What We Can Do
What’s already happening?
Every city, town, and county in California is required by state law to have a Housing Element that helps them plan for housing in their communities. The Cities, Towns, and the County of Santa Clara are working together to explore meaningful anti-displacement policies and programs that will work in each individual community to help residents stay in their homes and neighborhoods, foster community stability, and prevent homelessness. State law also requires communities to take action to overcome segregation and create more inclusive communities.
State law also requires communities to take action to overcome segregation and create more inclusive communities.
What’s happening in your community?
Check out your community’s webpage to learn more about the housing element, get contact information and access other local information.
How can we prevent displacement?
An anti-displacement strategy typically includes a variety of policies and programs:
- Protect and support tenants
- Preserve and expand affordable housing
- Produce more housing
- Engage and educate the community about displacement and opportunities
A successful anti-displacement strategy must be pro-housing and support tenants at the same time. Protecting tenants is critical, but without enough housing at affordable prices, displacement will continue to happen.
Protection
Keeping People Housed
Support people to stay in their homes and help our neighbors stay in our communities.
Preservation
Keeping Housing Affordable
Keep existing housing affordable, which is usually easier and more cost-effective than building new housing.
Production
Creating More Housing for Aall
Make it easier to build housing and support more affordable housing production.
Plus:
Engagement & Education
Provide tools, assistance, and information to the community, particularly people experiencing or at high risk of displacement, and develop a shared sense of purpose and goals about displacement.
Important approaches for anti-displacement work:
- At all times, prioritize equity, inclusion, and belonging.
- Give voice to the people most at risk of displacement, who may not be formally protected and whose challenges are not always recognized.
- Make recommendations with unbiased data, fairness, and balanced perspectives.
- Think about people’s experiences when making policies and try to make things simple for people who use the services and programs.
- Build strong community partnerships between local government (including within departments), tenants, landlords, developers, nonprofits, philanthropy.
Policy & Program Options
The Three Ps: Protection, Preservation, and Production
Losing housing can push a family into poverty and homelessness. The policies and programs listed below can help prevent displacement, keep our neighbors housed and strengthen our communities.
Protection: Keeping People Housed
These strategies help people stay in their homes and communities.
Policy and Program Options
Just Cause Eviction
These protections define specific reasons a landlord can use to evict a tenant. Examples include a breach of the lease (including non-payment), the landlord removing the property from the rental market or the landlord or family member wanting to move in.
Tenant Legal Assistance / Tenant Right to Counsel
Studies show that tenants with legal assistance or representation are half as likely to lose their home. Tenant legal assistance includes providing tenants with the legal representation and resources needed to fight unlawful evictions, rent increases, or unsafe living conditions.
Rental Assistance
These programs provide financial assistance to help people stay in their homes. These can range from providing short-term or one-time emergency rental payments to giving long-term assistance like Section 8/Housing Choice Vouchers.
Tenant Relocation Assistance
Under the California Tenant Protection Act, some renters facing a no-fault eviction are entitled to one month’s rent. Some communities offer more or other assistance, like money to move or help with rent.
Landlord and Tenant Dispute Resolution/Mediation
These protections help resolve landlord-tenant disputes by requiring mediation under certain conditions, such as before a notice of eviction or if a rent increase is more than a certain amount.
Tenant Commission / Rent Board
These groups regulate the relationship between landlords and tenants by mediating and arbitrating disputes, enforcing relevant protections, and investigating wrongful eviction. In particular they can help enforce limits on rent increases.
Foreclosure Assistance
These programs provide a dedicated funding source for short-term assistance (money or other support) to homeowners at risk of foreclosure, to help keep people from losing their homes.
Fair Housing Enforcement
These efforts ensure that housing practices are equitable and helps prevent discrimination and unfair practices that could lead to displacement. Typical examples include fair housing testing, monitoring, and enforcement.
Proactive Enhanced Code Enforcement
When code violations are identified early, landlords are required to make necessary repairs, protecting tenants from being forced to move due to unsafe or unhealthy conditions. Some places may offer assistance for improvements in exchange for protecting existing tenants.
Tenant Anti-Harassment/Retaliation
These rules give tenants legal protection from unreasonable, abusive, or coercive landlord behavior including intimidation, threats, or other forms of harassment that try to force tenants to leave without a legal eviction process.
Right to Return/Right to Purchase
These policies say that people displaced by a no-fault eviction may have the right to return if the unit later becomes available again. In other cases, when a residential building is renovated, demolished or redeveloped, communities may require property owners to give existing tenants a right to return at their former rent or right to purchase.
Tenant Preference
In areas with high displacement rates, preference policies prioritize local and previously displaced low-income applicants for help finding affordable housing.
Landlord & Tenant Education & Outreach
Education and outreach materials that cover more of the issues around displacement, are culturally appropriate, and available in many languages help tell tenants and landlords about their rights and responsibilities. This helps everyone navigate complex and changing rules.
Preservation: Keeping Housing Affordable
These strategies help our homes stay affordable and help people find affordable homes.
Policy and Program Options
Rent Stabilization
Also known as rent control, these policies prohibit landlords from raising the rent more than a certain amount in a certain time frame for certain rental units. Local communities can expand rent stabilization if they choose.
Rental Registry
Tracking information about rental properties and their owners and tenants allows communities to collect better data on changing rents and other household trends, allows for better enforcement of housing laws. This information makes it easier to track property conditions, address tenant complaints and enforce fair practices.
Public/Community Land Trusts (CLTs)
Public- and non-profit entities such as housing co-operatives, CLTs, and land banks can offer housing at permanently affordable levels. This encourages long-term stability and affordability by keeping properties out of the traditional real estate market.
Funding to Support Preservation
This type of funding can allow non-profit housing groups, CLTs and other CBOs to acquire and manage properties, including properties at-risk of redevelopment or rapid rent increases.
Funding to Preserve Unsubsidized Affordable Housing
This funding helps keep housing for lower- or moderate income residents affordable. This funding is necessary to protect tenants in changing housing markets from gentrification and rising rents and property values.
Tenant / Community Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA/COPA)
When an owner decides to sell a building these policies allow tenants or mission-driven nonprofits to make a purchase offer before other people (the “right of first refusal”). This can provide a path to ownership for tenants and helps stabilize communities.
Condominium Conversion Restrictions
When rental units are converted to condominiums they may no longer be affordable for existing tenants. Conversion restrictions require that units converted to condominiums be replaced 1:1 with comparable rental units, unless purchased by current long-term tenants or converted to permanently affordable housing for existing tenants.
Mobile Home Preservation & Rent Stabilization
Residents of mobile home parks typically own their home but lease the land underneath, which limits their opportunities to find housing if they are forced to move. Some communities restrict mobile home parks from being converted to other uses and some communities limit rent increases on mobile home park land.
Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Preservation
SROs typically offer some of the most affordable rental options in high-demand cities. These programs limit the demolition of occupied SRO rental units or conversion to condominiums and other uses that would displace existing residents.
Fee Regulation
Regulating fees that can be charged to tenants, homeowners, and housing developers, can protect tenants from excessive or unfair charges.
Production: Creating More Housing for All
Production strategies aim to reduce barriers to building housing and support more affordable housing production.
Policy and Program Options
Inclusionary Zoning
These policies require that a percentage of units in new housing developments include housing for low- and moderate-income residents. In some cases developers may be allowed to contribute to a fund for affordable housing instead of building units on-site.
Affordable Housing Overlay Zones
These zones encourage the construction of more affordable housing in high-demand areas by allowing developers to build more units or have their project reviewed more quickly if they include affordable units.
Affordable Housing Funding
This type of dedicated funding helps pay for deed-restricted affordable housing or buy and protect existing unsubsidized affordable housing.
Public Land for Affordable Housing
By dedicating public land to affordable housing, governments can reduce land costs. This can help make it less expensive to build homes, helping to create more homes that are affordable, including for very-low-income people.
Ministerial Approval
This strategy provides a streamlined approval path for affordable housing projects, reducing uncertainty during the permitting process and reducing the time and cost to build affordable housing.
Development Certainty and Project Streamlining
Affordable housing projects with more certainty and a short timelines for approval cost less and can be ready to break ground more quickly. Cost savings can mean even lower rents or additional affordable units.
Other Ways to Address Displacement: Education & Engagement
Public Information & Education
Community conversations about displacement are an important first step to developing an anti-displacement strategy. For handouts to help start a local conversation visit the resources page.
Advisory Committee
An advisory committee gives people a voice in the displacement discussion and a place to discuss the interests needs and wants of local residents and stakeholders. It can also advise decision makers and staff on development of an anti-displacement strategy.
Get Involved
Take the Community Survey!
Tell us what you think about displacement and how it is affecting you and your community.
Your feedback is important and will help local staff understand how best to address displacement in our communities.
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You’ll be updated when new resources are added to the website or when there are new opportunities to get involved.
Check out other ways to get involved and learn more:
Connect to Your Community
Learn more about the housing element, get local information about housing and connect with local staff.
Browse Resources
Download informational handouts and connect with organizations that are working to prevent displacement.