Supervisors Pass Further Tenant Protection
embers of My Eden Voice pose with Supervisor Elisa Marquez after the vote on tenant protections. From left to right, Paloma Aspe, Anayely Piscil Salazar, Sandra Hernandez, Vicki Vivaldi, Rosisela Murillo , Elisa Marquez, Elena Torres, Dave Thompson, Leo Esclamado , Kristen Hackett and Miguel de Leon.
Tenants in unincorporated Alameda County, including Castro Valley, received additional housing protections from the county Board of Supervisors at its February 4 meeting.
The supervisors unanimously passed an extension of protections to renters of single-family houses if the owner operates five or more units in unincorporated areas. (Single-family houses are exempt from the state law. Cities or counties can pass their ordinances or choose not to go beyond the statewide protections.)
Eviction notification periods were extended to 90 days for some especially vulnerable tenants, compared with the three days protected by state law. Those groups include households with children, elderly or disabled members, and low-income households.
The provision also requires two months’ rent in relocation assistance when tenants are evicted without fault, such as when major renovations are scheduled, or the unit requires extensive repairs due to a natural disaster.
The ruling was hailed by tenant advocacy group My Eden Voice, whose members mostly live in unincorporated Ashland, Cherryland, and San Lorenzo. Since before the pandemic, they had spearheaded the effort for protection on behalf of several other groups.
“More protections are still needed, but this is a good start,” said My Eden Voice organizer Kristen Hackett.
Julia Vazquez, another My Eden Voice leader, said, “We have built the foundation for something that can be as big as our will and imagination allow.”
The group has been pushing for tenant protection in unincorporated areas since 2018, with the notable backing of the late Supervisor Wilma Chan from District 3. The county’s Community Development Agency (CDA) had been tasked with developing a local ordinance to stabilize the housing market.
These efforts were thrown into starker relief when evictions started increasing before the pandemic, sometimes involving tenants current on their rent, and continued as many people lost jobs and income due to COVID-19. The county and cities responded with eviction moratoria, which were then lifted as the pandemic eased.
District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley led several years of negotiations between tenant and landlord groups for ongoing protections, which led to several versions of a proposed housing protection ordinance.
CDA’s 2022 version contained provisions limited evictions to a list of causes, prohibiting harassment of tenants by landlords, a right of return to a unit after renovations or repairs that led to the eviction are finished, and a rental registry of occupied and unoccupied units.
Miley said he wanted to continue investigating a rental registry and anti-harassment protection for tenants but that a mediation ordinance that supervisors passed on November 17, 2024, should resolve at least some landlord-tenant disputes.