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Will Council Back Moratorium on Excessive Rents and Unjust Evictions?

Published

10 years ago

April 1, 2016

The Oakland Post has asked the eight members of the Oakland City Council and Mayor Libby Schaaf whether they are supporting a declaration of a housing state of emergency, which is on the council’s agenda for a vote Tuesday evening, April 5.

“At the request of the public, on April 5, I will introduce a 90-day emergency rent moratorium prohibiting large rent increases and expanding rent control protections – these reforms are long overdue,” said City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who has worked closely with community members to iron out legal and technical issues to assure the resolution a place on the agenda Tuesday evening.

Based on the city charter Lynette Gibson McElhaney Rebecca Kaplan Desley Brooks and past practice, the emergency declaration calling for a moratorium on excessive rents and non Just Cause evictions will need the votes of six of the eight councilmembers in order to be approved.

If passed, the 90-day moratorium would go into effect immediately and could be extended by the council.

“Many Oaklanders are suffering under rapidly escalating rents, and Oakland’s current rent stabilization program is inadequate to address the needs of landlords and tenants,” Council President McElhaney told the Post. “I will bring forward strong revisions to strengthen our rent stabilization laws.”

Councilmember Desley Brooks has also helped to assure the moratorium would come to the full council for a vote, and Councilmember-at-Large Rebecca Kaplan has expressed her support.

“We need to be taking serious action to protect Oakland tenants – including working to close the loophole which exempts newer buildings from our rent laws, which deprives many of our tenants the protections from excessive rent increases,” Kaplan wrote to the Post. “And, I am asking that Oakland immediately issue the funds to expand education and enforcement of tenant protection laws.”

“Last year Councilmember Brooks and I, together with community advocates, fought for, and won, funding to expand community based outreach and enforcement of tenants’ rights laws,” she added. “However, this funding has not yet been issued by the administration.”

Councilmember Dan Kalb wrote, “Clearly, we have a crisis of housing affordability in Oakland. We need to build and identify more housing for lowand moderate-income residents. Furthermore, we need to strengthen renter protections to help reduce displacement of current renters in our city.”

“I also can support urgent action within what the law allows that helps stop the displacement of renters due to unfettered rent increases,” said Kalb.

Though the mayor is not on the city council and cannot vote on April 5, she underscored the importance of taking strong actions to address the housing crisis.

“I’ve been declaring Oakland’s affordability crisis an emergency ever since I took office,” Mayor Schaaf wrote to the Post. “Since last summer, I’ve regularly convened 110 diverse stakeholders and experts to identify and implement the actions that will most quickly fix this crisis… 41 achievable actions that will protect 17,000 Oakland households from displacement and create 17,000 new units of housing to accommodate new residents.”

In a reply to the Post, Councilmember Abel Guillen backed the efforts of the mayor’s housing cabinet.

“I am keenly aware of the breadth and urgency of the city’s housing crisis, and the council will consider this legislative action carefully to see how it fits into the comprehensive package of housing goals and strategies that the City’s Housing Cabinet recently recommended,” he wrote.

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

4 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

5 days ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke