A new report produced by tenants’ rights advocates paints a damning picture of the injustices renters in Alameda County’s urban incorporated area face on a daily basis—everything from broken water heaters to rodents to unresponsive landlords.
One resident reported having her entire apartment flood with sewage water during a winter storm. Another said flaking walls and deteriorating carpet are worsening her children’s asthma.
“We know it’s bad, but it’s also getting worse,” said Leo Esclamado, an organizer with My Eden Voice, a grassroots campaign to unite the Eden Area–which is broadly defined in the report as the communities of Ashland, Cherryland, Hayward Acres, and Castro Valley. “When you’re talking about leaks for a toilet or faucet, or garbage, or lead paint, it’s almost compounding in terms of the health risks people already face in these unincorporated areas.”
According to the report, more than 50% of residents in the Eden Area are renters, and more than 60 % are Black, Indigenous or people of color. These communities also face some of the highest poverty rates in the county.
The highly urban region has a population of approximately 150,000 people, larger than the city of Berkeley. But unlike Berkeley, residents of the Eden Area do not have comprehensive renter’s protections and housing oversight.
As a result, according to the report, residents are paying “never-before-seen prices for poorly maintained housing stock.”
The report finds that one-third of renters in the Eden Area could be living in housing that should be deemed legally uninhabitable. The survey, however, was based on just a few hundred responses. According to Alameda County, there are over 10,000 renter households in the unincorporated area.
Still, Alameda County does not dispute the concerns raised in the report.
“We are aware that the conditions in the unincorporated area have been a great concern to the community,” said Michelle Starratt, Alameda County’s housing director. “These are exactly the concerns we’ve heard.”
According to Starratt, the county is going to be running its own habitability survey in the next few months, surveying both renters and owners. She said they’ve already created a grant program for landlords to make repairs, which has thus far been underutilized.
In the report, the authors call for a number of changes to address the challenges faced by renters living in the Eden Area. Those changes include rent stabilization, a rental registry that would enforce tenant protections, and the creation of a proactive rental inspection program as opposed to the current complaint based model.
“We ask that Alameda County decision-makers take urgent and concrete action to address the needs of Eden renters,” the report reads.
Some of the changes are currently stalled before the County Board of Supervisors.
In 2020, the county received a grant to study the development of tenant protection policies for unincorporated areas. The County Housing and Community Development department ultimately recommended a “phased approach to implement tenant protections”, including rental registry and just cause for eviction ordinances, as well as potential rent stabilization down the road.
According to the report, the first batch of tenant protection ordinances initially passed in 2022, but have failed to pass on a second reading.
“It’s been encouraging to see more municipalities across the East Bay adopting tenant protections, and it’s time for Alameda County to follow suit,” said Sasha Perigo, the strategic communications manager at East Bay Housing Organizations, one of the authors of the report. “Renters in the unincorporated Eden Area deserve equal protections.”