L.A. City Council Votes to Ban Low-Income Section 8 Rental Discrimination

Kimberly Dominique lived in her car for months before she finally found a landlord who accepted her Section 8 voucher. (Maria Alejandra Cardona / Los Angeles Times) The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance that bars landlords from refusing to consider tenants who pay rent through Section 8, the federal subsidy program...Read More...

Family Loses Everything, Including Pets, After Apartment Fire in Pasadena

PASADENA, Texas (KTRK) -- Just days after Christmas, a Pasadena family lost everything in an apartment fire. The fire happened Friday around 10:30 a.m. at an apartment complex on Westside Drive. The family who lived inside wasn't home at the time, but two dogs and several other pets were killed in the fire. "When I saw...Read More...

10 Things to Look for in the Perfect Apartment

When apartment hunting, the endless list of options alone can be overwhelming. Then comes the hard part: finding an apartment that meets all of your needs. You know – an apartment that “checks off all the boxes” on your needs list. To make it easier, we’ve compiled a list of 10 things to look for...Read More...

How Low Turnover Fuels New York City’s Affordable Housing Crisis

We are accustomed to gauging the housing health of cities through some familiar data points: vacancy rates, new building permits, affordability. But there’s another, under-appreciated measure which explains a great deal about a city’s housing market and, specifically, provides an insight into the ongoing housing “crisis” that plagues some of America’s most prosperous cities,...Read More...

What Does the Next Chicago Mayor Have in Mind for Affordable Housing?

There are presently 21 candidates in the race for mayor of the city of Chicago. The final field will undoubtedly thin considerably by the process of nominating signature challenges — candidates must have at least 12,500 nominating signatures to get on the final ballot for mayor, but in what’s become a Chicago electoral tradition,...Read More...

$71 Million Behind St. Paul's Innovative Solution to Affordable Housing Crisis

St. Paul city leaders are moving forward with a huge and historic investment in low-cost living. At their most recent City Council meeting, council members approved a $71 million plan to expand housing over the next three years. Chris Tolbert represents Ward 3 and the Housing Redevelopment Authority. "This is going to help people, help families, help create...Read More...

Bombay High Court Evicts ‘Trespasser’ Maid from Dead Owner’s Flat

A domestic help who continue to stay in a flat in south Mumbai even after the death of her employer 12 years ago has been declared a trespasser by the Bobmay high court. Justice Atul Chandurkar declared that the 48-year-old woman's continued occupation of the flat in Sir Shapoorji Broacha Baug in Girgaum was illegal and...Read More...

Guest Column: Knowledge of Tenant Rights Is Power

It’s been nearly a year since the former Ontario government rolled out 28 pilot courses on financial literacy as part of a possible revamp of the high-school civics and careers course. Since the election, the new Ford government has stressed it will indeed revamp this curriculum as well. Premier Doug Ford said, “Financial literacy is an...Read More...

Trump Family's Tenants Paid More in Rent Because of Property Improvement Scheme: Report

“Thousands” of rent-regulated tenants in Trump family-built apartments saw questionable rent increases because the Trumps overstated how much they spent on property improvements, The New York Times reports. When tenants in Trump family-built properties noticed their rents went up in the 1990s, some were skeptical the increase was due to rumored building improvements that cost millions....Read More...

Council to Debate Options for Evicting Corporate Housing from the City

City Council will embark on a wide-ranging discussion of corporate housing in Santa Monica at their Tuesday meeting to eventually craft more specific rules that will prevent permanent housing from being used for temporary residences. According to City Staff, the corporate housing problem is still small compared to the broader housing market but there are...Read More...

As the Trumps Dodged Taxes, Their Tenants Paid a Price

They were collateral damage as Donald J. Trump and his siblings dodged inheritance taxes and gained control of their father’s fortune: thousands of renters in an empire of unassuming red-brick buildings scattered across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Those buildings have been home to generations of strivers, municipal workers and newly arrived immigrants. When their...Read More...

Sultan Begins Reign on Rent Control Board

The new member of the Rent Control Board sees a growing tenant harassment problem in Santa Monica and wants to strengthen the City’s power to address it. Veterans rights attorney Naomi Sultan was sworn in Tuesday, joining four other board members, three of whom are also attorneys. She said she wants to immediately start reevaluating...Read More...

Apartment Tenant Deals with Faulty Outlets, Dead CO Detector, Mold

A Suffolk County tenant says she is getting help with her complaints about her apartment thanks to News 12 Long Island. For almost four years, Alexa Avellino has lived at the Fairfield Village at Coram apartment complex without issue. Then a few months ago, she says there were some electrical outlet problems that forced her to...Read More...

L.A. City Council Passes Restrictions on Airbnb and Other Short-Term Rentals

after more than three years of debate — including an 11th hour plot twist — the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously in favor of new restrictions on Airbnb-style short-term rentals. The City Council stripped from the proposed new ordinance a controversial tweak that would have essentially allowed people to host short-term rentals in other...Read More...

Mountain View Council Sides with Developer, Votes to Demolish Rent-Controlled Units

City leaders in Mountain View voted early Wednesday morning to tear down dozens of rent-controlled apartments for market-rate townhomes. Just after midnight, the council voted 4-3 to demolish 20 rent-controlled units at the Royal Viking Apartments to make way for 15 market-rate townhomes at $1 million each on Rock Street. The council asked the developer...Read More...

3 Killed in Same Apartment Complex in a Year

[fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left"...Read More...

Startup Fights to Protect Tenants

The fight to protect rent-controlled units in New York City is ongoing. Standing up to landlords who want to sell units at market price can be challenging. However, the free web-app JustFix.nyc is helping tenants build legal cases to fight evictions and pressure landlords to make necessary repairs in rent-regulated units. Sometimes, landlords need to be reminded of...Read More...

London Mayor Performs U-Turn on Rent Controls

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has revealed that he wants to see rent controls introduced in London. The news was leaked yesterday by a national newspaper after a letter from Khan to London Labour MP Karen Buck went public. In the letter Khan says the case for introducing rent controls is overwhelming  to create a “strategic approach...Read More...

Apartment Fire Started by Fish Left Cooking on Stove

An unattended stove started a blaze that destroyed an apartment and took nearly two hours to extinguish, according to the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety. The fire occurred in the early morning of Saturday, Dec. 8 at an apartment complex on Inverness Lane, according to a news release issued by the department. No one was...Read More...

NMHC / NAA Push Back on Proposed Source of Income Legislation

Senators Hatch (R-UT) and Kaine (D-VA) introduced the Fair Housing Improvement Act of 2018 on November 13 to amend the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination based on source of income, which NMHC/NAA believe fundamentally changes the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program from an optional government program for private property owners to mandatory. Dating back to...Read More...

County and Glendale Freeze Rents While Both Craft Alternatives

Despite the defeat of a ballot measure that would have allowed communities to establish their own forms of rent control, rent freezes are being imposed on properties in Glendale, Altadena and other unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County amid a growing tenants’ rights movement in Glendale and Pasadena. Although Proposition 10 — which would have...Read More...

Legislation for Rent Register, Rent Controls and Notices to Quit to Come Before Cabinet

Legislation will be brought to Cabinet next Tuesday to better enforce rent pressure zone designations, double the notice to quit period and introduce a rent register, the Taoiseach has told the Dáil. Leo Varadkar said the Government would introduce a rent register as recommended by the housing charity Threshold in its annual report on Wednesday. It...Read More...

Should California Subsidize Housing with ‘Rent Stamps’?

It’s time for the California Legislature to take a totally new approach to meeting the critical human need for shelter. The Legislature should consider approaches that neither impose the costs of this societal need on a subset of the real estate industry nor give its benefits randomly to those in need. Shelter, like food, is...Read More...

Vancouver Rent Control Is Not the Advertised Win for Renters

The freshly adopted rent-control measures in Vancouver have been celebrated by advocates and politicians alike. The Vancouver Tenants Union even went as far as calling the new restrictions an “incredible win for literally half the population.” But the adopted measures are not what they seem. The additional measures scheduled for the spring are even...Read More...

‘Til Death Do Us Part: When Rent Control Is a Bigger Commitment Than Marriage

We’d had a pretty incredible San Francisco night. It started at one of The City’s last underground art spaces for an event called Puppet Death Match. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a series of funny vignettes in which a bunch weird puppets battle to the death…obviously. Afterwards, we popped by the White Horse Tavern for...Read More...

Rent Control’s Momentum

Rent control is back on the agenda. Its presence on the ballot recently in California and Chicago suggest that rent control has found new life amid a countrywide affordable housing crisis. While it will take years of struggle to win, both campaigns have awoken the real estate lobby, long ago convinced that rent control was a dead letter. Although the...Read More...

Does Rent Control Stifle Construction? Until There's More Data, the Jury's Still Out

Ontario has done yet another somersault on rent control regulations. Premier Doug Ford’s government recently reversed the stringent rent control regulations that were enforced last year by the Liberals. Under the revised regulations, new or previously unoccupied rental units will no longer be subject to rent control. Existing tenants in purpose-built or private rentals will continue...Read More...

Why Low-Income Earners Should Actually Welcome Ontario's Reversal on Rent Control

The knee-jerk reaction to Ontario government's recent action on rent control — removing it as a policy for new units in the province — was largely one of despair. The move was called "regressive" and "short-sighted." Toronto City Councillor Kristyn Wong Tam tweeted that the new policy meant "class warfare," suggesting that the "removal of rent...Read More...

KFOX14 Investigates: East Side Apartment Complex Without Hot Water

People at an east side apartment complex say they've been without hot water for more than a month. They weren't getting any answers from their apartment complex so they called KFOX14 Investigates. “Really cold, it's uncomfortable,” said Dionne a resident of the Monterrey Garden Apartments in east El Paso off of Miracle Way and Sims. As the...Read More...

Aids Healthcare Foundation: Prop. 10 Election Results Final Tally Dec. 3, 2018

-Proposition 10, also known as the Affordable Housing Act, forced a robust public debate about access to affordable housing throughout California, galvanizing policymakers and advocates who are profoundly frustrated at the insidious acceleration of homelessness caused by persistent, excessive increases in rental rates. Despite losing statewide, the ballot measure won key victories in regions...Read More...