Last week, the San Jose City Council voted to ban landlords from intimidating tenants by threatening to call immigration authorities, and ensured that tenants in rent-controlled apartment complexes pay only their fair share of utility bills.
These welcome victories are on top of earlier wins in San Jose to reduce how much landlords can increase rents and stop landlords from unfairly evicting tenants for no good reason.
However it wasn’t all good news last week. The powerful landlord lobby pushed through measures to make some evictions easier and weaken some rent control laws.
We know that if San Jose is going to make real progress on combatting our region’s housing crisis, more action is needed. We need to protect our most vulnerable residents, build far more affordable housing and preserve the reasonably priced housing we already have.
