metroactive.com | sanjose.com | metrosiliconvalley.com | APRIL 26-MAY 2, 2017
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SVNEWS
6th Annual Summit on Entrepreneurship & Innovation Celebrating National Small Business Week in a Diverse Community
The “All About Small Business” Event Friday, May 5th 2017 San Jose City Hall 8:00 am - 1:00 pm
Registration at : https://goo.gl/HI8dC0
Welcome by Mayor Sam Liccardo and Board President Dave Cortese
Speakers: • Mayor Liccardo City of San Jose • Board President Cortese County of Santa Clara • Damien Hooper-Campbell eBay Chief Diversity Officer • Trami Cron Business Owner - Chopsticks Alley • Matt Mahood MC - The silicon valley organization
Workshops: • Accessing Capital • Real Estate Basics • Social Media and Branding • Selling to Big Business and Gov’t • Library Resources for Start Ups • Trademark Basics • Restaurant Permitting
Resource Providers: SCORE, SBDC, EDD, and many more!
Sponsors:
Organized by: BusinessOwnerSpace.com and Partners City of San Jose County of Santa Clara SV Small Business Development Center Kiva work2future
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eviction regulations, can no longer count on a working majority on the council to advance his agenda. Councilman Johnny Khamis, a landlord who voted against the new policy, notes that it does nothing to fix an affordability crisis caused by an intractable shortage of housing. Council members Chappie Jones, Dev Davis and Lan Diep joined his opposing vote. Freshmen council members Sergio Jimenez and Sylvia Arenas drafted the winning ordinance, which called for stricter eviction controls than those prescribed by the city’s housing staff. Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco, who was appointed by Liccardo and considered the swing vote going into the April 18 meeting, backed the newcomers’ proposal along with council members Don Rocha, Raul Peralez and Tam Nguyen. “The new composition of the council was really put to the test by this vote,” Nguyen told Metro. “It shows how when it comes down to a very important and difficult situation like this, people come back to their principles.” As someone who once owned a home and now rents a shared space in the district he represents, Nguyen says he sees both sides of the discussion. But tenants made a more convincing case, he adds, while landlords presented little in the way of solutions. “I understand that landlords want to get a fair return on investment,” says Nguyen. “I can live with that. But I thought they should have come up with a better story. For me, I thought the vote was a show of people standing firm on their core values and their constituents.” Despite fears of retaliation while the policy is in limbo, activists cite the reforms as proof that renters have come into their own as a political force in Silicon Valley. San Jose’s just cause vote came on the heels of another win for tenants in nearby Mountain View, where a voter-approved rent control measure survived a legal challenge from the California Apartment Association. “What we’re seeing, I think, is a growing awareness that rent control is the most realistic, effective tool that we have to deal with in this housing crisis,” says Daniel DeBolt, one of the chief organizers behind the rent control campaign in Mountain View. “Business as usual isn’t going to cut it.” The wave of renter rights campaigns sweeping the Bay Area has galvanized a
longstanding push for statewide reforms to bolster rent control by expanding the pool of eligible housing. A bill introduced by Assembly members Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), David Chiu (D-San Francisco) and Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) aims to overturn a state law called the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which undermines local rent regulations by allowing landlords to reset vacant rent-controlled units to market rate. It also exempts all singlefamily homes, condos and apartments built after 1995 from rent caps, although San Jose set 1979 as the cutoff. Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, an attorney specializing in real estate law, says the debate over rent control misses the point entirely. Economists largely view rent control and other price controls as ineffective, or a way to push costs to other people. To fix the affordability crisis, Reed says, Californians must building more housing. But incentivizing new development would require sweeping reforms that have failed time and again for decades. “The market is already totally distorted in San Jose because we haven’t built sufficient housing to meet the demand created by jobs for the past 40 years,” Reed says. “San Jose has made a huge effort to create jobs, but is much less successful at getting housing. I don’t think there should be rent control at all.” Price controls are hardly the only distortion at play, according to UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Richard Walker, an outspoken critic of market fundamentalism. Income inequality, speculation, tax havens and tax cuts all drive the affordability crisis, he notes. He cites Proposition 13 as a case in point. The 1978 law keeps property taxes far lower than the rest of the country and discourages local governments from investing in housing because it generates less in taxes. Even proponents of rent control concede that it’s merely a stopgap. But absent a statewide fix, local governments have no choice but to act, tenant advocates say. In a memo issued before the just cause vote last week, Councilman Rocha presented rent caps and eviction protections as one part of a whole suite of possible solutions. “I agree that rent control isn’t a full solution,” DeBolt says, “but it does protect people from needless rent increases and evictions.”