“I know of no authority that gives the U.S. government the ability to circumvent and ignore the application of Oakland’s Just Cause for Eviction ordinance as it attempts to remove these lawful occupants,” said Meghan Gordon, an attorney who is the director of the East Bay Community Law Center’s housing practice.
Melissa Colon, who works with the East Bay Community Law Center, said her organization has seen a lot of cases in Oakland and Berkeley of people with low incomes being driven out of their homes as landlords try to attract new tenants who they can charge more.
On Tuesday, Hardy attended a rally in front of City Hall, where about 40 tenants rights groups and renters demanded that the city take action to close 10 loopholes in Oakland’s renter-protection laws. They said those gaps allow unscrupulous owners to hike rents and displace low- and middle-income tenants.
With the recent rain we have had multiple reports of flooding, trees down and damage to homes.
We checked in with Meghan Gordon, housing attorney for the East Bay Community Law Center who says tenants have been dealing with mold as well as leaking from roofs and windows.
On December 2, a warehouse in Oakland, California that was being rented out as artist studios burned down, killing 36 people, making it the worst building fire in the US since 2003. While a lot of the media has focused on the issue of artists moving into old industrial spaces, Lane explained that the problems with informal housing were much broader. “There are a lot of low-income people living in converted basements, and converted garages, and converted storage units,” she said.
Laura Lane ’96 has represented low-income tenants in the East Bay for nearly 20 years. During all that time, she never saw a landlord go this far to drive out tenants as she did recently at a low-income residential hotel in Oakland’s Chinatown.
In 2015, Endia Cleveland – an Oakland native and mother – was hopeful that she and her family would soon have a new apartment to call home. She submitted more than 10 applications but was denied without explanation.
A months-long effort to evict a quadriplegic senior from his South Berkeley apartment is over, after the management company apparently gave up. “Your eviction lawsuit is finally over,” attorney Meghan Gordon of the East Bay Community Law Center told tenant Michael Pachovas in a letter this month. “I will be closing your case at EBCLC because this matter has been settled,” she added.
Fueled by the injustice he encountered as a student advocate, Phil Hernandez ’16 has turned a simple idea into a California bill to protect tenants involved in eviction lawsuits. While working with the Housing Program at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), Hernandez assisted clients who suffered from what he calls “a big flaw in landlord-tenant law.”
