The IE Tenants' Union is a project of Inland Equity Community Land Trust. IE CLT is working to build tenants’ unions to create policies that protect renters and to encourage renters to assert protections that already exist in California law. Renter protection like those passed in the City of Pasadena, by the work of Tenants Together, which approach the limit of what is possible in the State of California under the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. We are building a tenants’ rights movement to encourage jurisdictions in the IE to pass similar ordinances to stabilize the rental market and give renters tools to fight slumlords and assert their rights. IE CLT is working to create housing policies and structures that work for people who live in the Inland Empire. At our core IE CLT is a community land trust, which is a tool to make housing accessible to all. Our goal is to create an affordable path to homeownership and so we are building homes in Adelanto that will be owned and be permanently affordable.
Inland Equity Community Land Trust grew out of a fiscally sponsored project of Community Partners called California Partnership CAP. IE CLT formed as its own non-profit in 2019. CAP’s coalition work on housing began when we started monitoring the Housing and Disability Advocacy Program in 2016. Rents had outpaced the ability of people receiving SSI/SSP and pushed many disabled people into homelessness. Our coalition advocated for an increase in the COLA for SSI and for the development of low income, emergency and bridge housing. For the past year, IE CLT has worked to help establish tenants’ unions in the Inland Empire. The catalyst to this project began when Karen Suarez from Uplift San Bernardino asked IECLT to reach out to Deborah Harmon at the Date Park Apartments in San Bernardino. The situation there and in other complexes in the city has demonstrated a great need to enforce existing local ordinances and state laws. We now have regular tenant meetings in the cities of San Bernardino, Riverside, Ontario and Hemet. As far as policy, The City of Perris is drafting renter protection ordinances. The City of San Bernardino is bringing the issue to the agenda.
We are working to expand the number of tenant unions and build out our program to fight unlawful evictions by building a Tenants Defense Fund, a program to assist tenants in asserting their rights. The program provides tenants with legal assistance in landlord-tenant disputes. Tenants, who are already struggling to pay rent, often give up and don’t assert the rights that are in California State law. The California Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (AB 1482) has some good legal protections but many landlords ignore the law. Landlords know that renters don’t want to risk an eviction to assert their rights and most renters can’t afford legal representation to assert their rights. This has created a culture of lawlessness among landlords and the management companies they hire.
