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beside a gas station. About 40 demonstrators were there. Some had wrapped themselves in Canadian flags and held signs that read “No Vax Mandates” and “(explicit) Trudeau.”

Tom Lyons, a retired Windsor firefighter, is among the supporters. Lyons said while he supports the vaccines, he also supports the truckers who are against the mandates.

“I believe that 90% of truckers are vaccinated but they don’t like the idea of the mandates and digital tracking,” said Lyons, 70. “Crazy thing is the truckers drive alone all the time. The old one-size-fits-all doesn’t fit all the time. The protest is just starting to impact trade with the automotive industry and Windsor feeder plants have had to send people home. A good majority of people I talk to support this.”

Earlier, at about 8:15 a.m., Windsor police had tweeted that it was making arrests and towing cars.

Vehicles blocking the bridge were also removed Saturday and police warned that protesters who remained at or near the bridge would face arrest if they did not leave.

At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, nine hours after Canadian police began enforcing the injunction, the two sides seemed to reach a stalemate that continued deep into the evening.

On Sunday, police at the demonstration site engaged protesters for continued enforcement and multiple arrests were made, Windsor Police Service said.

“The arrested persons are all facing a charge of mischief. Multiple vehicles within the demonstration area were also seized,” police stated. “You will see a continued police presence in the area in order to maintain an environment that is safe. In an effort to work towards resuming traffic flow, a continuous assessment of the situation is vital to ensure a sustainable solution.”

Late Saturday, Windsor police tweeted that it had arrested a 27-year-old male for “a criminal offense in relation to the demonstration. Officers will intervene when necessary to ensure the safety of the public & maintain peace & order.”

An Ontario judge granted an injunction Friday against protesters but crowds remained defiant over the weekend despite it.

The protesters are in opposition to a vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country. The United States also has a vaccine requirement for freight truckers delivering goods across the border.

Galit Rodan/Bloomberg file Protesters block access to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, Wed., Feb. 9.

Tenant

From Page One

Protecting small landlords – or big business?

The bill took aim at the Ellis Act, a 1985 state law that allows owners of rent-controlled properties to evict their tenants if they take all the units of a building off the rental market – a path that could otherwise be blocked by local governments guarding the precious stock of affordable units. Once off the market, those apartments can be sold as condos or demolished to make way for new homes.

More than 27,000 rentcontrolled units have been removed in Los Angeles since 2001 using the Ellis Act, while San Francisco has lost about 5,000 units since then. And they’re sorely needed: the California Housing Partnership estimates1.2 million low-income renter households don’t have access to an affordable home, and building a new government-subsidized unit costs an average of $500,000.

Lee’s bill mandated a five-year holding period before evicting tenants – an attempt to allow struggling property owners to go out of business, as had been the law’s original intent, while preventing speculators from buying up cheap properties and flipping them overnight. The bill also restricted the use of such evictions to one building per owner per decade.

That would significantly curb Ellis Act evictions, as three-quarters of evictions in Los Angeles between 2016 and 2019 occurred within five years of purchase, according to a recent analysis by Alexander Ferrer, policy and research analyst at SAJE in Los Angeles. But because of a glaring lack of transparency around who owns buildings in California, the effect on mom-and-pop landlords – a group the Legislature holds dearly – is difficult to determine.

In an opposition letter to lawmakers, the California Association of Realtors asserted the bill would devastate “Struggling Small Property Owners Who Are Seniors or Individuals of Color.”

“I think it’s concernmongering for a problem that we don’t know exists,” Ferrer said, citing the lack of demographic data on property owners. Wagle cited anecdotal evidence from their members.

Ferrer’s analysis found that owners who had a property registered under their own name evicted tenants, on average, eight years after purchase – while limited liability companies, responsible for more than half of those evictions, did so in an average of just three years. But in California, it’s not uncommon for individual property owners to put even a single rental into an LLC.

That means a bid to win more votes – an amendment that carved out an exemption for “natural persons” who own no more than four residential units – is “not logical,” according to Debra Carlton, executive vice president and chief lobbyist for the California Apartment Association.

Ferrer found 45% of Ellis Act evictions during that time period in Los Angeles were filed by owners who held five properties or less – LA’s definition of a mom and pop landlord – a percentage Wagle, from the California Association of Realtors, says is not insignificant. Besides, he argued, the impact of the pandemic on small-property owners should not be understated. Some landlords, he said, have gone nearly two years without rent payments, thanks to eviction bans, while still having to upkeep their properties.

“Among small rental property owners there’s this sense of, ‘Wait a minute. We’re enduring all these problems right now and again, more burdens are being placed,’ ” he said.

Tenant attorney Sean Chandra, from Public Counsel in Los Angeles, said the threat of an Ellis Act eviction remains a crucial tool for landlords, even if the court process isn’t completed. Instead of going through the Ellis Act, which mandates relocation costs between $8,650 and $22,350 depending on a renter’s age, income and tenure in the building, some owners pay tenants to leave by their own choice in “cash for keys” arrangements.

Chandra’s client, who declined to be interviewed, is facing an Ellis Act eviction at 416 S.Catalina St. in Koreatown. The elderly woman and her adult son are paying $975 a month for their two-bedroom in the six-unit building, where they moved in 1996. The stucco-clad, L-shaped two-story, originally commissioned by a Los Angeles Times advertising executive in 1940, was deemed historic by the city, which means it can’t be demolished. The owner is hoping to mount it on a truck and move it elsewhere – and renting isn’t in the picture.

The owner plans to erect a luxury tower in its place – following in the footsteps of a 61-unit tower next door, where a 576-foot studio rents for $2,654 a month and where, according to the building’s website, “living your best life has never been easier.”

“You tear down an old building, you want to build something that’s going to maximize your income,” said John Greenwood, the developer’s attorney. “So it’s hard to incentivize building lowincome property. And these Ellis Act evictions do displace poorer people, that’s understood. But, you know, that’s also the definition of progress – making things better.”

According to Greenwood, the tenant will be able to rent an affordable unit in the new building, provided she qualifies. Ellis Act restrictions in LA stipulate that if a developer builds market-rate units, a portion of them must be affordable, or all the units must be rentcontrolled after the initial rent is set. But in contrast to rent-controlled units, affordable housing usually comes with income and immigration status restrictions, and sometimes, a long waitlist.

Demolishing rent-stabilized housing to make way for exponentially more housing is taking place across Los Angeles, according to Moira O’Neill, senior research fellow at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley, who recently coauthored a report for the California Air Resources Board about social equity in housing development patterns.

O’Neill and her colleagues found that the demolition of at least 2,400 housing units in LA between 2014 and 2017 gave way to at least 12,000 new units. But the demolition of 1,600 units that were rent stabilized gave way to only about 1,300 affordable units on those same sites. Their geographic distribution was particularly troubling.

While every neighborhood type saw a loss of rent-stabilized units, most were lost in more affluent areas of LA like Westwood and Brentwood. Only 241 affordable units replaced the 1,092 rent-stabilized units lost in those same neighborhoods. About half of the rent-stabilized units demolished in moderate income areas, like parts of Koreatown, were replaced with affordable housing.

“It makes sense that people are trying to prevent that,” O’Neill said.

Policy and politics at the Capitol

California YIMBY, which often supports housing production efforts, backed the bill because production alone isn’t enough, said legislative director Louis Mirante.

“I think California YIMBY is a great example of an organization that endeavors to find the three P solutions: The production solutions, the tenant protection solutions and the affordable housing preservation solutions,” he said. “We’re not eager to pit those solutions against each other.”

The California Apartment Association, however,dubbed the bill the “Stay in Business Forever Act,” arguing that it restricted landlords’ freedoms. Carlton said while a property owner could still sell their building, without the option of turning below-market apartments into more profitable condos or market-rate units, the universe of buyers shrinks considerably. The powerful California Chamber of Commerce opposed the measure for the same reason, as did the California Building Industry Association.

Carlton also argued the bill would block “tenancies in common,” in which several families buy a duplex or fourplex together – the only way for some families to enter homeownership as median home prices top $700,000 in California.

“I support homeownership, but the question is: ‘How are you getting there?’ ” said Joan Ling, an urban planning professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Are you going to get there by dislocating renter families that most likely are going to have to move out of the area where they are living? There’s a big public policy question here.”

Abdeshahian, from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, said during the two weeks leading up to the vote, the legislators who had originally demonstrated their support for the bill began parroting the talking points they read in opposition letters by the Realtors and the Apartment Association, which spent $1.6 million and $1.3 million, respectively, in total lobbying efforts in 2021.

“That’s what killed this bill,” she said. “It became just like an annoying screaming match where the Apartment Association will be saying one thing, we’d be saying another, and why would they listen to us when we don’t give them any money for their re-election, but the Apartment Association is the reason that they’re in office?”

“I just don’t buy that,” Carlton responded, describing a clear division between the organization’s lobbying and campaign efforts. “This has just been a consistent policy that legislators haven’t agreed with.”

Manuela Tobias is the housing reporter for CalMatters. Her stories focus on the political dynamics and economic and racial inequities that have contributed to the housing crisis in California and its potential solutions.

Leave

From Page One

Good for smallbusiness owners

Small businesses have been buffeted around by closures, staffing issues and supply chain snafus. Business plans have been upended with each new wave of the virus, and while companies like Amazon, Apple, Tesla and UPS have seen their stock soar during the pandemic, profit margins for many small businesses have worn thin.

Larger employers generally have more cash on hand and easier access to credit, so they might have an easier time adapting to new costs, said David Nelson, director of public policy for California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce.

“If the exemption was not put in place for small businesses, a mandate like that likely could have been the death knell for many small businesses, especially minority small businesses,” said Nelson. He estimates the average Asian American and Pacific Islander-owned business in California has between four and 12 employees.

But leaving small businesses out entirely wasn’t the only option lawmakers had to soften the impact.

California will have a $21 billion surplus for the coming budget year, based on the Newsom administration’s projections. Seemingly everyone involved in California state politics has their own idea for how to spend it. That includes smallbusiness advocates, who say the state could have reimbursed small-business owners for providing additional paid sick leave to workers.

“We recognize, especially with another historic surplus in the budget, that there are ways that the administration could make this place that small-business owners are in much easier,” said Bianca Blomquist, California policy director for the advocacy group Small Business Majority.

Other small-business groups opposed the law, despite the exemption for small employers.

“There’s this assumption by the progressives in the Capitol that employers are not doing their part,” and making leave available, said John Kabateck, California state director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

“California is rich with employee leave programs,” he said, pointing to a list of leave programs, many of which do not apply to workers exposed to Covid-19, such as time to serve on a jury, or for victims of domestic violence to file restraining orders.

Jim Relles, a florist in Sacramento, is glad the new leave requirement won’t affect his business. He’s got 19 employees and said it’s been hard to keep up with shifting requirements during the pandemic. A new paid leave policy would mean more bookkeeping and another rule to stay on top of.

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What other Covid protections do small-business workers have?

Small-business employees who are exposed to Covid at work have significantly more protections than workers who get exposed or sick outside of work.

Under California’s Covid-19 workplace rules, workers who get sick due to a workplace exposure are supposed to be sent home with full pay until they’re able to return to work. If an employer offers more sick days than the minimum of three that workers are granted by state law, then they can ask workers to use those additional sick days to quarantine or recover.

Workers who are sure they were exposed to Covid outside of work don’t have the same pay protection, but they might be eligible for other programs, such as disability insurance. The state has a website to help workers figure out what sort of leave they’re eligible for based on their situation.

Cassidy, from the Work and Family Coalition, said she hopes small-business owners are working paid sick leave for Covid into their budgets: “It really seems like being able to support workers should be a very basic cost of doing business.”