City Government

Op-Ed: Housing Moratorium Ends, Council Must Approve Kaplan’s Renter Protection Proposal

Published

10 years ago

July 8, 2016

By James Vann

After weeks of testimony at City Council meetings of exorbitant rent increases, cruel evictions, and neighborhood disrupting displacement, on April 5, with over 600 residents crowding City Hall, Oakland’s City Council finally adopted a 90- day moratorium.

The moratorium requires the city to enact programs and policies that will reduce the displacement crisis. However, the moratorium has now ended, and Oakland tenants are again facing the brunt of the crisis without lasting and strong protections.

The crisis is not confined to lower-income residents, but extends to working families, students, teachers, firefighters, union members and postal workers.

Oakland’s prized diversity is being dismantled. Between 2000 and 2010, over 25,000 Black residents of Oakland were pushed out, dropping from 42 percent to less than 22 percent of the city’s population.

In addition, over 17 percent of school-age children and their families also left the city. While the hemorrhaging continues, the disregard of city council to the displacement crisis is painfully apparent.

As the moratorium ends, only one of the community’s 13 proposed actions – to require owners, not tenants, to file petitions to increase rent above the inflation rate – is under discussion. But nothing has been adopted. It is long past time that City Council make the displacement crisis a priority and install real, lasting, and permanent tenant protections.

To protect Oakland’s workforce and the many residents who help make Oakland the beloved city that it is, the City Council must approve for the November ballot Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan’s Renter Protection Act of 2016.

Councilmember Kaplan’s proposed measure includes real tenant protections, while also assuring rental owners a fair and decent profit.

Every other city in California with a rent control program requires landlords to petition if they can justify increasing rents above the inflation threshold. These cities see only a fraction of the petition filings Oakland receives, and their systems work much more efficiently.

Example: in 2015, Berkeley received only 28 landlord petitions, while the number of tenant petitions in Oakland exceeded 900. It is past time for Oakland to correct this wrong-way process.

In the continuing hot Bay Area real estate market, Oakland tenants also need protections against owners who use arbitrary evictions as a tactic to empty rental units to make way for new tenants escaping San Francisco who can pay much higher rent.

Extending “Just Cause” eviction protection to all tenants, or as many as politically possible, is only right, and will help assure that more residents will not be unfairly thrown from their homes.

The moratorium on rents and arbitrary evictions ended July 5. The City Council must uphold its promise to the people to put permanent tenant protections in place. Councilmember Kaplan has worked closely with the Protect Oakland Renters Coalition to include the Coalition’s priorities in a measure that should now go to the voters.

It is the people that make Oakland creative, unique, and much beloved. The City Council must not allow the “soul” of our city to be displaced.

The message that must be shouted – loud and clear – to the City Council is: “Let the Voters Decide.”

Please the attend the council meeting, Tuesday, July 19, to convince policymakers that they must approve the Kaplan proposal for the November ballot.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Oakland Sells E12th St. Land Despite Neighbors’ Pleas

Don't Miss

Local Lawmakers Pushing for Bail Reform to “Fix Broken System”

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 31, 2025 – January 6, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 31, 2025 – January 6, 2026

Published

2 weeks ago

January 2, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 24 – 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 24 – 30, 2025

Published

3 weeks ago

December 25, 2025

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Alameda County

Oakland Council Expands Citywide Security Cameras Despite Major Opposition

In a 7-1 vote in favor of the contract, with only District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife voting no, the Council agreed to maintain its existing network of 291 cameras and add 40 new “pan-tilt-zoom cameras.”

Published

4 weeks ago

December 21, 2025

Oakland Post

At the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Flock Safety introduces new public safety technology – Amplified Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve law enforcement investigations. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

The Oakland City Council this week approved a $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety for a mass surveillance network of hundreds of security cameras to track vehicles in the city.

In recent weeks hundreds of local residents have spoken against the camera system, raising concerns that data will be shared with immigration authorities and other federal agencies at a time when mass surveillance is growing across the country with little regard for individual rights.

The Flock network, supported by the Oakland Police Department, has the backing of residents and councilmembers who see it as an important tool to protect public safety.

“This system makes the Department more efficient as it allows for information related to disruptive/violent criminal activities to be captured … and allows for precise and focused enforcement,” OPD wrote in its proposal to City Council.

According to OPD, police made 232 arrests using data from Flock cameras between July 2024 and November of this year.

Based on the data, police say they recovered 68 guns, and utilizing the countywide system, they have found 1,100 stolen vehicles.

However, Flock’s cameras cast a wide net. The company’s cameras in Oakland last month captured license plate numbers and other information from about 1.4 million vehicles.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Council meeting, Fife was critical of her colleagues for signing a contract with a company that has been in the national spotlight for sharing data with federal agencies.

Flock’s cameras – which are automated license plate readers – have been used in tracking people who have had abortions, monitoring protesters, and aiding in deportation roundups.

“I don’t know how we get up and have several press conferences talking about how we are supportive of a sanctuary city status but then use a vendor that has been shown to have a direct relationship with (the U.S.) Border Control,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Several councilmembers who voted in favor of the contract said they supported the deal as long as some safeguards were written into the Council’s resolution.

“We’re not aiming for perfection,” said District 1 Councilmember Zac Unger. “This is not Orwellian facial recognition technology — that’s prohibited in Oakland. The road forward here is to add as many amendments as we can.”

Amendments passed by the Council prohibit OPD from sharing camera data with any other agencies for the purpose of “criminalizing reproductive or gender affirming healthcare” or for federal immigration enforcement. California state law also prohibits the sharing of license plate reader data with the federal government, and because Oakland’s sanctuary city status, OPD is not allowed to cooperate with immigration authorities.

A former member of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission has sued OPD, alleging that it has violated its own rules around data sharing.

So far, OPD has shared Flock data with 50 other law enforcement agencies.