Tenant advocates report having enough signatures to put Delano rent control on November ballot

BY JOHN COX jcox@bakersfield.com

Organizers behind a campaign to adopt rent control in Delano said Friday, May 17, they have enough signatures to put the first such measure in Kern County before city voters on the November ballot.

A representative of the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance said the organization has gathered, in cooperation with Fair Rents Delano, Impacted Delano Tenants and others, "way more than" the 1,700 signatures required to qualify the petition for the general election.

If the petition is certified by the city, voters will be asked to decide a question that has stirred passions at Delano City Council meetings in which residents have had little success pushing for limits on how much landlords can raise rent prices.

While other municipalities around the state are considering similar proposals, the largely working-class farmworker community of Delano would become the first city in Kern County with rent control if the measure passes.

The petition states the proposed ordinance would limit rent increases to a rate that’s 60% of the annual change in the federal consumer price index. Rents would not be able to rise more than 3% per year, though exemptions would apply.

There would also be new restrictions on landlords' ability to evict renters, along with new prohibitions on actions such as intimidation of tenants and bad-faith negotiations.

According to the campaign's coordinators, tenants make up 42% of households in Delano. According to an American Communities Survey, almost half are "rent-burdened," meaning they pay more than 30% of their income toward rent.

Last year, the City Council tabled a rent-control proposal so city officials could take a close look at how municipal finances might be impacted by rent control.

Councilman Salvador Solorio-Ruiz said Friday there is still no clarity on what it would cost the city to administer rent control. But that information is just starting to come before the council, he added, "which is exactly what I wanted from the beginning."

He said he welcomed the petition, even as the city may want to conduct an informational campaign to help people understand how rent control might be carried out in the city and why some people oppose it.

"Democracy is a beautiful thing," Solorio-Ruiz said. "I am neither against (rent control) nor for it."

Arturo Rodriguez, communications and organization director for the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance, said campaign supporters plan to turn in the petition on Tuesday, weeks ahead of the deadline to qualify for the ballot.

"We're turning in the petition a little early just to give the city a little more time to work with it," he said.

Now that enough signatures have been gathered, he said, organizers behind the petition plan to shift to what he called a more traditional campaign with messaging and endorsements.