Housing activists should be tracking the availability of rentals in cities like Albany, California, and the trends in rentals of single-family homes and apartments.
Some Albany, California candidates for elected office include in their platforms housing affordability, and the affordability of rentals. Some candidates for reelection also promote a ballot measure to tax and enforce codes on rentals, and we need to understand whether such codes amount to little more than a legal way to discourage small property owners from renting and sharing of single-family homes in favor of aggregating housing in the hands of corporate and investment entities like the Oakland-based Roofstock.
The turnover of rental homes does not only add to the property transfer taxes that cities like Albany, California can claim; the consolidation of rented properties in the hands of those whose profit increases with rental prices likely comes with properties changing hands more frequently and further increases in the taxes collected with each transfer.
The interests of cities with a small tax base, like Albany, California, appear to diverge more and more from the good of the people. Code enforcement is a bad reason to force rental homes into the hands of corporations or investors. Cities that refuse to acknowledge the criminal activities of some of their block coordinators, city workers, and even elected officials who look the other way or actively participate in real estate scams intended to hand properties over to those whose goal is profit and gentrification are not only complicit in the harm that comes to the victims of predatory scams like real estate mobbing. Their claims of protecting tenants and affordable housing become disinformation as damaging as Trump’s claims that, like it or not, he will “protect” women. If they want to protect affordable housing, they should be working to put it into the hands of land trusts.
The failure of those who hold positions of access to acknowledge has real world consequences for individuals and for community. The failure to acknowledge, more than anything, allows harm, and allows it to continue. I am forced to live in a manner that is completely inapposite to my rights under the Constitution of the United States because of the failure to acknowledge. And the failure to acknowledge invites further harm upon me.
Most of us do not acknowledge crime until the police tell us crime has occurred. So when croneyism leads to corruption in cities like Albany, California, and block coordinators with close relationships to police work to evict their neighbors, the police will likely refuse to acknowledge and investigate dangerous predatory crimes without the intercession of federal investigators.
We have the right to housing, and we have the right to enter into contracts to rent or own. Our rights to live in and rent the single-family homes that exist must be considered apart from the need to increase the density of housing for a growing population of those who will never be able to own as housing is increasingly consolidated into corporate hands.
