You’d think that stopping real estate mobbing in self-proclaimed sanctuary cities in the San Francisco Bay Area would be a no-brainer. And that it wouldn’t take much to expose and eradicate this criminal practice that Amnesty International has dubbed a human rights crime in a small Bay Area town a little more than a mile-square. But with the acceptance of neighborhood corruption at the hands of block coordinators, in effect repackaging the bias and bad acts of the National Neighborhood Watch into local emergency services, real estate mobbing has a home in Albany, California.
I’ve been intending to write more about the lackluster response I received when I first wrote Albany city officials about how the block coordinator across the street was a key participant in the attempt to forcibly turn over my childhood home by sabotage of utility, an endeavor that does not only impact every household system and appliance but sabotages interior air quality, the safe use of electrical systems, secure communications, medical devices and more. But the mid-term elections are fast approaching and with them, a couple of Albany City Council positions are up for grabs.
In May, 2021, I wrote email to inform the City Council of Albany, California about the involvement of block coordinators in criminal conduct against neighbors in the City of Albany, under the noses of and perhaps with the knowledge and even the involvement of some members of the Albany Police Department. See earlier blogs for the description of the visit to the Albany house on Easter of that year in which two balaclava-clad Albany Police Officers demanded me to produce my elderly relative as though I had done her harm, a visit that the block coordinator across the street appeared to relish. I requested the issue of Albany participation in the National Neighborhood Watch program be put on the agenda, a request that was deflected first by denial that Albany participated in the program, and then, after a series of exchanges approaching word play, into an acknowledgement that a still advertised neighborhood watch program had morphed into an emergency services-based system of “block coordinators.” Given that the involvement of the block coordinator across the street from the Albany house almost certainly originated before the repackaging of the Albany neighborhood watch, it was a case of six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other.
Call them what you will, the engagement of city appointees in criminal harassment that arguably constitutes civil and human rights violations as well as acts of domestic terrorism–harassment that includes utility sabotage, network intrusions, threats, elder abuse, neighbor battering by sound and IoT, sleep deprivation and other punishments that we do not tolerate against prisoners–is unconscionable. The response of the City Council of Albany, California is to avoid a reality at odds with the image the township prefers to project. For example, the response from Albany City Council member Peggy McQuaid, whose interest in the issue was limited to the desire to “close this out.” Disappointingly, an Albany City Council member I’d refrained from contacting directly because I did not want to take advantage of our acquaintanceship through high school and university, wrote that the Albany City Council does not run the City of Albany, something I acknowledged in an earlier blog. By virtue of their election, however, these officials are given a platform. If they are disinterested in the forced eviction of legal residents by criminal means, whatever are they doing in office?
I’ve been battered in my childhood home with the continuing participation of the block captain across the street and lowlife neighbors to north and south for another year and a half since, as a contractor and his relatives who bought the house to the south appear to be trying to wait us out of our home. You hear about construction-related harassment; what you don’t hear about is cases like mine in which a single woman who is a tenant, is targeted for forcible eviction by a malicious neighborhood watch group in one municipality and then followed to another city–another city that did have a neighborhood watch in place at the time–for more. When these criminals think they have a good victim lined up in one city, they follow her to another. When she complains she is being stalked, her claims are ridiculed. I guess they know a good victim when they make one. When cities fail to act on increasing volumes of digital crime, and when bias against the complaints of women is entrenched in city government, all it takes to succeed is a tech-enabled scam in which female victims, especially those who report, are defamed as delusional. The real estate mobbing scam as it has played out in Albany, California and–no doubt–other locales, is an effective means of denying women their legal rights and contracts for property.
There are ways to discourage this scam. For example, single women who are victimized by this crime might consider putting their homes into trusts. Instead of selling them, perhaps they could leave them to be established as equitably priced rental homes for those who otherwise might not be able to live in those cities. Lease terms could be fixed so that more could benefit. There should be no rewards for crimes like mobbing. But no one should have to spend years of her life as I have had to do. No one should be battered in her home with the complicity of those who represent and work for her city.
I read an interesting article a while back, about how, in the face of increasing threats to democracy and the rule of law, we might begin to take back our cities and restore our rights even as right-wing hooligans organize on the local level. I’ll write more about that article in one of the blogs awaiting my attention. But now, it’s time we stop tolerating hate. It’s time to consider what the refusal to believe or to act on reports like mine leads to. We’ve got hooligans attempting to subvert national elections, to run coups and instigate civil war. They come from somewhere. From what I see, they might well come from Albany, California.
If you don’t want to see the routinized battering of legal residents from their homes–owners and tenants alike–vote for change. Vote for an Albany City Council determined to create change, even if they have to find a way to take the reins of government from the biased and the corrupt, and institute measures to shrink the divide between the aspirations of the city and the reality of living there. If you believe that our city officials should stand for our civil and human rights–if you don’t want your own childhood home forcibly turned over by criminals who appear to be willing to kill out of whacko hatred or for some kind of kickback–elect those whose interest and focus is in providing access to equitable housing over engaging in housing speculation, elect those who work for transparent government process and accountability instead of shutting people down and closing ranks, elect those willing to go beyond proclamations and to act.
There are a few candidates on the Albany City Council slate who’ve been involved with such efforts, according to their statements on the City of Albany website. If we don’t want right-wing liars taking over the government of a liberal populace, we must stop tolerating hate. We must instill in government great tolerance for complaint and we must fight against bias. We must be proactive in creating secure national, regional and city grids, and we must begin to consider how wireless technologies and IoT expand the domestic attack surface into our homes and lives. We can no longer afford to bury our heads in the sand. We need city council members who are willing to change local government to ensure the continuance of democracy.
