Oakland raises fees for those evicted from illicit residences

Supervisor Rebecca Kaplan listens to public commnet while council discussed city measures and resolutions related to the Ghost Ship fire during a city council meeting with several at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, January 23, 2017. less Supervisor Rebecca Kaplan listens to public commnet while council discussed city measures and resolutions related to the Ghost Ship fire during a city council meeting with several at City Hall in Oakland, ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Oakland raises fees for those evicted from illicit residences 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

The stakes are high for Oakland political leaders, who are facing pressure to beef up building safety but shield a warehouse community that gives the city its hipster cachet.

On Monday, the City Council tried to strike a compromise, passing a law that will ease the burden for tenants who get displaced when a landlord makes safety improvements.

The law, pushed by Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, nearly doubles the relocation fee that landlords must pay tenants they evict to repair code violations. It passed by a unanimous vote, during a meeting filled with wrenching, tearful speeches.

Artists said they live in fear of losing their homes if they complain about safety deficiencies. Others chided the city for failing to protect people who get pushed out of subpar buildings.

“Most people who are evicted, that’s that,” a curator named Tyler Hanson told The Chronicle. “They’re either out of the city or they’re forced into a more dangerous space.”

He deemed Kaplan’s ordinance a small but necessary step for a city “that has been in crisis for a long time.”

Zac Unger, vice president of the Oakland Firefighters Union, said its members wholeheartedly back Kaplan’s legislation.

“We’re in and out of homes every day, and we see buildings that aren’t safe,” he said. “We understand that safety and affordability don’t have to be in conflict.”

The council’s vote followed weeks of concern over the city’s many non-permitted live-work spaces, which are seen both as safety hazards and important cultural incubators. These buildings became the focus of a testy debate after the Dec. 2 Ghost Ship fire, which killed 36 people at a non-permitted warehouse in Fruitvale.

Steven DeCaprio, founder of the housing activist group Land Action, said he moved into a warehouse similar to the Ghost Ship because it was the only option he could afford. “It was my path out of homelessness,” he said.

Relocation fees apply to residents of non-permitted housing as well as to people living in legal spaces that have been poorly maintained, so the new law could affect many vulnerable populations in Oakland. While the city has long harbored artists who move into derelict industrial buildings, it’s also home to low-income families and immigrants in the country illegally who live on the margins, in illegally converted storage sheds or garages.

The current fees are $3,446 for a one-bedroom and $4,346 for a two-bedroom, plus $200 for move-in costs. The new ordinance raises payments to $6,500 for a studio or one-bedroom unit and $8,000 for a two-bedroom unit. Tenants evicted from a three-bedroom unit will be entitled to $9,875 — far more than the current payment of $6,034.

Those hikes irked some property owners, even though none spoke out against the ordinance Monday.

Jill Broadhurst, head of the East Bay Rental Housing Association, a group that represents property owners, said in an email to The Chronicle that the fee increases do nothing to encourage landlords to “convert these unconventional spaces into safe and livable ones.”

She noted, further, that the new law fails to distinguish between a mom-and-pop landlord and a profiteer who illegally rents a warehouse to 50 people, or a large developer who clears all the tenants out of a warehouse to turn it into high-priced lofts.

Kaplan deflected those points, saying the language in the ordinance “does not mean we think all property owners are the same,” but rather “that all tenants are faced with the current market costs of relocating.”

The council also grappled with an emergency ordinance brought by members of the warehouse community, which would place a moratorium on evictions from non-permitted live-work spaces and temporarily stop the city from red-tagging buildings for non-life-threatening code violations.

Several council members raised concerns about whether the proposed law would preempt another disaster on the scale of the Ghost Ship fire, which happened when the building’s lessee, Derick Ion Almena, had allowed a promoter to hold an illegal event there. Two property owners also challenged the ordinance, saying they had no desire to displace tenants, but that they do not want to be held liable if a commercial lessee surreptitiously converts a building into a residence.

But the proposal, which was not up for a vote, mostly drew rousing support from dozens of speakers, including punk musicians, activists and Almena’s wife, Micah Allison.

“I really don’t want to be here — I’ve given up on the City Council, I’ve given up on the city,” said DeCaprio, recalling how he slept on the street or squatted in abandoned buildings between 2000 and 2006 “because I refused to leave this community.”

Another member of Land Action, Kelly Jewett, said that Oakland’s soaring rents have pushed many people — herself included — into “housing situations that are less than traditional.”

“What we need to focus on now is making the places where we are living safe and accessible,” she said.

Allison apologized for the Dec. 2 fire, saying she wished that “more had been done” to prevent it. She also cast herself as another victim of the affordable housing crisis in Oakland.

“I have kids who go to school in Fruitvale,” she said. “In order to keep my kids in school, I need a house.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan