Activism

Heritage Park Seniors Say Rent Hikes are Unaffordable, Garner Support from City

City officials have recently supported Heritage residents. During a city council meeting on Nov. 28, council members Cesar Zepeda and Melvin Willis asked staff to approve a letter asking USA Properties not to implement the 5% increase and to reevaluate future increases. The letter stated the increase could force residents “to sacrifice other needs to keep up with their housing cost” and possibly drive them to homelessness. The City Council unanimously agreed to send the letter, although USA Properties still raised the rents.

Published

10 months ago

December 26, 2023

By Zack Haber

Left to right: Dolores Ferrell, Donald Roberts, Samuel Lewis, Elda Fontano, and Timothy Sykes stand in front of a Christmas Tree at Heritage Park at Hilltop Affordable Senior Apartments in Richmond on Dec. 12. Photo by Zack Haber.

By Zack Haber

Some tenants at an affordable senior apartment facility in Richmond called Heritage Park at Hilltop have been speaking out against what they see as excessive rent increases. Low-income tenants like 72-year-old Elda Fontano worry that the 5% increase they received on Dec. 1 could price them out of the facility. The tenants have garnered support from city officials, who are questioning if 5% rent increases are affordable for Richmond seniors.

“This 5% increase is killing me and eventually it’s going to send me right out the door,” said Fontano.

Richmond Councilmember Melvin Wills said that conversations with tenants have shown him that many are already struggling with rent costs and that he thinks the goal for affordable housing facilities should be “stabilizing the community at hand.”

“I know that technically [Heritage] is considered affordable housing for the region,” Willis said. “But if you’re going to be increasing rents knowing that people can’t afford it and it’s just going to open up the space for someone who can, I identify that as a problem even if it is legal.”

Heritage, which opened in the year 2000 and has 192 housing units, is owned and operated by the Roseville based USA Properties Fund, inc. The company receives federal funding for the facility through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and has just over 100 apartment complexes operating or under construction. Most of them are affordable facilities, and about half of them are senior apartment facilities, like Heritage, for those ages 55 and older.

Rents at Heritage fall within what the state legally allows affordable housing providers to charge. The California Tax Credit Allocation Committee calculates and monitors maximum allowable rents for the low-income housing program. According to a spokesperson for USA Properties, the committee has set Heritage’s maximum allowable rent based on income levels of 60% of the area median income. These limits are $1,909 for two-bedroom apartments and $1,601 for one-bedroom apartments. The spokesperson said on average, Heritage tenants are charged $1,523 for two-bedroom apartments and $1,432 for one-bedroom apartments. Other than providing these figures, no one from USA Properties provided further comment or answered questions for this article.

The formula that the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee uses to calculate maximum rent costs at affordable senior facilities poses difficulties for Richmond residents. It’s based largely on area median income at the county level. But census data show that, on average, Richmond residents make less money than the rest of the county. While the average per capita income for all of Contra Costa County between 2018 and 2022 was around $59,000 per year, the average per capita income in Richmond during that time was around $39,500 per year. The formula doesn’t account for fluctuations in income throughout a county, so the committee allows companies to charge Richmond residents as much in rental costs as those living in wealthier towns like Lafayette, whose per capital income is around $111,000 per year.

The comparatively high costs of rent are straining Heritage residents like Fontano and her neighbor, 62-year-old Samuel Lewis. Both are on fixed incomes, can’t work because they have disabilities, and say they have trouble affording basic necessities like food. Fontano spends over half her monthly income on rent. Rent makes up over 70% of Lewis’s expenses.

Complaints about affordability are not new at Heritage. According to a city report, around 30 Heritage tenants expressed concerns to Richmond’s Rent Board and City Council shortly after receiving word that their rent would increase much as 12% in March of 2018. Some tenants said they feared they would be left homeless or “unable to buy medication or enough food.” In response to their concerns, the City Council passed a resolution in June of 2018 that stated it was “in the best interest of the city” to take a stand against the rent increases at the facility. According to Willis, who also is an organizer with the grassroots housing justice group Alliance of Californias for Community Empowerment, tenants organized through that group to push back against the 12% increase. USA Properties agreed to lower the increases to 3%.

In February of 2019, the Richmond Rent Board adopted a resolution capping rent increases at Heritage at no more 5% a year. The resolution also covered all of the approximately 30 other housing facilities in Richmond that receive Low Income Housing Tax Credit funds. USA Properties increased Heritage tenants’ rent by 5% in 2019, then in 2020 and 2021, rent was not increased while Contra Costa County had a moratorium that banned residential rent increases due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the 5% rent increases started up again in 2022 though, some residents again took their complaints to the city, saying the increases were now at too high a rate to be affordable. In August of that year, Heritage resident Laureen Lober told Richmond’s rent board in a public comment that due to the rent increase, “routine maintenance, utilities, cable, and internet might not be possible because living expenses are a struggle.”

In a Nov. 7 Richmond City Council meeting this year, shortly after receiving word that Heritage rents were again being raised 5%, Fontano submitted a public comment to City Council stating that the rent increase was especially burdensome as living expenses where rising while her and her neighbors incomes were stagnating.

“Please do whatever you can to help us or a lot of seniors in this affordable complex are going to end up homeless,” she wrote.

In their comments, both Lober and Fontano also complained of reductions in services and amenities as the rents were increasing. Lober complained that “dumpsters that residents were paying for have been removed causing an overflow of garbage,” while Fontano mentioned that a holiday event budget at the site was being reduced.

In response to affordability, service and amenity issues, tenants at Heritage formed a tenants association that began meeting last July. According to Lewis, about 30 people have been coming to the weekly meetings, and the association has had success in getting a trash service resumed that had been stopped. When a woman was temporarily displaced due to a habitability issue, the association was also able to inform her that USA Properties owed her a higher living expense stipend than the company had been paying, and she was then able to secure the higher stipend.

“We’re able to decimate information a lot more than in the past,” Lewis said about the association. “It’s a move in the right direction.”

Willis told the Post News Group he wants to continue to support the tenants. He feels the 5% rent increase cap at Heritage and other low-income senior facilities may no longer be sufficient.

“With inflation going up and folks who are on fixed income or in debt because of COVID,” Willis said. “We may need to revisit the 5% cap rent increase and what the impact on residents is going to be.”

By Zack Haber

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‘Respect Our Vote’ Mass Meeting Rejects Oakland, Alameda County Recalls

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda. The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Published

1 week ago

September 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Some of the leaders who spoke at the Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!” mass meeting were (left to right): Elaine Peng, Mariano Contreras, Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, and Stewart Chen. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

A recently organized coalition, “Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!,” held a standing-room only mass meeting on Sept. 14, urging residents to vote ‘No’ on the two East Bay recalls funded by conservative billionaires and millionaires with the help of corporate media and instead to support the campaign to protect residents’ democratic right to choose their representatives.

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda.

The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Speaking at the meeting, prominent East Bay leader Stewart Chen said that local leaders, like Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, worked hard to get elected, and our system says they get four years to carry out their policies and campaign promises. But rich people have “broken” that system.

Within two months after they took office, they were facing recalls paid for by billionaires, he said. “(Billionaires’) candidate did not get elected, so they want to change the system.”

“(Our elected leaders) were elected through the process, and the people spoke,” said Chen. “It’s the entire system that the billionaires are trying to (overturn).”

“If a candidate does something wrong or enacts a policy that we do not like, we let it play out, and in four years, we do not have to vote for them.

“The democratic system that we have had in place for a couple of hundred years, it needs our help,” said Chen.

Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, a leader of the coalition, emphasized the diversity and solidarity needed to defend democracy. “We need each other’s wisdom to make our nation great, to make it safe. We are deliberately African American, English-speaking, Latino American, Spanish-speaking, and all the wonderful dialects in the Asian communities. We want to be together, grow together, and have a good world together.”

Mariano Contreras of the Latino Task Force said that people need to understand what is at stake now.

The recall leaders are connected to conservative forces that will undermine public education, and bilingual education, he said. “The people behind (the recalls) are being used by outside dark money,” he said. The spokespeople of these recalls are themselves conservatives “who are wearing a mask that says they are progressives.”

In 2017, Oakland passed an ordinance that gave teeth to its “Sanctuary City” policy, which was brought to the City Council and passed because it was supported by progressive members on the council.

“That would not be possible anymore if the progressive alliance – Sheng Thao, Nikki Fortunato Bas, and Carroll Fife – if they are pushed out,” he said.

Elaine Peng, president of Asian Americans for Progressive America, said, “I strongly oppose the recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.”

Citing statistics, she said Alameda County’s murder rate was higher when Alameda County D.A. Nancy O’Malley was in office, before Pamela Price was elected to that position.

“The recall campaign has been misleading the public,” said Peng.

She said Oakland is making progress under Thao. “Crime rates are falling in Oakland,” and the City is building more affordable housing than ever before and is creating more jobs.

Attorney Victor Ochoa said, this recall is “not by accident in Oakland – it is a political strategy.”

“There is a strategy that has been launched nationwide. What we’re seeing is oligarchs, (such as Phillip Dreyfuss from Piedmont), right wingers, conservatives, who can write a check for $400,000 like some of us can write a check for $10.”

“They aligned themselves with so-called moderate forces, but they’re not moderates. They align themselves with the money, and that’s what we have seen in Oakland.”

Ochoa continued, “You got to put up signs, you’ve got to talk to your neighbors, volunteer whatever hours you can, have a house meeting. That’s the way progressives win.”

Pecolia Manigo of Oakland Rising Action spoke about what it will take to defeat the recalls. “This is the time when you are not only deputized to go out and do outreach, we need to make sure that people actually vote.

“We need everyone to vote not just for the president, but all the way down the ballot to where these questions will be. Remind people to fill out their ballot, and mail it back.”

Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who had herself faced a recall attempt, said, “In this recall, they used a lot of money, had paid signature gatherers, and they moved very fast. I talked to many of the people gathering signatures. They didn’t know what was going on. Many of them didn’t live in Oakland. It was just money for them.”

“Sam Singer, the guy who is their spokesperson, is a paid PR guy. He has media ties, so they’ve swamped the media against Sheng,” Quan said.

‘Oakland is… a city that implemented some of the first rent control protections in the country. So, developers and big apartment owners would love to get rid of rent control,” said Quan.

“We also established ranked-choice voting, which allows people with less money to coalesce and win elections,” she said. “That’s too democratic for people with big money. They would rather have elections the way they were.”