Pasadena Needs an Eviction Moratorium

GUEST EDITORIAL

Apartment for rent on E. California Blvd. (Photo – Emmanuel Kraultez).

Tenant power has become the zeitgeist defining the political moment for our state. This should come as no surprise; the truth is readily apparent to anyone residing in California.

By Matthew Sorrenti

The cost of living has skyrocketed, driven by ever-increasing rents. In most parts of the state, there are no limits to the increases, effectively forcing many from their homes. Gentrification assaults the working class and communities of color, as tenants with too few rights are exploited by landlords with too much greed and influence. This fact could not be more clear than in Pasadena, a city with a tenant majority population, yet without any rent control or just-cause eviction protections.

Sacramento and AB 1482

Some may have predicted (or rather hoped) that the narrow defeat in 2018 of Proposition 10 (which would have overturned the anti-tenant Costa Hawkins Act) would have dissipated the spirit of the movement. Instead working-class communities across the state were propelled to stand up and demand change. Bottom-up organizations such as the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Tenants Together, Housing is a Human Right, the Eviction Defense Network, and numerous local tenants unions across the state have maintained the momentum. Under this pressure, Sacramento has recently passed AB 1482, the Tenant Protection Act, which prohibits the worst excesses of rent gouging and unjust evictions.

Landlords and AB 1482

The reaction to AB 1482 from many landlords has been sadly predictable: a wave of preemptive no-cause evictions across the state in municipalities and cities without such laws to protect tenants. While provisions in the new state law, effective January 1, would retroactively roll back rent hikes to pre-March 2019 rates, there are no similar protections against no-cause evictions. In Pasadena nearly any tenant can be served a sixty-day notice to vacate, no reasons given. This gap in state and local laws has left tenants in our community anxious and vulnerable. Many already have been served sixty-day notices just in time to avoid AB 1482’s just-cause eviction provisions, and just in time to force families out of their homes for the holidays.

Pasadena needs bold leadership

Pasadena needs bold leadership now. On Monday, the Pasadena Tenants Union, working closely with allied community organizations, presented the city council with a carefully crafted ordinance for an eviction moratorium. This moratorium would invalidate current sixty-day notices to vacate if they lack a clear just cause, as outlined by the ordinance. Now is a critical moment for Pasadena’s mayor and city council to step up and protect our community from the greed and avarice that already has done so much damage. We the people will hold our elected representatives accountable.

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