Tenant Law
Tenant Rights are Human Rights
Contributors
BE ALERT CALIFORNIA!Wednesday, October 1, 2008
BE ALERT CALIFORNIA! Don’t allow slick public relations people and political handlers to sway your decisions. Demand that tough concerns be addressed. With election season in full swing and election day less than 6 weeks away, countless propositions are on the November ballot, and at first glance some look appealing. However, don’t forget to read the fine print.
Proposition 6 is one such initiative that deserves deeper thought and scrutiny. In a recent article in Beyond Chron, Dean Preston outlines the implications associated with California Proposition 6, which has been described as a "comprehensive anti-gang and crime reduction measure." On the surface, Proposition 6 seems to be a step in the right direction to help create safe neighborhoods by allocating $10 million annually to "Safe Neighborhoods Compliance Enforcement Fund." However, everything has strings attached, and here these strings are tight. With this allocation of dollars, comes the requirement that all state subsidy recipients, including both Public Housing and Section 8 tenants, undergo annual background checks. These would be on top of the strict background checks that recipients already undergo just to qualify for the subsidy programs. The proposed annual background checks would be not only invasive, but costly. Under Proposition 6, funding only partly comes from the new sources identified in the proposition, and the remainder would be paid by local housing authorities; the very agencies that are already incredibly under-funded and overworked.
Proposition 6 is not limited to subsidized renters, but it also impacts the private rental market. The measure would empower the government to evict any or all tenants in a building deemed to be a nuisance for gang related criminal activity. The problem is that the definition of such a nuisance, under Penal Code section 186.22a, as quoted in Beyond Chron, is "every building or place wherein or upon which criminal conduct by a gang member takes place." So if a single resident is called a gang-member by the government, then any criminal activity no matter how minor can lead to sweeping and mass evictions from the property. Currently, the government has no right or authority to pursue evictions in the private rental market, only landlords can do so. Proposition 6 changes that dynamic. Given our current failing housing market and culture of inequality, should we really be creating another avenue for displacement of low income renters? While Proposition 6 is intended to make communities -- particularly low-income communities – safer, it may put at risk the very people it aims to help.
The same can be said for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent attempts to create safer streets. In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Amanda Witherell outlines Newsom’s San Francisco Streets and Neighborhoods workgroup and its recent meeting: "to analyze and understand the key issues impacting safety on our streets and formulate recommendations for needed improvement with the goal of creating a safe environment on our streets for everyone." The main concern of this street safety meeting according to Ms. Witherell was not violence specifically, but rather the homeless. From her analysis, the meeting missed the point entirely of safety – focusing instead tangentially on "drug dealing, aggressive panhandling, blocking the sidewalk, public urination and defecation, littering (and) intimidation."
Not that homelessness-related issues aren’t important when speaking of street safety, but the more serious safety issues facing San Francisco residents require immediate action. There has been a recent surge of murders in the Mission, with the San Francisco Chronicle noting that, "six people have been slain in the past two weeks." Fatalities in the Western Addition and Richmond districts, and vigils to raise awareness of the killings and violence, take up much of our prime time news hour. Yet, when task forces are convened, the heart of the issue is missed.
Seth Katzman of the Human Services Network aptly stated, "We have tenants and clients in the Tenderloin who are afraid to go out of their buildings at night because of drug-related violence. They’re not complaining to us about people peeing on the streets...No one likes it, but that’s not the big issue right now." However, rather than addressing these pertinent issues, Mayor Newsom’s meeting focused on enacting special enforcement and enhanced penalties for VIP sections of the city – the places where the ‘Very Important People’, eat, sleep, sight-see and shop (including Yerba Buena Center, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, and Union Square). Thankfully Jennifer Friedenbach, representing the Coalition on Homelessness, defended people who have nowhere to go with hard-hitting comments. It was reported that she was "sarcastically suggesting they have a registration for homeless people entering certain areas of the city," and that she later stated: "‘When you say sitting and lying on the sidewalk, that is targeting people who don’t have a place to sit.’"
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s agenda for this meeting demonstrated the desire, on the surface, to remove the eyesore and irritation of homelessness rather than addressing real safety issues and enacting progressive policy to create better enforcement in the neighborhoods of concern. Moreover, Proposition 6 seeks to clean up neighborhoods by merely kicking people out of their housing and by default, onto the streets. Both of these attempts at change miss the point entirely. We have violence, we have homeless people and we have a lack of affordable housing. We need to address the causes of each of these issues, rather than the effects, for the process to bring about any meaningful and effective change.
So consider these important issues when voting on Proposition 6; read the fine print on the ballot and demand that our elected officials address the real issues.
Proposition 6 is one such initiative that deserves deeper thought and scrutiny. In a recent article in Beyond Chron, Dean Preston outlines the implications associated with California Proposition 6, which has been described as a "comprehensive anti-gang and crime reduction measure." On the surface, Proposition 6 seems to be a step in the right direction to help create safe neighborhoods by allocating $10 million annually to "Safe Neighborhoods Compliance Enforcement Fund." However, everything has strings attached, and here these strings are tight. With this allocation of dollars, comes the requirement that all state subsidy recipients, including both Public Housing and Section 8 tenants, undergo annual background checks. These would be on top of the strict background checks that recipients already undergo just to qualify for the subsidy programs. The proposed annual background checks would be not only invasive, but costly. Under Proposition 6, funding only partly comes from the new sources identified in the proposition, and the remainder would be paid by local housing authorities; the very agencies that are already incredibly under-funded and overworked.
Proposition 6 is not limited to subsidized renters, but it also impacts the private rental market. The measure would empower the government to evict any or all tenants in a building deemed to be a nuisance for gang related criminal activity. The problem is that the definition of such a nuisance, under Penal Code section 186.22a, as quoted in Beyond Chron, is "every building or place wherein or upon which criminal conduct by a gang member takes place." So if a single resident is called a gang-member by the government, then any criminal activity no matter how minor can lead to sweeping and mass evictions from the property. Currently, the government has no right or authority to pursue evictions in the private rental market, only landlords can do so. Proposition 6 changes that dynamic. Given our current failing housing market and culture of inequality, should we really be creating another avenue for displacement of low income renters? While Proposition 6 is intended to make communities -- particularly low-income communities – safer, it may put at risk the very people it aims to help.
The same can be said for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent attempts to create safer streets. In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Amanda Witherell outlines Newsom’s San Francisco Streets and Neighborhoods workgroup and its recent meeting: "to analyze and understand the key issues impacting safety on our streets and formulate recommendations for needed improvement with the goal of creating a safe environment on our streets for everyone." The main concern of this street safety meeting according to Ms. Witherell was not violence specifically, but rather the homeless. From her analysis, the meeting missed the point entirely of safety – focusing instead tangentially on "drug dealing, aggressive panhandling, blocking the sidewalk, public urination and defecation, littering (and) intimidation."
Not that homelessness-related issues aren’t important when speaking of street safety, but the more serious safety issues facing San Francisco residents require immediate action. There has been a recent surge of murders in the Mission, with the San Francisco Chronicle noting that, "six people have been slain in the past two weeks." Fatalities in the Western Addition and Richmond districts, and vigils to raise awareness of the killings and violence, take up much of our prime time news hour. Yet, when task forces are convened, the heart of the issue is missed.
Seth Katzman of the Human Services Network aptly stated, "We have tenants and clients in the Tenderloin who are afraid to go out of their buildings at night because of drug-related violence. They’re not complaining to us about people peeing on the streets...No one likes it, but that’s not the big issue right now." However, rather than addressing these pertinent issues, Mayor Newsom’s meeting focused on enacting special enforcement and enhanced penalties for VIP sections of the city – the places where the ‘Very Important People’, eat, sleep, sight-see and shop (including Yerba Buena Center, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, and Union Square). Thankfully Jennifer Friedenbach, representing the Coalition on Homelessness, defended people who have nowhere to go with hard-hitting comments. It was reported that she was "sarcastically suggesting they have a registration for homeless people entering certain areas of the city," and that she later stated: "‘When you say sitting and lying on the sidewalk, that is targeting people who don’t have a place to sit.’"
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s agenda for this meeting demonstrated the desire, on the surface, to remove the eyesore and irritation of homelessness rather than addressing real safety issues and enacting progressive policy to create better enforcement in the neighborhoods of concern. Moreover, Proposition 6 seeks to clean up neighborhoods by merely kicking people out of their housing and by default, onto the streets. Both of these attempts at change miss the point entirely. We have violence, we have homeless people and we have a lack of affordable housing. We need to address the causes of each of these issues, rather than the effects, for the process to bring about any meaningful and effective change.
So consider these important issues when voting on Proposition 6; read the fine print on the ballot and demand that our elected officials address the real issues.
<< Home