PROTESTING SECTION 8 EVICTIONS
Only a few showed Saturday morning, June 19, 2004, to protest the evictions. Families were tired from a week of protesting.
Rob Rooke told The Alameda Report, "We told everybody last night but everybody was pretty stressed out because they're coming out with kids. They're coming out with family members. So we told everybody, 'Don't worry about it. There'll be a few people out with signs."
Rob Rooke and Havana of the Campaign for Renter's Rights pass out flyers
asking the people of Alameda to "Save Our Homes" and to call Mayor Beverly
Johnson at (510)747-4701 protesting the eviction of hundreds supported by
254 Section 8 rent vouchers. Reach The Campaign for Renter's Rights
at (510) 595-5545
About 10 - 15% of the approximately 1600 rent subsidy vouchers in Alameda,
so-called Section 8 vouchers, will be dropped immediately.
The Campaign had turned out 40 or 50 people at the City Council meeting the previous Tuesday, June 15. The issue of Section 8 evictions was not a regularly scheduled agenda item for the meeting, so the group was not heard until they interrupted the proceedings. (In fact, the interruption is not listed in the Council official meeting minutes.)
Rob said that Mayor Johnson brushed them aside, asking where had they been when the issue was covered six months earlier. "But about 250 people's lives were about to be shattered," he explained
Some vouchers subsidize single renters; others subsidize whole families, so several hundred people will be without any support for their rent. The group moved outside council chambers into the lobby where the Head of the Housing Authority and the City Attorney met with them. Ideas for alternatives were discussed but were vague and noncommital, according to Rob.
The Campaign attended the Housing Authority meeting on Thursday, June 17. Some Bay Area media reported the event. The Housing Authority offered two month vouchers. Recipients tore up the offer because those vouchers were in cities hundreds of miles away from Alameda, hardly an alternative for poor people anchored to tenatative jobs and some family support or faced with moving expenses. The Campaign argued that the offer was only to soften the blow of eviction, but the blow was still as severe.
