The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists. OTU's core values are to protect and expand tenant rights and interests. OTU works directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacts legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and works with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares its core values and believes that tenants have the power and responsibility to advocate on their own behalf.

In 2020, we restructured our organization and ratified new bylaws.

To learn more about what we do, join us at one of our upcoming meetings.

Draft Principles

These principles are a list of values that, once affirmed by all OTU members, will provide a framework to guide OTU's work.

• Housing is a human right, not a commodity. The right to housing is the right to live in security, peace, and dignity.
• All tenants, regardless of race, national origin, ancestry, class, color, immigration status, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, marital status, or income have the right to:
  • A place to call home. No tenant should be forced into homelessness. The right to a home includes the right to privacy within that home.
    An affordable rent. No tenant should have to pay more than 30% of their income on rent, even if that income is $0. Proven strategies like rent control can contain rents. Public ownership, housing subsidy programs, land trusts, and other approaches can provide long-term affordability.
  • Freedom from arbitrary eviction, retaliation, and discrimination. Just cause for eviction laws are essential and must be enforced. Tenants deserve security in their homes and must not be displaced without a justifiable cause.
  • Safe and healthy living conditions. Tenants need access to strong code enforcement and recourse against landlords that refuse to maintain legal and habitable accommodations.
  • Tenant protections. Tenants should not have to deal with exorbitant fees, security deposit theft, credit blacklisting, harassment, retaliation, and other abusive practices. Tenants need meaningful enforcement of existing laws and strengthening of weak protection laws.
  • A right to counsel.
  • A right to organize without interference.
  • Self-determination. Tenants deserve to have our voices heard, whether on resident councils, in legislative chambers, or through alternative property ownership and governance structures. Housing is a communal resource, even if privately owned. The owners’ rights must be balanced with the rights of tenants to determine the fate of our homes and communities.

Draft Policy Priorities

• Rent Control & Stabilization: Ultimately, OTU has a goal of true rent control combined with. OTU supports any policies that furthers this goal, including repealing Costa Hawkins, lowering the annual allowable rent increase, bringing more types of properties under rent stabilization, and supporting rent control/stabilization efforts in other places.
  
• Just Cause for Eviction: OTU supports strengthening our Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance and supports efforts to bring just cause protections to other places.
  
• Ellis Act Reform: The Ellis Act should be repealed. OTU supports any policies that will limit or get rid of the Ellis Act.
  
• Limiting Capital Improvement Pass-Throughs: OTU supports efforts to limit the amount of things that landlords can pass through to their tenants (i.e. capital improvements, soft-story retrofits, or building electrification)
  
• Tenant/Community Opportunities to Purchase: OTU supports Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Acts (TOPAs) and Community Opportunity to Purchase Acts (COPAs) that further our goal of decommodifying housing by permanently taking housing off the speculative market.
  
• Social Housing: OTU supports social housing efforts that adhere to our principles for social housing, as well as repealing the Faircloth amendment to allow new public housing to be built.
  
• Senior Renter Protections: People deserve to grow old with stability, able to stay in their community without the threat of rent hikes. In particular nobody should be evicted while undergoing medical treatment.
  
• Security Deposit Reform: OTU believes security deposits should be minimized and accrue interest, to be paid out each year during a tenancy in the form of a cash payment or rent rebate. If a tenant moves out before the annual payment is due, the balance should be paid when the tenant vacates their unit.