to uncover what was really going on in EPA.  The documents reveal that the City Manager had effectively given control over the regulatory process to the biggest landlord in East Palo Alto. Responding to complaints from Equity Residential (EQR), the city's largest landlord, the City Manager interfered with enforcement of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO). Whether motivated by bias or incompetence, the City Manager allowed her office to be used by EQR as a tool to impose its will and override the efforts of the Rent Stabilization Administrator to enforce the RSO. EQR acknowledged her efforts in an email thanking her for her "continued support."

TT publicized the findings in a press release on July 9.  Media coverage followed.  Gonzalez’s response was to say that TT had “cherry picked from the documents.”  One online commenter said it best: “You can't cherry pick if there are no cherries to pick.”

In a dramatic hearing on July 14, tenants turned out in force to demand change.  Dozens of EPA residents spoke out against City Manager Gonzalez for her mismanagement of rent control, law enforcement, and other matters of concern.  On July 15, the City Council announced that it had hired a search consultant to find a new City Manager.

This is a huge victory for EPA residents and for the preservation of rent control in EPA.  It is also a major setback for EQR’s efforts to undermine rent control. This victory sends a strong message that City leaders who cozy up to major landlords do so at their own risk.

Victory! Tenants win Anti-Bedbug protocol in City of Concord

In Response to Tenant Organizing, City of Concord Adopts Bed Bug Policy

The City of Concord in Contra Costa County has adopted a Bed Bug Response Pilot Program and declared bedbugs a public nuisance subject to civil, criminal and administrative remedies. The new policy embraces the City’s role in enforcing a landlord’s obligation to provide a bed bug free home to their tenants.

Tenants Together has been organizing buildings in Concord where landlords have been allowing bed bug infestations to persist. In the summer of 2013, TT began helping Concord tenants make formal complaints. In October, tenants testified at a city council meeting about the problem. In response, City Councilmember Edi Birsan vowed to take action.

Tenant organizing moved city policy

The new policy follows a period of inaction on bed bug complaints. Initially, city code enforcement officials and county public health officials frustrated tenants by “passing the buck,” each claiming the other was responsible for holding landlords accountable to address bedbug infestations.

Monica Damian, a tenant living in the Monument corridor, a neighborhood afflicted with infestations, welcomed the news: “We’ve been suffering with these bed bugs biting us for so long. I’m glad the City is recognizing the problem and taking steps to address it, but it needs to happen without delay. These bugs are biting our family every night and we need help.”

What can you do in your community?
If you’re interested in organizing your building or starting a Tenant Action Group in your city, contact our Organizer, Guillermo Elenes at Guillermo@tenantstogether.org to get some advice.

Campaign launched to reform the Ellis Act

California's Ellis Act is out of control. When the Ellis Act was adopted, proponents claimed it would rarely be used to evict tenants. For ten years, that was true. But then real estate speculators starting abusing the Ellis Act to turn a quick profit by evicting long-term tenants and selling the units. Ellis Act evictions are now surging. In San Francisco and Los Angeles in particular, thousands of rent-controlled tenants are being displaced by Ellis Act evictions. The stories are heartbreaking, including a recent high-profile case of seniors and a disabled adult daughter who were thrown out of their long-term Chinatown home by a serial evictor. Click here for more information.

Enough is enough. The time for Ellis Act reform is now. Sign our public petition to save homes for low-income renters:

For months, groups in San Francisco have been fighting back against the latest surge of Ellis Act evictions. The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AMP), a non-profit collective housed within the San Francisco Tenants Union, just released its newest map of no-fault evictions. The numbers of no-fault evictions in San Francisco from 1997 to 2013 are stunning: 3693 due to Ellis Act, 6952 due to owner move-in, and 1121 due to demolition. Grassroots organizations like Eviction Free San Francisco have been consistently protesting unfair evictions since the summer, and now local politicians have responded positively to the call to address the crisis. The issue has received national attention. Thanks to effective organizing on the issue, the time is now to reform at the state level.

Sign our public petition now!

Fresno Tenants Fight Back!

Fresno tenants are taking action to fight dozens of illegal eviction notices that were delivered to tenants at the Fresno Inn last week. Tenants and allies will hold a press conference at noon today to update the media on the plight of tenants of the Fresno Inn and reiterate demands that the landlord withdraw the pending 3-day eviction notices.

Tenants Together issued a letter last week demanding that the landlord stop the evictions. The landlord has not responded.

According to the 3-day notices, tenants are being evicted because the property is being demolished to make way for high-speed rail. "These vague 3-day notices are totally illegal," commented Leah Simon-Weisberg, Legal Director of Tenants Together. "Evictions for a CalTrans project would require that tenants get far more than 3-days to move, not to mention state-mandated relocation payments so they don't end up homeless."

"It makes me feel terrible, because they had no right to do this," said Christine Wilson, a tenant who lives at the Fresno Inn with her family, in a recent TV interview.

Omé Quetzal Lopez, regional organizer for Tenants Together, is assisting the tenants and urged the landlord to withdraw these notices: "These tenants are in shock and scared. They've paid their rent but are being kicked out with virtually no notice. There are families with kids, disabled folks, elderly, and low-income tenants who have lived here a long time. This landlord needs to stop these evictions now."

The tenants of the Fresno Inn have repeatedly complained of substandard living conditions. The landlord refuses to make necessary repairs, despite being cited by the city. Tenant advocates suspect that the landlord is trying to empty the building rather than make legally required repairs.

The press conference will be held TODAY at the Fresno Inn, 2335 N. Parkway Dr., Fresno CA 93705

Tioga Residents and Merced Tenants Together Win Against Management Over Bogus Eviction Notices

by Susan, member of Merced Tenants Together

On April 1, 2013, our local chapter of Tenants Together, Merced Tenants Together (MTT), received word from one of our members, a resident at the Tioga Apartments, that many of the tenants received unfounded 3-Day Notices to Pay or Quit. The notices stated they owed money for rent even though the rent had previously been paid. The tenants even had receipts to prove this. MTT immediately took action by notifying reporter Josh Emerson Smith of the Merced Sun-Star of the issue and proceeded to organize the building’s tenants.

On April 2, 2013 MTT held an initial meeting with one of the tenants who received a 3-day notice. With the assistance of two of the residents, MTT went door-to-door to investigate further and recruit residents to meet to decide how to tackle the problem. We discovered that at least 27 residences of 91 were served the notices. A few residents moved without fighting, afraid of an eviction on their record. One tenant paid the extra money. All these tenants had paid their rent in full! This was outrageous!

More than thirty residents attended a building meeting where we discussed how to proceed. The group decided to start a tenants association in order to take action collectively. The first formal association meeting was planned for Friday, April 12.

In the interim, we met informally during the week to keep the residents plugged in about the issue and continued to discuss concerns. We discovered many of the units had serious needs for repairs and rampant pest infestations. We saw hundreds of roaches while visiting tenants during the day. On Wednesday, the Merced Sun Star put the issue on the front page and before noon, KSEE channel 24 was out interviewing the residents about the 3-Day Notices. The story made both 6pm and 11pm news that day.

KSEE was also stunned by the Tioga’s pest problems, and the next day Angela Greenwood from KSEE returned to cover the living conditions at the Tioga.

In response, management went door to door to inspect apartment conditions, rescinded the 3-Day Notices, and issued a letter of apology to each of the residents.

The Tioga Resident Association and MTT secured a swift and awesome victory against the bogus 3-day notices. If it were not for Merced Tenants Together organizing The Tioga building, more tenants may have moved out of fear or paid extra rent they didn’t owe. Inspired by our victory at the Tioga, Merced residents are joining MTT with the desire to take action against other slumlords.

Tonight is the Merced City Council meeting and we look forward to bringing the Tioga living conditions to their attention. City of Merced Code Enforcement says they have received previous requests about the roach problem but they have not inspected or cited the owner. We will tell them it is an emergency and ask that they should send Code Enforcement in to inspect. We will keep you posted. Tioga Residents are ready to fight, and Tenants Together is ready to help in any way we can!

Ridgecrest Tenants Win Kern County's First-Ever Tenant Protection Law

Last night marked a historic moment for tenant rights in Kern County. In the span of just three months, determined Ridgecrest tenants, working with Tenants Together, organized and successfully pushed city officials to pass a just cause eviction law for tenants in bank-owned properties after foreclosure, the first tenant protection law ever passed in Kern County.

"This is a great day for Ridgecrest tenants and for the entire community," said Bob Nostrand, a Ridgecrest renter who helped lead the effort to get the law passed. "This will bring desperately needed relief to renters who are innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis."

Ridgecrest now joins the cities of Richmond and Los Angeles in addressing the crisis facing tenants in foreclosure situations by passing new just cause eviction laws that will allow innocent tenants to remain in their homes after bank repossession.

“We congratulate Ridgecrest residents and their leaders for passing this essential law," said our director, Dean Preston. "Our communities are fed up with unfair evictions by huge national banks. This kind of eviction law is a cost-free way for local governments to protect their residents from unfair displacement, prolonged vacancies and blight.”

This extraordinary victory for Ridgecrest renters should inspire other cities across California and the United States to protect innocent tenants from displacement and homelessness by implementing similar just cause eviction laws.


Nela Hadzic of Tenants Together meeting with La Mirage tenants Jimmy Paterson, and Kellye McClarity

As told in an earlier blog post, we have been honored and pleased to work for the last few months with an extraordinary group of tenants from the La Mirage Complex in Ridgecrest. We first learned of their plight in May of this year via our tenant foreclosure hotline. After receiving calls from dozens of tenants living the La Mirage neighborhood, we began to investigate and soon discovered that many Ridgecrest renters -- like renters in San Diego and Escondido -- had become victims of a statewide mortgage fraud scam involving convicted felon, James McConville and his affiliated real estate investment companies.

Virtually all of the 300 units in La Mirage were in foreclosure or facing impending foreclosure and virtually all of them were renter-occupied. Residents were facing eviction due to no fault of their own in in a city with a less-than-1% vacancy rate and had essentially nowhere else to go. [Media coverage.]

To make matters worse, many tenants were almost completely in the dark about the status of their homes and were unable to get accurate information from their management company, Diamond House Development. Diamond House, not coincidentally, was run by McConville the central figure in the mortgage fraud scam. Tenants were reporting that trustee sale notices were being removed from the front doors of units by the company's staff. Tenants were receiving 3-day pay or quit notices from Diamond House even after the homes had gone into foreclosure and it was not at all clear that they were legitimately collecting rent on behalf of the actual owners of the properties.

Tenants Together began to meet in phone conferences with groups of La Mirage tenants. Tenants started organizing and on May 20th they showed up in force at a City Council meeting to voice there issues and demands. [Media coverage.]

We issued a press release and statement calling for the city to take swift action to help tenants. We also suggested that, until Diamond House Management could provide evidence that it was legitimately collecting rent on behalf of the actual owners of the properties, that tenants might want to withhold and set aside their rent. As we suspected, many tenants who withheld their rent were never provided with such evidence and were never given pay or quit notices or eviction notices.

Fortunately, after sufficient light was shed on the situation, Diamond House backed off some of its more questionable practices, but the fact remained that numerous innocent tenants were facing eviction and had few if any options for places to relocate to in the community. Ridgecrest was in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis and City officials needed to take swift action.

Two of our staff and one board member traveled to Ridgecrest to meet with tenants and community leaders and to participate in a town hall meeting for La Mirage tenants along with Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance and the Kern County Housing Authority. At the town hall meeting, the city council chambers were packed with Ridgecrest tenants who came to learn about their rights and to tell their stories and voice their concerns to the City Council members present at the meeting.


La Mirage tenant and activist Bob Nostrand



La Mirage Tenant and activist Cora Campbell



Tenants filled the City Council Chambers at a Town Hall meeting where Tenants Together participated along with Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance and the Kern County Housing Authority.

At this meeting and at a full city council meeting the following evening, La Mirage tenants and Tenants Together called on the City Council to quickly draft and pass an eviction protection ordinance, similar to one that had just passed in Richmond, to stem the epidemic of unnecessary evictions due to foreclosure.

During our visit to Ridgecrest we were able to meet face-to-face with tenants in their homes where we heard their sometimes heart-breaking stories. We were so inspired by their awaking tenant consciousness and their determination to advocate for themselves and their neighbors. Folks who had never-before set foot in city hall were become savvy, outspoken activists and they were clearly making a difference.

Over the coming weeks we remained in close contact with these tenants as they repeatedly brought their stories and demands to City Hall pushing the City Council to act. One council member in particular, Jerry Taylor (pictured right), proved to be a forceful advocate for renters by championing the ordinance and pushing his colleagues to support it as well. Councilmember Ron Carter took a strong stand for the ordinance.

Despite pushback from developers and local realtors, within about two months, the city council has passed a just cause eviction law and history has been made for tenant rights in Ridgecrest and Kern County. Again, communities across the state and the country should take notice and follow Ridgecrest's lead in protecting tenants in foreclosed properties.

We wish to thank and congratulate the tenants of Ridgecrest who boldly stepped up and worked so diligently for this victory. Their efforts should serve as a model for others to follow throughout California.


La Mirage tenants Karen and Miguel Martinez

Ridgecrest Tenants Organize

Tenants in the city of Ridgecrest, California are rising up and organizing to face a serious housing crisis triggered by a statewide real estate scam. We've been most fortunate at Tenants Together to have the opportunity to work with these inspiring tenants who have stood up for their rights, are working to form a new tenants association, and are pushing for local legislation that will help renters keep their homes -- renters who face eviction due to no fault of their own.


La Mirage Tenants outside the City Council Chambers in Ridgecrest, California

According to media reports, from publications such as Voice of San Diego and the News Review, a one James McConville (yes, Con-ville, a name almost too perfect to be true) of Freemont, CA, orchestrated an elaborate statewide mortgage fraud scheme in which he set up "straw buyers" to unwittingly purchase residential properties. Straw buyers were led to believe they were lending their good credit scores to McConville in exchange for a few thousand dollars so that he could take out mortgages in their names. The buyers believed the loans and properties would be promptly transferred out of their names. In reality the loans remained in the straw buyers' names. Buyers didn't realize they owned the properties and so were not paying the mortgages. Meanwhile, the properties were rented to unsuspecting tenants. Hundreds of these properties have now gone into foreclosure in places like San Diego, Escondido, and Ridgecrest and as a result hundreds of innocent tenants have lost their homes.

The community of Ridgecrest has been hit particulary hard by the ripple effects of the mortgage scam. Not only is the city experiencing mass foreclosures, but tenants have been served invalid eviction notices and have been told to pay rent to McConville's management company, Diamond House Development, even when there was no clear indication that the rent was being legitimately collected on behalf of the actual owners of the property. To make matters worse the isolated community has a very low vacancy rate and many evicted tenants cannot find places to move to.

Tenants Together received numerous calls from Tenants at La Mirage wanting to know their rights and wanting to make sense of the foreclosure notices they were receiving.

It immediately became clear that the Ridgecrest city government needed to step in and address the city's housing crisis. Tenants began to organize and attend city council meetings demanding that the city take action. Tenants Together initially met with groups of tenants over the phone and then visited Ridgecrest in June where they participated in a city-hosted town hall meeting along with representatives from Greater Bakersfield Legal Assitance and the Kern County Housing Authority. Tenants packed the City Hall chambers to learn more about thier rights and to voice their concerns and demands. City Council members present insisted that they had received the message and would take action.



Tenants in La Mirage are continuing to work together and plan to establish a Ridgecrest tenants association to make certain that tenants will continue to have a voice and continue to be heard.