Re: [sudo-discuss] Evictions in California

1) Fight fire with a bigger fire: Find a progressive legislator who can introduce a bill calling for: a) Landlords convicted of illegal evictions or slumlording, to be subjected to civil forfeiture of their properties. Seized properties to be sold to nonprofit housing-oriented groups and tenant co-ops at subsidized rates. b) Felony enhancement for landlords found to have made materially false statements under oath or in any legal documents pertaining to their tenants or cases. This part can be bargained away as a "compromise." Don't just play defense, always play offense. 2) Dealing with NIMBYs: It's useful to parse out actual NIMBYism from honest concerns such as parking shortages, inadequate water mains, blocked solar access, etc. The most useful thing to do about parking, and excessive reliance on automobiles generally, is to use strong tax incentives for telecommuting & telework. Any job that does not involve putting hands on products is a potential telework job. Any job that primarily involves using a computer and/or phone is an obvious telework job. Conversion to teleworking will enable large numbers of workers to happily give up automobiles that they only keep due to a need to commute to work. This will substantially reduce parking congestion in residential areas. Conversion to teleworking will also reduce the need for large office space by downtown businesses. Consolidation of office space into fewer buildings opens up potentially huge square footage that can be converted to housing. Win/win/win solution all round. -G. ===== On 14-03-21-Fri 4:30 PM, Gabrielle Silverman wrote: There were two groups meeting at Sudo yesterday doing anti- eviction work. AB- 1513 was written as a state wide anti-squatting bill, but its so broad and so bad that it affects everyone. The earlier afternoon group meeting yesterday was squatters from a number of different households likely to be directly affected if the bill passes. AB- 1513 creates a means of extra judicial eviction. If it passes, a property owner (or someone representing themselves as such) can declare residents to be "unauthorized occupants" and get them immediately evicted. No court process, no rights for the residents. This is immediate eviction more or less on the honor system for the owner. This can apply for families in foreclosure battling banks, for tenants on shaky ground fighting their landlords, for squatters, homestraders, community gardens, people living in mobile homes and vehicles... The bill as it was originally written also had this creepy felony enhancement making it "felony punishable" for residents to refuse to leave after being ordered, or using violence or threats of violence during the extra-judicial eviction. The felony component (almost like hate crime enhancement for real estate) was stricken down and is no longer part of the bill, but I mention it because this is some sick twisted shit. I encourage anyone interested to look up the text of AB- 1513 and give it a read. The big update from today is that the bill is getting moved around between committees so Tues is not the hard deadline we thought it was. We want to kill the bill at the committee level where there's fewer votes that we need to shut it down and kill it dead. Find us at the Anarchist Bookfair Sat and find out more about how to help! We'll be by a big banner raining turds, warning of the coming "eviction shit storm".... Gabby On Mar 21, 2014 11:39 AM, "Vicky Knox" <vknoxsironi(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ sudo-discuss mailing listsudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.orghttps://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss