Elections are upon us. It’s time to vote for good, to vote for democratic government, and to vote against corruption. Here’s a yard sign to spread the good word in Albany. Click the link below for a proof that should be printable at Office Depot.
And while I’m at it, I’ve just become aware of what could well be a backdoor attempt to further rid the City of Albany of renters and rental homes. This after the visit of a woman who has owned and rented rooms in an Albany Prop 13 house since the early 2000s. Albany Measure R proposes to support renters and rentals by putting a local tax on them. The common understanding is that the measure will increase housing costs for Albany tenants as well as for home owners who rent to them. What’s Albany got to gain? In the short run, they can collect a bit of tax money. The measure also makes Albany look like it’s doing its part to preserve (more) affordable housing. But in the long run, Measure R is likely to discourage home owners from holding and renting homes and will encourage the fall to speculators of houses shared with renters, followed by the further gentrification that comes with it. Albany will collect tax revenues, much of which will undoubtedly be property transfer taxes, and ensure that there are fewer and fewer single-family homes in Albany where tenants who are not well monied can reside. Albany also proposes to enforce codes on the owners of rentals, and perhaps they will if code enforcement helps to turn over housing. But as someone who continues to repair the damage from earlier permitted and poorly inspected renovations in a single-family home, and someone who had to reschedule an inspection on permitted work in January three times before it was finally attended in summer, I am skeptical of the City’s interest in protecting residents from shoddy work. Perhaps Albany’s interest in increasing tax revenues by “protecting” renters has more to do with growing the City by adding the staffing for “enforcement.” Perhaps the City should instead drive campaigns to educate home owners on upgrades that can help them to hold their homes, and to safely share them.
Albany is another town where home owners have historically disparaged renters and rented homes. The focus of this discomfort used to be the once larger University Village—U.C. Berkeley’s “married students housing” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Tract)—and the influence of a progressive block of student tenants on Albany elections. The complex was sited on the Gill Tract, a long block from the old home of the John Birch Society on San Pablo Avenue. This antipathy persisted as I graduated from Albany High School and went on to U.C. Berkeley and, as in neighborhood watch towns like Seattle, continues even now. Policy whose net effect is the exclusion of tenants is nothing more than a repackaging of the covenants that were used to exclude Blacks from Albany and other towns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,_California). Housing discrimination is one way to cut the competition in a tight market.
The big winners when cities tax room rentals? Quite possibly corporate entities promoting online investing in single-family homes, like the Oakland-based Roofstock. Roofstock advertises their “scientific approach” to sourcing “off-market” homes—maybe yours and mine. No worries—those who bank on investing in single-family homes would be happy to rent them back to us, for twice the price or more. There’s certainly science at play when it comes to sabotaging electrical and communications services to force women out of their homes. And there is the coincidence that at least one of their employees appears to figure in my situation.
It’s clear that one of the strategies used to turn over houses is to exploit the vulnerabilities of the landlord-tenant relationship so that each side blames the other and the house winds up on the market. To try to stop the rapid increases in housing costs and recreate the housing market for people over profit, landlords and tenants need to rethink this contentious construction of their relationship and become allies in what is turning out to be a battle with corporate interests. These interests are slowly but surely moving to take over the housing “market” and are bringing small towns that want large coffers to their side.
From what I can see, there may not be much support for home owners and for single-family homes shared with tenants in Albany from this year’s City Council candidates. One is a real estate agent who makes her living off of properties changing hands. She did nothing when I wrote her about what was happening on my block. Another, when I initially wrote the Albany City Council to tell them about the criminal harassment that involved the Albany block coordinator, was quick to terminate the contact by telling me she wanted to “shut [the exchange] down.” I wrote about this in a much earlier post. And the two who appear to be recommended by a local organization of Democrats, I’m told, are solid backers of Measure R and not on the side of home owners who rent rooms in their homes. They were also included in email I wrote to alert the Albany City Council about a block coordinator (ironically charged with the maintenance of neighborhood safety) and others involved in a criminal attempt to forcibly turn over my childhood home.
It may be too late to reshape this year’s local elections with candidates who don’t try to solve the problems of government by turning over Prop 13 houses and rental homes. Instead of trying to figure out how to elect the lesser evil, Albany residents need City Council candidates who put our interests first, whether we rent or own. If that were already the case, perhaps I wouldn’t have spent years with neighbors, including a block coordinator, demanding me, even inside my own home, to “Move on!” But perhaps, to solve the problem, we should just find a way to petition to dissolve the City of Albany charter and request to be annexed back to Berkeley.
In the interim, if Measure R passes, it may be a good time for home owners to investigate the strategy of transferring their homes to nonprofit (and less taxed) land trusts whose primary interest is housing. My understanding is that it may be possible to transfer homes to land trusts even while residing in them. Perhaps those in my situation should investigate how such a transfer would work.
One more idea: I have been made to live in a horrible situation for years because those who conspire to turn over properties as some neighbors have been trying to turn over mine lie and defame reporting victims, and they have the support of at least some city officials in so doing. I have faithfully documented my experiences in this situation as much as my time and energy allow, and I will continue to do so barring federal intervention that forces those involved to stop. Nevertheless, in their totality, the methods that have and continue to be tried to force me to abandon my civil rights, my contracts, and my home, are criminal. If people want to turn things around, address corruption on the local level, and stop these end runs around the law and ethical conduct, exposing what has been done to me and prosecuting those involved is likely to bring about some change.
