25 Mar Tenant Advocacy Groups to Rally Ahead of Tuesday Antioch City Council Meeting

(Image courtesy of city of Antioch via Bay City News)

By Aly Brown
Bay City News

The Antioch City Council on Tuesday will consider creating a just cause eviction ordinance that would add protections for renters within the city, and advocates for renters will be rallying ahead of the meeting.

Advocates of the ordinance say it could protect renters from no-fault evictions and prevent some families from experiencing homelessness.

Tenant advocacy groups are planning to show up to the meeting to share their experiences and describe how the passage of such an ordinance would impact their lives.

“Over the past few months, we’ve been talking with people, hearing stories about the lack of protections in the city and the concerns people have about falling into homelessness,” said Luis Fernando Anguiano, a statewide communications associate for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action.

The California Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (AB 1482) already requires landlords to have just cause before terminating tenancies, and that law established two types of allowable evictions: “at-fault” and “no-fault.”

An example of an at-fault just cause eviction could include failure to pay rent or malicious conduct at the property, whereas a no-fault just cause eviction could be when a property owner intends to move back into their property and remove it from the rental market or to complete renovations.

Ethan Silverstein, a senior staff attorney for California Center for Movement Legal Services, said that while he supports AB 1482, there are some serious loopholes, and the protections don’t apply to everyone.

“It doesn’t apply to most single-family homes,” he said. “It doesn’t apply to most condos. It doesn’t apply to most properties that were built in the last 15 years. It doesn’t apply to serve in subsidized housing. So there are a lot of people who just do not have any just cause protections at the state level.”

Renter and policy advocacy and racial equality organizations like ACCE Action, Rising Juntos, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Monument Impact and Movement Legal, along with Antioch residents and faith leaders have been pushing for an ordinance that would protect renters from unnecessary no-fault evictions, such as renovating to circumvent rent increase prohibitions on longtime renters.

“These are like really anti-homelessness protections — they’re pretty common sense,” Silverstein continued. “There’s a lot of work to make them sound really radical and extremist. But at the end of the day, what this is really saying is like, ‘hey, just, you know, have a reason before you make a family homeless.'”

California cities like Richmond, Baldwin Park, Bell Gardens and Oxnard have already established just cause eviction ordinances, which were cited in Antioch’s staff report on the item. Some of their added tenant protections have included prohibiting evictions for owner move-ins when the renters have been lawful tenants for a defined number of years and are either elderly, disabled, terminally ill, or have minor children; increasing the amount of relocation assistance, or allowing violating landlords to face civil and criminal penalties.

Silverstein went on to note that the movement behind renters’ rights in Antioch has been powerful and resulted in big wins for residents.

“This has happened because tenants — mostly from low-income properties — have packed City Hall again and again,” he said. “And that’s how tenant protections happen. It’s when tenants get together and organize collectively. That’s how it happened in Antioch, and that’s really the best way to make these common sense protections a reality.”

The council will consider whether to direct city staff to begin drafting a just cause eviction ordinance during its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Copyright © 2024 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.