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CONCORD — Dolores Ramos is not new to community activism. About six years ago she and other parents in the city’s Monument Boulevard corridor began calling for improvements to the neighborhood’s parks and persuaded the city to pay for street safety measures such as stop signs and sidewalks on Detroit Avenue.
Then about three years later, she and fellow parents who make up the Central County Regional Group started focusing their attention on what everyone seems to agree is an urgent need in Concord: preventing rents from soaring so high they’ll drive away many longtime residents. For Ramos, the affordability crisis became personal — she was pushed out of her home last fall when a new building owner told her and more than two dozen families to leave during the renovation of their apartment building, which led to higher rents.
Though she found a place to stay with family, Ramos still is looking for a more permanent arrangement eight months later and fears that, in a horrible twist of fate, she may have to move outside the community she has worked for years to improve. She relayed her dilemma Wednesday as she gathered with other Concord residents to rally and march through the city, demanding policies to cap rent increases and restrict property owners’ ability to evict tenants. They’ve pushed for such policies at City Council meetings and in protests and rallies throughout the city over the last couple years.
To the residents, tenant issues are intertwined with other causes espoused at May 1 rallies each year, such as workers’ rights. The housing crisis, after all, has been fueled by housing prices that outpace worker wages. In January, the City Council formed an ad hoc committee to explore potential renter protection measures with teeth.
The committee includes Mayor Carlyn Obringer and Councilmember Dominic Aliano, whose District 3 includes a lot of rental housing. Obringer said in an interview this week that she and Aliano have been meeting with renters and property owners in the city as well as economists and a representative from the Association of Bay Area Governments to discuss potential policies.
“We are taking time to educate ourselves about this topic,” Obringer said. “We are learning what other cities are doing and following what the state Legislature is doing as well.”
Obringer said she and Aliano will hold a public meeting in the next month or so to present what they’ve discussed and get feedback, then make some recommendations to the full council in June. Like other cities in the Bay Area, housing prices in Concord have skyrocketed in the last several years. The median mortgage in Concord’s 94520 ZIP code — home to the Monument Boulevard corridor and many of the city’s apartment buildings — doubled between 2012 and 2018, according to a recent analysis of Zillow data by this news organization.
The median market rent in that area is $1,840 per month, a little less than in adjacent ZIP codes. Concord has some of the few Bay Area neighborhoods considered “affordable” to people or families who make around $100,000 per year, which is still considerably more than what many residents earn.
According to a survey of almost 1,000 people conducted last year by East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, First 5 Contra Costa and Raise the Roof, three-quarters of Concord residents are afraid of being evicted from their homes and almost all worry their rents will increase. Roughly 80 percent said they have received a rent increase in the past two years.
That fear has spurred renters such as longtime Concord resident Betty Gabaldon to get actively involved. She says she was evicted from her apartment by her landlord last year when she requested longer leases and questioned a neighbor’s eviction. Gabaldon had to move out of Concord because of steep rents, huge deposit demands or higher income requirements.
Monica Harris, a teacher at Oak Grove Middle School in Concord, said this week that she’s seen the impact of housing affordability on her students. At least one of them had to move farther east, where housing is more affordable while others have had to stay with relatives or bounce from the couches of friends and family members.
“That affects attendance and being on top of their homework,” Harris said.
Concord has long shied away from rent control, but of late the once-taboo topic has been coming up frequently. Council member and former Mayor Edi Birsan has welcomed the attitude change, noting the council seems to be coming around to the idea of a “moderate” rent control approach that he long has advocated.
In the last election Nov. 6, housing emerged as a key campaign issue as candidates for the first time ran in districts instead of citywide. Aliano, who won District 3, said he supported rent control and just-cause tenant eviction policies, as did his losing opponent, Kenji Yamada, who remains an outspoken advocate for those policies. Obringer has been vague about where she stands, saying she is committed to finding a “fair and balanced” solution.
Apartment owners contend that limiting rent increases would do more harm than good. The California Apartment Association has argued that rent control discourages construction of new homes, which in itself could help alleviate the crisis. The city has taken some small steps to protect renters, such as strengthening its program for inspecting apartment buildings for bed bugs, mold and other hazards after some residents alleged landlords weren’t properly maintaining their buildings.
And under a rent review program that went into effect in June 2017, tenants in buildings with three or more units who are slapped with rent increases totaling more than 10 percent a year can contact ECHO Housing, a counseling firm contracted by the city.
When mediation doesn’t work, the city schedules a public hearing for the tenant and landlord before a rent review panel made up of one tenant representative, one landlord representative and one neutral party. While property owners in the city have declared the rent review program a success and sufficient, renters and tenant advocates counter that it is nonbinding. Meanwhile, Ramos must find an affordable home to remain in the city, where she works and her young daughter attends school.
“I want to stay in Concord,” she said.
