Renoviction Moratorium

Core Spaces is attempting to evict residents from all 264 units at CBC & The Sweeps: pushing around 1,000 Isla Vista tenants into a ruthless housing market. Many of these people will become homeless overnight, everyone is scrambling to make tough decisions about where to move to or how to make ends meet. Those with the fewest resources will be hit hardest; recipients of Section 8, undocumented folks, working families, and families with young children. The least of these parents’ concerns — unlike what Core Spaces executive Chris Richards imagines — is that their kids will have to change schools.

In response to powerful tenant organizing, the Board of Supervisors passed an emergency ordinance that buys the tenants time, but it won’t keep Core Spaces — a multi-billion dollar firm led by ex-Blackstone executives — from doing what they do: pushing out vulnerable populations to create luxury student dorms.

Landlords can complete legitimate renovations without evicting tenants. A previous landlord redid the entire roof without displacing us. My current landlord is remodeling both the bathrooms while we continue to live in the unit. The only reason landlords evict tenants under the guise of renovations is to circumvent the state’s already high rent cap of 10 percent per year.

Unless the Board of Supervisors takes further action, we will see this continue across the county, and families will have nowhere left to go. Until the vacancy rate rises to a healthy level, the board can and should follow the steps of other jurisdictions and pass a moratorium on renovictions.