FancyMancy
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2017
- Messages
- 6,741
Katie Dixon, 36, stands inside her basement apartment in Oakland. Dixon is a formerly incarcerated person who got her first apartment after Oakland passed a law banning criminal background checks for those who hold prior convictions.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle
Katie Dixon, 36, looks at her holiday decorations as she returns home after walking her chihuahua, Marie. Dixon is a formerly incarcerated person who got her first apartment after Oakland passed a law banning criminal background checks for those who hold prior convictions.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle
Katie Dixon remembers walking into her rent-controlled basement apartment for the first time in November 2020, and feeling a rush of relief, safety and success.
The Oakland unit was the first home of Dixon’s adult life, after spending more than two decades in and out of jail and homelessness.
“For the first time in my life, I felt psychologically, emotionally and physically safe,” Dixon, 36, told The Chronicle. “To have a roof over my head when I’ve never had stable housing before, it’s life-changing. I’m able to breathe by not worrying about where I’m going to sleep for the night.” She found her place almost a year after Oakland banned criminal background checks in housing applications.
On Tuesday, Alameda County became the first county in the nation to prohibit landlords from conducting criminal background checks on prospective tenants. Four of the five supervisors voted yes on the ordinance, and one abstained from voting. The new law takes effect after the county’s eviction moratorium, put in place during the COVID pandemic, expires on April 30.
The Fair Chance Ordinance — part of a package of three tenant protection bills the county Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday — applies to most residential units in the unincorporated communities of Ashland, Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview, San Lorenzo and Sunol. It also prohibits private and public landlords from requiring applicants to disclose previous arrests or convictions, and disallows advertising that discourages people with criminal histories from applying for housing.
The vote comes two weeks after supervisors delayed a decision to fine-tune details of the measure and as landlords objected to the new regulations, which also created a rental housing registry and approved a Just Cause for Eviction policy governing when and how a tenant can be evicted.
Proponents of fair-chance laws say they provide a legal recourse for tenants who’ve been unfairly treated based on past convictions. They also say the laws reduce homelessness, family separation and recidivism by increasing access to housing for formerly incarcerated people and their families. Opponents say the policies limit landlords’ control and increase liability.
“I don’t think it is a good idea — historic information about an applicant is important in evaluating whether the applicant will be a positive contribution to the community and does not pose an unreasonable safety risk,” Daniel Bornstein, a Bay Area attorney representing landlords, said through email.
Bornstein said it’s easier to screen out prospective tenants who will be disruptive or pose a health or safety risk than it is to displace them through the eviction process. However, his advice to landlords is to follow the new law.
A portrait of Katie Dixon, 36, is posted in between her motorcycle helmets inside her Oakland apartment.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle
The cities of Oakland and Berkeley banned routine criminal background checks in most housing applications in 2020. Richmond, in 2016, and San Francisco, this year, put narrower laws in place. Portland, Ore., and Seattle also have local laws banning criminal background checks in housing.
The accumulation of these policies is happening at the same time as the federal government is taking a harsher view of their opposite.
So-called “crime-free” housing policies that make it easier to evict tenants and that are enacted on a local level have become a target of the federal government. The U.S. Department of Justice last week secured a nearly $1 million agreement with the city of Hesperia (San Bernardino County) and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office over a since-repealed ordinance that federal prosecutors argued was racially discriminatory and actually led to the eviction of people of color who were reporting crimes or calling for help.
There are approximately 2,000 such policies nationwide, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told the Los Angeles Times.
Born in New Orleans and raised in Oakland, Dixon said her family was trapped in poverty. Her first run-in with the law happened when she was 11. She spent the next 15 years cycling in and out of jail, until she was admitted to the Delancey Street Foundation’s rehabilitation program in 2012. The San Francisco nonprofit provides rehabilitation services and workforce training for formerly incarcerated people and substance abusers.
Dixon said the program helped her get her life together and the skills and resources she gained led to steady employment, including her current job as an organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
It also helped that the California Legislature passed the Fair Chance Act, which took effect in January 2018 and makes it illegal for employers with five or more workers to run a criminal background check when making an employment offer. But housing remained a challenge for Dixon.
“When you check the box that asks for criminal background history, you self-select yourself out,” she said. “You get on databases that keep a record of it, and it just prevents you from securing housing when everything else works out. Even if you have a job and can make rent, you don’t get a place to stay. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Katie Dixon, 36, walks with her chihuahua Marie in their Oakland neighborhood. Dixon is a formerly incarcerated person who got her first apartment after Oakland passed a law banning criminal background checks for those who hold prior convictions.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle
Dixon spent eight years on the margins of homelessness — living at Delancey’s residential rehabilitation program, spending nights on friends’ couches, sleeping in her car and in a shelter — before landing her first-ever apartment two years ago.
Earlier this month, she phoned in to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting to urge passage of the Fair Chance housing ordinance, telling supervisors how housing changed her life.
“I said it then, and I’ll say it again: Having a stable job and stable housing has led me to be alive and crime-free,” she said. “It’s an important safety net to get our lives back on track.”
https://archive.vn/ngTKF
