Gentrification in California

Karen Aguirre
4 min readDec 12, 2018

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It is no surprise that California is in the top 10 most expensive cities to live in the nation. Throughout the last decade, we have seen a tremendous spike in housing prices. To focus in the Bay Area, the housing prices went up 45% from 2008 to 2018. The tech jobs around the area have attracted people from all over the world and is affecting housing prices as the demand is high and there is housing shortage. There is reports on many families moving into the central valley from the Bay Area as they can no longer afford housing here. However, not only tech jobs are responsible for the housing crisis. There are investors who are seeing this opportunity to “flip” houses in lower income areas to attract a more affluent crowd of people. They are tearing down old neighborhoods and shopping centers to create more modern new neighborhoods and shopping malls. This is gentrification.

As communities are being gentrified, long time residents of these communities are being forced out to make space for affluent potential home buyers. Developers are taking away the opportunity for local families to buy homes as they come in with cash offers, leaving families that have to go through bank loans with no chance. Not only does this affect home buyers, but this is an even bigger issue for families who rent. As landlords see the housing costs go up, they take advantage of people and evict them to increase the rent. This way they avoid being sanctioned by rent control ordinances cities may have in place and excuse it with a “no-cause” or even a “owner move-in” eviction.

These “owner move-in” evictions have been popular ways to evict people as the landlord simply sends out a notice to the tenant letting them know themselves or a family member will be moving in and it is an excused eviction. However, this becomes an issue when the landlord does not move themselves or family in, and instead does some remodeling in the house and then increases the rent and won’t allow the previous tenants to move in. As these rents keep increasing our lower income population is being forced out to move out to cheaper cities and some still commute to their jobs here. These commutes can take up to 6 hours round trip affecting family, school and leisure time.

So when does this stop? Efforts have been made by community members who have demanded rent control ordinances in their cities and other renter associations who have gathered to protest and worked on several ways to block landlords to evict people without the tenant being at fault. Anti-gentrification activists made progress in San Francisco and San Diego by claiming that their culture and heritage is being wiped out by these companies and developers who are coming in to gentrify their life long cities. For example, in San Diego the city made many efforts to tear down Chicano Park, a very famous park dedicated to Chicanos and that was built by the community during the Chicano Movement in the 1960’s. The community gathered and protested at the park for 12 days until the City finally allowed them to keep and maintain the park as a City landmark. In San Francisco, in different neighborhoods where latinos and blacks live they have tried wiping out the murals that have been alive in the streets for years as these developers are trying to “remodel” these neighborhoods. They have been blocked by community members many times demanding they leave their murals up as it is part of the history of their neighborhood and heritage is marked all over their walls.

So far, we have not seen a big significance decrease in rents or housing costs in general. However, as community members we can defend our rights as tenants and homeowners and demand the city to either design more affordable housing or design more strict ordinances that will protect renters from being evicted by these “no-cause” evictions. In Alameda, the Alameda Renter Coalition was formed which made a huge difference in a measure in their ballot to approve a rent control ordinance. Although the City of San Jose already has an apartment rent ordinance in place, it is only for certain apartments and mobile homes who participate in the “Apartment Rent Ordinance”. However, the rent may still be increased after a tenant has voluntarily vacated the unit or if they were evicted and this is when landlords find loopholes around this. As a city and community we can come together to push our government for policies that will protect the rights of tenants and home owners.

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