Rent Control Campaign kicks off Sunday in Santa Cruz

Nearly 1,000 signatures were collected in Santa Cruz on Sunday to get a Renter Protection Initiative put on the 2018 November ballot.

Community members and activists started a Campaign seeking rent control and just cause for evictions on Sunday.

The group will be collecting signatures through June in hopes of getting 8,000.

The initiative they are looking to put on the ballot will include rent stabilization, eviction protections, and the formation of an elected “Rent Board” separate from City Council, which will handle the regulation of rent prices and eviction.

Organizer Viveka Jagadeesan says this is an issue that has impacted her personally, “I’m someone that became severely ill from living in a moldy building and not feeling like I had protections. So this issue is really personally important to me. Our ultimate goal is to create a community where people can live long term, know their neighbors, where older folks, people of color, working people are able to live here and have a great quality of life.”

One attendee of the campaign kick-off says he was already pushed out of San Francisco and doesn’t want to see the same thing happen here, “I was a transplant here as a cause of gentrification in san Francisco so I know the impact of high rising housing cost. and the fact that our employment and wages are not keeping up and what that does to our communities. So I’m trying to do a tangible step to prevent any future displacement of our communities and to preserve as much of Santa Cruz as we can,” says Raymon Cancino.

Resident Madeline Clyde tells KION it’s not just one group being impacted, “It’s really across the spectrum, i mean I have a son who grew up and was raised in Santa Cruz he can’t afford a place here and even my coworkers who are making fairly decent salaries have to live out of County because it’s just become unaffordable.”

Jagadeesan says she’s hopeful they will be able to collect the signatures in time, ” I think we’re gonna make it. Every time I say I’m working on a rent control campaign I hear from people say yes, we really need that oh my gosh yes I’m going to be there.”

For more information on the Movement for Housing Justice, click here.