Sacramento County leaders agree they’re failing renters, then let anti-harassment ordinance die

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed that county government was failing to keep renters safe from harassment before four out of five of the elected officials declined to vote Tuesday on a proposed tenant anti-harassment ordinance, ensuring the measure would die.

The board decided to put on a future workshop about tenant protection resources in the county.

Supervisor Patrick Kennedy, who proposed the ordinance, said he was inspired to do so after visiting a large apartment complex and seeing the mostly immigrant tenants paying “upwards of $2,000 a month to live in squalor.” While he was at the complex meeting with his constituents, he said, “I witnessed, myself, harassment.”

Kennedy — who represents south Sacramento, the Pocket, Vineyard and other parts of unincorporated Sacramento County north of Calvine Road and east of Excelsior Road — submitted a new county ordinance to give renters in unincorporated parts of the county more tools to defend themselves against landlord harassment.

After two hours of public comment and board deliberations, Kennedy moved to vote on the item. His four colleagues declined to second the motion.

The majority of public commenters spoke in favor of the change to local law, which some described as a matter of life and death. Many renters said they had dealt with landlord harassment themselves, and some told the board detailed stories of abuse.

A small handful of individual landlords and a representative from the California Apartment Association — which represents owners — and the Sacramento Realtors Association — which represents Realtors and property owners, and says it fights “onerous legislation” — spoke against the ordinance, saying it would unfairly harm innocent landlords.

Some also said the local change would duplicate state law and therefore be redundant.

The ordinance would have, among other things, allowed tenants to win $2,000 to $5,000 per violation from their harassing landlord in a civil case. Under state tenant harassment law, landlord liability is capped at $2,000 per violation.

“The question is, why are industry groups coming out here to oppose this?” asked Ethan Silverstein, an attorney for ACCE Institute who litigates tenants rights cases.

“I don’t think these big players are afraid of the $2,000 fine,” he told the board. In Sacramento County, the attorney explained, “There’s essentially two eviction defense lawyers. There are basically no private lawyers who will take cases out here. So the culture is if you’re a landlord or a property manager, you can do whatever you want and get away with it. What they are afraid of is showing the tenants in these rooms that they can change the situation. They’re not afraid of the fine. They’re afraid of the tenants organizing.”

Yvette Veiga, a certified nursing assistant who rents out an accessory dwelling unit

on her property to two tenants, said that she, too, was a mom-and-pop landlord — but she supported the ordinance. She has disabled clients who can barely get in and out of their apartments because their own landlords won’t fix accessibility issues.

Addressing the board, Veiga said, “The only people I feel that would oppose this are the people who want to slack and cheat and connive.”

Commenter criticizes landlords’ influence

Keyan Bliss, a renter who serves on the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission, pointed out that members of the board had accepted donations from industry groups opposing the ordinance.

Campaign finance disclosures confirm that every member of the Board of Supervisors has received financial support from the California Apartment Association.

Between December 2019 and October 2020, the California Apartment Association made two $2,500 contributions to elect board chair Rich Desmond. Supervisor Phil Serna, who represents much of the city of Sacramento, received a $1,000 donation from a local chapter of the association in 2018. The California Apartment Association gave outgoing Supervisor Sue Frost $1,000 in 2016, $150 in 2019 and $2,350 in 2020. In 2022, Supervisor Patrick Hume received $5,000 from the California Apartment Association.

Kennedy, who brought forth the ordinance, has received $3,500 from the landlord group that lobbied against his proposal.

‘People are dying’

In explaining why he couldn’t support the ordinance, Serna said he thought the language was too vague. But he said he seconded Desmond’s request for a workshop to go over the existing resources in the county before the end of the year.

Erica Jaramillo, an organizer with the Sacramento Tenants Union, told the board that existing resources were inadequate, and the county had divested from tenant protection efforts. One such spending choice came in 2014, when the Board of Supervisors became the final government body to defund the Regional Human Rights/Fair Housing Commission, which had provided attorneys to tenants in landlord disputes.

Serna said he would potentially be willing to make midyear adjustments to the budget if necessary because the need for change seemed pressing.

Shalonda Barksdale agreed that the matter was urgent. She told The Sacramento Bee that her apartment complex is essentially a slum, and she and her neighbors can’t get their landlord to make critical repairs. Other tenants, she said, are too afraid to complain to outside authorities because they worry the property manager will simply evict them in retaliation.

Barksdale was hospitalized for heat stroke last summer after her air conditioner broke and the property manager would not fix it. She said that tenants desperately need more protections in Sacramento County.

“It’s just not right,” she said. “People are dying, man.”