Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.
Politics these days demands cynicism, but progress requires the bravery to be inspired. Easier said than done, especially after the past week, but tonight’s featured campaign, a movement of regular working people fighting for one another, should make you believe that a dignified future is still possible.
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Marc Slakey grew up in Redwood City with the sneaking suspicion that he probably would not live there as an adult. It wasn’t that he dreamed of skipping town or living anywhere else in particular, but he was cognizant even from a young age that his small city, which sits nestled on the peninsula in between San Francisco and San Jose, was rapidly transforming. Silicon Valley was minting millionaires and displacing locals in equal measures, with real estate prices bordering on the obscene.
“There was always this understanding that ‘that’s just how it is,’” Slakey remembers. “It was basically either become one of the people who gets lucky and makes unbelievable wages, or get out.”
On the balance, Slakey was correct: the cost of rent in Redwood City sits at 183% of the national average, half of the city’s renters are officially considered rent-burdened, and many of his childhood friends have moved to the East Bay or out of California entirely. Slakey, now in his early 30s, has managed to stick around his hometown, but the precariousness of his situation, with a service industry job and high rent — he’s paying $2,000 a month for a studio, with 8% rent increases every year — pushed him to search for a bigger, more structural solution.
That brought him to Faith In Action Bay Area, a nonprofit coalition leading the campaign to pass a groundbreaking, multi-faceted rent control and tenant protections ballot measure in Redwood City.
The headliner is a rent control provision that caps annual increases at 5% flat or 60% of the Consumer Price Index bump, whichever is lower. The policy would apply to multifamily housing units — so, apartments — built before 1995, a limit dictated by state law. Another law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, capped rent increases at 5% plus local inflation, up to 10%.
In addition, the Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance would expand just cause eviction protections, including a ban on harassment from landlords. In the event of no-fault evictions, the measure would require large corporate landlords to pay up relocation fees of up to $12,000 to displaced tenants (or $16,000 for senior citizens), which far exceeds the one month rent that the city now requires.
This is the second attempt to qualify the initiative; Faith in Action collected petition signatures in 2024 but ran into technical issues with the residency requirements of some signers. This time, the organization collected nearly double the required petitions and submitted them to the city just last week, confident that they both blew past the valid signature requirement and that their initiative has broad public support.
“There’s actually been a little bit less tension this time around. People are seeing the writing on the wall,” says Carter Pohl, an organizer with Faith in Action. “From all the door-knocking we’ve done, more people signed this time around. We had a higher rate of people saying yes at the doors. Support for rent control and tenant protections has grown.”
That includes more longtime homeowners, many of whom told canvassers that they would not be able to afford to purchase a house there at current prices. The average home in Redwood City is worth $1.9 million, far exceeding the statewide average of $775,000.
As in 2024, the campaign faces a deep-pocketed opponent in the California Apartment Association, the corporate landlord industry group that has actively fought against the proposal. It’s a powerful organization; according to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, corporate landlords and real estate trusts own 87% of multifamily homes in Redwood City.
That dominance, though, has earned them some enmity from more local owners, who have helped to defy and correct the misconceptions and flawed talking points injected into the public consciousness by the corporate lobby.
“People repeat things they’ve heard through these powerful messaging channels, even when they don’t make sense or aren’t true,” Slakey says. “One of the clearest examples was hearing people warn that this initiative would hurt small landlords. Then I’d knock on the small landlord’s door, and they would sign the petition. They’d say things like, ‘I only raise rent 2%. I don’t want to cycle tenants every few years.’”
Affordability is now the buzzword in politics, which should give a real boost to the ordinance’s chances of passing in November. But for Pohl and Slakey, the word they go back to over and over again is community. The campaign behind the Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance is an entirely grassroots operation, powered by locals who have joined by the dozens in an earnest effort to help their neighbors and make life more sustainable for working people.
“When I first got involved, I was honestly a little jaded,” Slakey admits. “I wondered whether this was just another political thing. But once you actually experience a resilient community, it changes how you think about all of it.”
Pohl, an organizer for a number of years now, was similarly inspired.
“When we marched to turn in our signatures, there was this feeling of solidarity I’ve only felt a few times in my life,” he says. “Everyone trusting each other, working toward the same thing. That’s what this movement is.”
You can learn more and donate to the Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance at Faith in Action Bay Area’s website.
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