Housing rights advocates rally for rent relief in the Mission

Members of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, HRCSF SouthEast Tenant Associations, community organizations, and more rallied at Garfield Park in the Mission District on Aug. 26 demanding moratorium extension and real rent relief. 

The rally was put together after Elena Cruz, a member of the SouthEast Tenant Association (SETA), expressed her frustrations with the continual landlord harassment she has received amidst the pandemic.

“We asked Elena if she would be interested in members from the SouthEast Tenant Associations created a campaign for her,” HRCSF SouthEast organizer Maria Jandres said. “We knew it was going to be a lot of work and a lot of outreach to get this all together.”

Cruz has faced eviction, constant landlord harassment, rent debt, and potential homelessness even five months after city and statewide rent relief programs launched. She has lived in the same home in the Mission District for 18 years, sharing it with her extended family in hopes to make enough money one day to buy a home. The COVID-19 pandemic halted her plan after she lost her job in March 2020, but she continued to pay housing costs and small portions of rent when possible. 

“I was happy to see that I had that much support,” Cruz said. “It was a multicultural gathering and I’m very inspired by the support of the Association.”

While the rally formed based on Elena’s experiences, many folks in the neighborhood have faced similar struggles in the last 17 months. With the rent relief program being delayed and concerns about whether there are enough funds to cover the projected rent debts between $147 million and $355 million, Cruz and her fellow SETA members are organizing to stop harassment and evictions should the program leave them behind. 

Even with the rent relief, folks have continued to culminate “shadow debt” and have not made up for lost income. Cruz’s struggle resonated as a community struggle as SETA began its outreach. A petition was formed by Cruz and SETA decided to work on the campaign.

“We started doing outreach by going to different blocks every week and asking neighbors to come to our rally meetings,” Jandres said. “It was the first step to building people together to show landlords that tenants are not alone.”

At the rally, neighbors signed a petition that would be sent to Cruz’s landlord demanding the immediate end to harassment and illegal eviction attempts. The petition also states that the landlord must accept back rent from the rent relief program. 

“We are against harassment and we are against displacement especially during a global pandemic that has caused the loss of jobs and the loss of lives,” Jandres said. “We have to be unified to show that we will not take the harassment from landlords and we will not be displaced.”