Keep On Moving! Homes on Wheels Not Wanted in Bay Area

Jason O'Neal, FFWP

Last night, I read an article published by Berkeleyside titled, Berkeley City Council tells RVs to hit the Road.  At first glance it appeared to be another perspective from a long list of narratives about the “blight” of motorhomes and RVs parking on public streets in the Bay Area.  As I continued to read the article I could see it pitted the “boon dockers” ( a common term for RVs that move from place to place with no permanent hookup) against the homeowners and businesses in Berkeley.  

Of course there were the quotes from elected city officials, some who cast dissenting votes in the 6-3 city ordinance approving the ban, but the end result is the same.  If you can’t afford to live in Berkeley, the city’s residents and leaders don’t want you there. And to think this is the same “liberal” Bay Area city that has a “socialist” campus which threatens free speech for conservatives (although Berkeley is far from a socialist school and neither of the individuals in the most recent altercation to gain national media coverage are students there).

What is missing from this story is that Berkeley is a city with almost 120,000 residents and has a median income of more than $70,000 a year.  When I moved there in the summer of 2015, my girlfriend and I earned less than half of that and a studio apartment was renting for $1,700 a month.  Transferring from a community college in San Diego, I was told by an anthropology professor to be prepared for the high cost of housing because she had to live in someone’s garage while receiving her PhD there.  

Two days before my first scheduled class, and with a few hundred dollars in my pocket, we set out for Berkeley in our used RV which we had purchased two weeks before.  My girlfriend and I were not married and we were not eligible for student housing together. We had spent close to a month looking for room shares without success and had limited options by this point.  I would later discover that this is all too common for students at America’s first-ranked public university. The University of California, Berkeley enrolls approximately 27,000 students every year, but has nowhere near the affordable accommodations required to house them all.  For those lucky enough to gain entrance into one of the dozens of co-op houses, prices might be reasonable. But, for those forced into campus-contracted student housing, many have to take on roommates or a part-time job to afford it. A friend of mine, who was also moving to Berkeley, checked in the day before classes without knowing exactly where they were going to live.  

During my two years at UC Berkeley (where I was a fellow student with council member Rigel Robinson) I met hundreds of students who lived in the housing surrounding campus.  Many were using student financial aid, with a sizeable sum forked over to property owners in the area. Some may say this is akin to Section 8 vouchers for low-income housing where the federal government is subsidizing landlords to house poor people.  However, there is one glaring detail about the alumni at Berkeley which was brought to my attention while I was a student there. Nearly sixty percent of the students are not using financial aid and their parents are paying full-price which can reach an upwards of more than $30,000 a year when housing is factored in.  Either way, the university attendance is injecting about $300 million dollars a year in rent money to the surrounding area, and this figure does not include graduate students or professors.

Needless to say, my housing allowances were not spent there.  With relatively few places to park in the entire Bay Area, we were left looking for alternatives.  Even those parks that did accept RVs had strict rules on how old a caravan could be. Most would not take motorhomes older than fifteen years.  My first disbursement of student aid was issued and we applied for several places to no avail.

Like the RV owners who are now shunned by the city, we were hoping to save on expenses needed to live in Berkeley.  I met a graduate student and an employee at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who were living in RVs next to People’s Park.  They had much smaller motorhomes which were easily moved from one block to the next, but my girlfriend and I did could not get that close to campus.  After nearly three weeks at a motel parking lot in El Cerrito, where we spent $20 a day, we found someone willing to let us park in their backyard in Concord.  It was more than twenty miles from campus, but we only had to pay $500 a month. Six months later our landlord was evicted and we moved to the old Naval Air Station at Alameda where we parked in a low-income housing collaborative for the same price.  Another six months went by before we were forced out of there and we ended up at an RV park in Oakley, which put us forty-five miles from campus. This is where we stayed for most of my final year at Cal.

I graduated in 2017 and after a few months we eventually moved back to San Diego and sold the motorhome.  We now live in Phoenix, AZ were our one bedroom apartment costs less than $700 a month including utilities.  Cheaper housing has come at a price, however, because the fifth largest city in the United States has an infrastructure built entirely on individual automobile ownership.  It feels like public transportation is light-years behind BART and AC Transit, although one of the contracted carriers is a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate.  But, that is another story.

My takeaway from the two years I spent in the Bay Area is that the rich liberals don’t want poor people around and the cost of living is out of reach for anyone working on minimum wage.  In Oakland there are tent cities under freeways and nearly 5,000 homeless people migrating through the East Bay. If one factored in those living in their cars and RVs, I am sure the number would be much higher.

It appears affordable housing isn’t even on the table for discussion in these communities. There is not enough money to be made for those in power. While city councils are brokering deals with real estate developers, to gentrify neighborhoods to raise property values with higher tax revenues, human beings are kicked out into the streets where it is getting harder to survive.  Keep in mind, many of them are retirees, or on disability, and have nowhere to go. With this new ban on overnight parking ordinance now in effect, RV and motorhome owners will be joining them. Unfortunately, Berkeley residents and the city council doesn’t care as long as it’s somewhere else farther down the road.  

Hayward landlords raise rents 50%. Tenants fight back

Tenants are not prepared to take this lying down.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I attended a meeting of some  Hayward tenants today whose landlords have raised rents 50% that amounts to increases of anywhere from $600 to $900.  The word “terrorism” is very popular these days though the mass media rarely uses it to describe domestic acts of terror and never when it comes to Landlords. But we should recognize that what is happening to these tenants in Hayward is an act of terror, economic terrorism. One person I spoke to is on disability retirement and also has a daughter. For him it will mean being on the street. There are people serving time for much less than this.

The tenants, residents of 21631 and 21663 Garden Avenue in Hayward CA, are fighting back and have formed the Hayward Gardens Tenants Association. Through a lawyer they have managed to slow the process down as the Landlords through their property management company violated numerous legal procedures. 

One important violation is that California state law requires a landlord to give tenants a 30-day notice of any rent increase. But this period rises to 60 days if the increases are above 10% as far as I understand it.   A rent increase of 10% is considered “seriously high” as one attorney put it.  An increase of 50% is savage. Imagine one’s mortgage increasing by 50% in a month. What sort of human being is this?

The landlords, like most of them with any significant rental income property, hire property managers as they do their best to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and their victims.  These particular Landlords, Sammy Chan and Francis Leung also have their own accounting firm, called 9 Kearny Street LLC.

One tenant said that they want to appeal to the landlords so they understand what this means to them but someone that can do this does not care. They see their tenants simply as income-----unit 12, unit 35 and do so on.  The other problem is that they can legally raise this rent 50%, they have simply not followed procedure. The courts and the politics of city and state governments are all dominated by landlord interests, everyone knows that.  And while any rent control is welcomed, the bigger fight is for affordable and decent social housing.

In this case, the complex is in what is called an unincorporated area so it does not fall under Hayward City Council’s jurisdiction but the Board of Supervisors of Alameda County, the county that Hayward is in.  There is no rent control at all in unincorporated Hayward.

Skyrocketing rents and gentrification is making it almost impossible for people that work in some urban centers from living in them. This is particularly the case in San Francisco across the bay and increasingly in Oakland a few miles north of Hayward. Municipal bodies do next to nothing to prevent these type of assaults on working or people and our need for affordable housing. And we cannot rely on the courts as money always wins in these forums, any success we have in them is very limited as the law is on the side of the landlord.

I was invited to the meeting of the tenants to share my experiences as I was involved in a renters’ rights group some years ago and we had some major successes.  I stressed that the bottom line is the that law is against them, that the landlords can legally do what they are doing.  The tenants’ strength lies in organizing and using more direct action methods, relying their own strength and not the politicians who will only act if forced to do so. What works is mobilizing people and not just those directly affected as if this landlord gets away with this others will be encouraged.

When a landlord(s) intervenes in our lives in such a way that our health and welfare and the welfare of our families and our children are affected, we can retaliate by intervening in theirs lives as well as the lives of politicians who do nothing or who pay lip service when complaints are brought to them.  “You have to follow protocol” is the common refrain which means us as victims taking the road that will ensure defeat and a sense of helplessness. They want to wear us down until we go away.

Landlords often have other business that organized tenants and their allies can picket. They go to church where we can turn up and leaflet the congregation explaining the harm they are doing to others through their business lives. We can find out where they live and leaflet their neighbors. All sorts of direct activity that hurts their pocket books or reveals their darker side can be used as long as there are no threats of violence and other counterproductive activity. The main point is that they are interfering negatively in our lives and we can do the same with theirs. It is when their economic interests are threatened that they listen and act regardless of any laws.

Even if this particular landlord is using the 50% figure as a bluff in order to lower it and show the tenants he has compassion, that itself is an act of terror. It is terrorizing people, threatening to make them homeless.

The 22 tenants at today’s meeting decided to organize a “call in” tomorrow (April 25^th) to the Office of Scott Haggerty, the Alameda Board of Supervisors representative for their unincorporated area of Alameda County. It is a disgrace that this can occur at all.

They are asking any and all friends and allies to do the same. The tenant’s address is 21631 and 21663 Garden Avenue in Hayward CA and their group is called the Hayward Gardens Tenants Association.

Scott Haggerty is the representative for Alameda County District 1. His number is 510-272-6691. His official webpage is here.

The landlords, Sammy Chan and Francis Leung, business address is:

Sammy Chan Francis Leung

9 Kearny Street LLC
50 Victoria Ave, Ste 210

Millbrae, Ca 94030

Their phone number is: 415-546-7718 If you can call them as well that would help. Lets put some pressure on these people and let them know we know what they’re doing and we don’t like it.

Flint and beyond. Build a broad direct action movement against the 1%

Third world country?  No, a residents water pipe in Flint. Source, WSJ

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

In response to the poisoning of the city’s water supply in order to pay for US capitalism’s corporate wars, Flint’s city officials have added a chemical in order to stop the lead from leaking through pipes and in to the drinking water. What chemical and the effect it has on the human or any other organism, this writer cannot say. It’s sort of like spraying oil spills with chemicals to make us safe. Does it though?

One of the motivations for this exercise is that lead levels in the water supply have to fall below 15 parts per billion that water systems must test at or the federal government is compelled to take further steps it wants to avoid, the worst being installing a completely new system and removing contaminated lines.

The tests which are “not scientific” according to reports in the media, were samples local residents handed over to the state. Last month there were “More than 30 test results above 150 parts per billion..” according to the Wall Street Journal.  But there were some that came in at thousands of parts per billion, says Mona Hanna Attisha the Pediatrician that helped expose this catastrophe. More here  and here.  Like all environmental disasters, we will not know the extent of the damage to the children of Flint until it manifests itself, much like the affects of the BP spill in the gulf.

As I write this, I read in a three by inch and a half column in the Wall Street Journal, that one of the criminals responsible for another market driven environmental catastrophe in West Virginia has received 3 years probation and been fined $10,000. Robert Reynolds was an environmental consultant at Freedom Industries and was in charge of environmental compliance when the chemical agent MCHM, used for cleaning coal, was leaked in to the Elk River. Residents in nine counties could not drink, bathe in or wash anything in tap water for almost two weeks.

We need to remind ourselves that here in the US there are literally hundreds of thousands of working class and poor people, a disproportionate number of them people of color, languishing in US prisons for petty crime, offenses like smoking and possessing pot, stealing a car or perhaps some items form Macy’s, some even stole food. These are overwhelmingly people that capitalism has abandoned and who would undoubtedly choose other paths were the options open to them. They never poisoned and entire river or city.

Some time ago, a major US journal of the 1% described the dilapidated US social structure as the “Third Deficit”.  It is worse today.  But as it continues to decline, total debt in the US hits $17 trillion, $12 trillion of that private debt. And today I read the Pentagon is seeking more funding for our military presence in Europe. It is not unlikely that at some time we will witness a revolt among the European working class against US capitalism’s destabilizing role on that continent, supporting Fascists in the Ukraine, provoking the Russians and other activity. The US driven Middle East wars has forced millions to flee north to escape the carnage and most European workers are aware of this, that this is at the root of the refugee problem.  Even the staunchly pro-Zionist French are getting impatient with the Zionist regime and its US backers.

Back home, we will be asked to sacrifice more for this aggression that the corporate controlled media in the US refers to as spreading freedom and defending the American way of life. And what freedoms and way of life are they talking about defending? The right to pollute our rivers or the Gulf of Mexico and get away with it?  The right to drive wages and working conditions down to third world levels? The right to imprison two million people because capitalism refuses to provide fruitful work and a secure existence for more and more people?  The social and economic conditions that prevail in the urban ghettos, the Native American Reservations and places like West Virginia?  For those of us still with jobs and homes, keeping what we have is becoming more difficult and more stressful as the crisis of capitalism intensifies.

We can charter a different course.  We have the resources and the money.  Billions is being spent electing candidates for office from one of the two Wall Street Parties.  The trillions spent in the predatory wars and aggressive foreign policy to defend corporate profits abroad is not under threat from these candidates.  Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders talks of billionaires and raising taxes on them, but never talks about changing the system that perpetuates this. He refuses to point to the trillions of dollars spent on aggressive and hostile wars that have nothing to do with defending the US and our way of life because he supports US foreign policy and as a Zionist does not condemn Israel’s racist policies and ethnic cleansing. The US is armed to the teeth. Any country with thoughts of invading the US would be committing mass suicide and all countries know it.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are funded and backed by Wall Street.  The answer to Flint’s problems is a massive social infrastructure spending program to rebuild our cities, our parks, our transportation system ( a mass transit system has to be the alternative to autos). Millions of jobs can be created through this investment which can be paid for by taxes on the rich and by ending all wars and occupations. I remember my dad telling me how the US built a liberty ship a day during the war. He was in prison camp with Americans and loved had great respect for America and its productive power. Well, we're at war now only it against others who call themselves Americans, the few thousand billionaires and their system. Conditions that exist in Flint and throughout the US are a product of an economic system in decay.

Dominant industries that produce the necessities of life in any civilized society must be taken in to public ownership and run by the workers in these industries in combination with the communities that they serve and in which they are situated. Food production, education, health care, transportation, energy, all these industries are vital to our survival and cannot be run by a gang of hedge fund managers and billionaires whose sole goal is to accumulate wealth, to ensure and maximize shareholder value, human need and the environment is an obstacle to this.  

We are held hostage by the media that is owned by the same gang that owns the other industries. They produce garbage, 200 channels of it on TV and more crap films in Hollywood. They produce violent video games in partnership with the US military that damage our children as it prepares them for war,  and we have no say in any of this. They all sit on each other’s boards or are connected through numerous networks. They meet in Jackson Hole Wyoming, the Bohemian Grove in CA and other places we will never be allowed to enter where they discuss strategy and how they can best govern society in their own interests and the environment be damned.

While they have differences among themselves over how best to govern, over what is the most efficient and stable means by which to reap profits, they are united in their war against the working people of this country and the world.  The US became a world power on the backs of the auto industry in and around Flint and Detroit. It became a wealthy country, after its genocidal war against the Native population and through the importation of Europe’s poor that filled the textile factories of New England and the coalmines of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and the South. Through one of the most barbaric systems in modern history, US capitalism paid no wages to some 4 million Africans for 300 years and on the backs of the exploited it entered the world stage and replaced the once great British Empire as the world’s most powerful economic and military power.

These are the forces and system we are dealing with.  We are taught to be patriotic, to love our country. All nation states do this but it is a trick. The America of Rick Snyder, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg the former mayor of NYC worth some $30 billion and others like them is not our America.  We love our home turf, our back yard in a different way.  For the 1%, they’d live anywhere if the profits demanded it; they do live everywhere.

There are activists throughout the country being forced to fight back by necessity, from the folks in Flint to Lafayette Colorado and Oklahoma where people are fighting Fracking, to Chicago and other cities where residents are fighting back against gentrification. There are indigenous struggles against poverty and destruction of Native lands. In Porter Ranch California, the residents of this more affluent community have been driven from their homes due to a gas leak that has forced the governor to declare a state of Emergency. Black youth and their allies are fighting back against police brutality, women against gender discrimination. There are struggles everywhere taking place in isolation in the main.

Activists in these communities must connect to each other, must link up as part of the process of building an alliance against 1% and their austerity agenda. Part of this activity must be appealing to the rank and file in the unions in their effort to throw out their present pro business leadership. A wider movement must be built and out of this movement on the ground, a movement armed with direct action tactics, political candidates independent of the two Wall Street parties can emerge and begin the process of building a party of working people and the middle class that can challenge the dictatorship the Republicans and Democrats have over political life. Those of us on this blog would like to be part of this, would support such a movement but at this point our greatest resource is this blog.

This in not that period in history that gave rise to the idea of the American Dream; it is the period of the American Nightmare for all but a few billionaires. We will be forced to liberate ourselves form the distractions their media places before us but better not to wait until we are forced by necessity to act, we owe it to our children to act before that point and their future is denied them.

We can't rely on lawyers or the courts to defend us. The people in this nation of ours need to raise our expectations.

Chicago Residents Oppose Evictions

We are sharing this example of the struggle of working people against gentrification and slumlords. Stephen Perkins.

Members from the Springfield Autonomous Tenants Union (SATU) sing a version of 'Let it Snow' to Barnett Capital - the development corporation that's threatening to evict 10 members of the Centro Autónomo of Albany Park, Chicago. For more information about how to resist classist displacement, call 773-583-7728

BARNETT CAPITAL LTD: DON’T DISPLACE TENANTS FROM THEIR HOME AND HISTORY

TO: MRS. JULIE GATELY AND MR. DAN SHACHTMAN OF BARNETT CAPITAL LTD,

Dear Mrs. Julie Gately and Mr. Dan Shachtman of Barnett Capital LTD,

Actions speak louder than words.

We, the undersigned, demand that you, working on behalf of Barnett Capital LTD, cease the displacement of the tenants living in 4834 N. Springfield Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60625–organized through the Springfield Autonomous Tenants Union (SATU).

These tenants, who are also part of the Centro Autónomo de Albany Park and the community-wide Autonomous Tenants Association, have repeatedly asked for a meeting to negotiate, which you have denied outright. We stand with SATU and insist that you allow them to stay in their homes.

The 4834 N. Springfield apartment building is no typical dwelling.

The Centro Autónomo, an organization firmly rooted in the Albany Park community, started in this building. Immigrant workers living in Albany Park, came to this space to learn English and how to defend their rights as workers and as immigrants. In 2007, the Centro Autónomo moved to a more central location, while several organizers and professors continued living in the apartments. Now, all tenants living in the building are members of the Centro Autónomo. Not only are they defending their homes, we are defending their history.

Since Barnett Capital LTD’s acquisition of the property in June, SATU has been trying to work with you in order to stay in their home and their community. SATU has consistently asked for a one-year lease and that code violations be repaired. In responding to their asks, your answers have been infrequent and inconsistent. Now you are commencing an eviction process, which, if not stopped, will result in the displacement of these tenants from their homes and community while contributing to the gentrification of the Albany Park neighborhood.

Your continued disregard for the reasonable demands of these tenants has led us to the conclusion that you are gentrifiers. We have witnessed the displacement of hundreds of families from Albany Park at the hands of profit hungry real estate and development companies. As long as you continue to portray SATU’s dignified demands as unimportant, you will solidify Barnett Capital Ltd’s reputation as a gentrifier. Certainly a highly-esteemed company like Barnett Capital cannot afford such a reputation.

We, the undersigned, in solidarity with SATU, demand the following:

• Cease eviction proceedings against the tenants of the Springfield Autonomous Tenants Union.

• Agree to a 1-year lease in the property at comparable rent for all tenants of the Springfield Autonomous Tenants Union and promptly and properly attend to the repairs needed.

Sincerely,

Springfield Autonomous Tenants Union and Supporters

Why is this important?

Our struggle is important not just because of our individual struggle as tenants against Barnett Capital, but because of the gentrification of our working class neighborhood of Albany Park. Thousands of tenants have been priced out of our neighborhood due to greedy speculation by corporations like Barnett Capital. Families living in the neighborhood for decades have to move away from their friends and extended family, their children's schools, their social networks, their community centers, their churches, all because of developers’ and speculators’ desire for profit. Because of gentrification, tenants are displaced from the place they call home. By struggling for our right to stay in the neighborhood at an affordable rent, we are forming part of the larger neighborhood struggle against gentrification. The community has power when we organize ourselves! Please join us, ally with us, be in solidarity with us, by signing this petition!

How it will be delivered

The petition will be delivered in person to Barnett Capital LTD's offices.