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April 14, 2024
San Rafael City Council
Via email: [email protected]
Dear Esteemed Council Members,
We are writing to urge you to take action tonight to address the displacement currently taking place in the Opportunity Zone in San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood. We stand with local tenants in their pleas for relief and we urge your immediate action to prevent further mass displacement and gentrification by passing a temporary ordinance to protect renters in the Opportunity Zone.
Aggressive investor activity and predatory housing practices targeted in the Canal neighborhood is causing an immediate threat to the homes of some of the County’s most vulnerable residents. This Council has taken action in the past to provide much-needed protections in this area and we call on you to do so now with urgency. Families are experiencing unjust treatment. They are bearing incredible levels of stress and disruption to their daily lives. They are losing their housing and being forced to remove their children from school and leave Marin. Local businesses struggle to find and retain the workers that fuel our local economy. These realities undermine the strength of our community and they are wholly unacceptable to our shared values of racial and economic justice. We can do better and we need to move quickly.
We urge you to adopt the urgency ordinance in front of you tonight, and then to follow this action with the adoption of city-wide protections.
Best,
Jennifer Silva
Board Chair
BOARD
Jennifer Silva, Chair
Diane Benetez
Aaron Burnett
Betsey Cutler
Lucie Hollingsworth
Paul Jensen
Larry Kennings
David Levin
Claire McAuliffe
Tom McCafferty
Gail Napell
Steven Saxe
Amy Skewes-Cox
Chantel Walker
Warren Wells
ADVISORY BOARD
Ron Albert
Paula Allen
Margot Biehle
Greg Brockbank
Katherine Crecelius
John Eller
Kathleen Foote
Mayme Hubert
Linda M. Jackson
Shiraz Kaderali
Cesar Lagleva
Stacey Laumann
Stephanie Lovette
Douglas Mundo
Robert Pendoley
Jessuina Pérez-Terán
Scott Quinn
Michele Rodriguez
Annette Rose
Colin Russell
Ethan Strull
Mary Kay Sweeney
Joe Walsh
Joanne Webster
Steve Willis
Sallyanne Wilson
Tom Wilson
Carmela Davis,
Housing Specialist
Kiki LaPorta,
Communications
From: Ethan Strull
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 10:19 PM
To: Distrib- City Clerk <[email protected]> Subject: Regarding Agenda Item 6a
Dear Mayor Kate and San Rafael City Council,
Thank you for listening to San Rafael citizens and non-profit organizations and considering these important protections for Canal renters. This Urgency Ordinance would have direct, immediate impacts for residents of the 400 Canal building and other buildings in the area. As you know, eviction for many low-income renters has drastic impacts that range from homelessness, overcrowding, or displacement from our County. Especially when eviction is no fault of one’s own, it is extremely important to mitigate these life-altering consequences.
Ensuring that tenants have the costs of relocation covered and a right to return without significant rent increase would reduce housing instability and displacement while buildings receive much-needed renovations. It would also reduce developers’ incentive to renovate buildings in order to drastically raise rent and cater to a higher-income renter but rather encourage reinvestment into existing tenancies. Thank you for considering this Urgency Ordinance, and please take action today to approve it.
This ordinance makes clear that San Rafael can and will take meaningful actions to keep working-class community members housed. It will have huge impacts for a small slice of our city’s renters, but it will not reduce displacement and rising rents for many who live outside the Canal or face housing instability with differing causes. I look forward to continuing conversations at City Council meetings to establish renter protections that encompass our entire community. -Ethan
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