Help SBTU Member Pay $4490 Fine For Speaking Up

Short version:

SBTU member “Priscilla” was renovicted in early 2023 by a very rich, powerful, well-known landlord in town. She tried using the city’s tenant-landlord mediation program for a “mutually beneficial solution” but he still displaced her which forced her to live on friends couches for months. During her time couch surfing she joined SBTU and helped spark the anti-renoviction movement that all tenants in our region now benefit from and have heard so much about in the news. She told her story at city hall over and over and this made an enormous difference, but since she signed a “non-disparagement” agreement for use of landlord-tenant mediation, the ex- landlord came after her in small claims and unfortunately won.

Priscilla is being forced to pay her ex- landlord $4490 and this is money she simply does not have. We know he does not need the money because he is a very rich, powerful, well-known landlord, which means this entire small claims situation was a manipulation of the courts to punish her for speaking up. Please donate to help Priscilla out and get involved with SBTU if you think tenants should keep speaking up and making change!

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Long version:

Hi I'm Max, a co-founder of the Santa Barbara Tenants Union (SBTU). I'm trying to help a fellow SBTU member who has been forced into a very difficult situation from her ex- landlord who just won against her in small claims. To protect her identity and prevent any further retaliation from her landlord, I'm calling her "Priscilla."

Priscilla does not have $4,490 to give her ex- landlord, but the court has ruled that she must pay it due to having made "disparaging remarks' against the landlord when she spoke at city council to advocate for stronger eviction protections. She told her story in service of something bigger than herself, so landlords could no longer displace tenants through “renovictions” in order to double the rent. But the court dispute wasn’t whether she spoke up for a good cause, it was whether she violated the “non-disparagement” agreement she signed when she used the city’s landlord-tenant mediation program. This is a bigger problem with the city’s mediation program, in that it creates a silencing effect for tenants who wish to speak out if mediation doesn’t go well. Unfortunately, the mediation program is notoriously tilted in favor of landlords but most tenants who are told they will be looking for a “mutually beneficial solution” don’t necessarily realize what they are signing up for. Priscilla, like most tenants being threatened with permanent displacement from Santa Barbara through profit-driven renoviction, was desperate and used the mediation program because she had such limited options to try to stay housed.

What happened was that there was no mutually beneficial solution reached through mediation, and her very rich and powerful landlord instead got his way as expected. He kicked Priscilla out and paid her the 3 months of rent worth of relocation money because the city requires this, not because he is kind. Then he doubled the rent on the unit Priscilla had rented for 14 years - immediately after she moved out. We know this because the unit was listed on Craigslist for double what she was paying right after she left.

Priscilla could not find anywhere to move within Santa Barbara since rents have doubled in the last few years, and having to make 3x the rent in income is impossible for most people. She stayed on friends’ couches for several months, with most of her belongings in temporary storage. Despite the demoralizing and traumatizing nature of this violent displacement experience, Priscilla was posting on Facebook and Nextdoor to figure out what she could do. Some people recommend she link up with us in the tenants union and she did.

When Priscilla met up with us in SBTU, maybe due to how fresh the renoviction trauma was, she was really fired up. She and a few others within the union had the idea of just going to city hall every Tuesday at 2pm during public comment to tell them to change the law. Priscilla inspired us to call and email and text through our union contact list to see who else had been renovicted and a ton of people said they were. We hit public comment weekly throughout early 2023, sent hundreds of emails to city council, and if you’ve been paying attention to all the law changes in our region now you know where it all started. Personally, I think that’s why Priscilla’s landlord went after her for an amount petty to him and devastating to her; he knows she helped spark a local movement that ended up more successful than any of us could have imagined.

Before we got the law changed within the City of Santa Barbara, landlords could just put a piece of paper on your door saying they needed to "substantially remodel" the unit. You'd have to leave in a month or two, period. There was no legal defense against this based on loopholes in state law. But the city responded to our demands after Priscilla and dozens of others told their stories - the law was changed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. Then Core Spaces, the billionaire firm out of Chicago, put 250+ renoviction notices on doors of tenants outside the jurisdiction of the City of Santa Barbara – the new law didn’t apply to them so all of us who were just sprinting to change the law had to shift to marathon-mode to advocate to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Priscilla was right there for this as well, still couch surfing and traumatized from her displacement.

We just kept winning. The county then changed the law in a way far stronger than the city. Then Carpenteria copied Santa Barbara City’s law. Then Goleta copied a combo of both SB City's law and SB County's law, but made them both stronger. And now SB City is about to potentially pass a version stronger than Goleta's.

Not ALL of this can be attributed to Priscilla's storytelling, but much of the initial spark that got all of us in SBTU so fired up about changing laws to ban renovictions came largely from her. I watched this from start to finish, all the way up to her receiving the court summons from her ex- landlord a few weeks ago. I sat in the small claims court with her as moral support and am still astounded her landlord won. I can’t stop thinking about how she doesn’t have the money to pay him, and what he’s asking for in “damages” is an amount he probably just made passively as you’re reading this sentence, because of the amount of rental properties he owns. It just feels like petty, retaliatory bullying to me – but the court sided with him because the question was did she or did she not violate the non-disparagement agreement.

If you have been an active SBTU member or followed all we've been doing in the news over the last year, please consider helping Priscilla out. Her truth telling, her passion, and her resilient transformation from trauma into tenant activism, has improved all of our lives as tenants in the SB region and beyond. As the old trade unionist saying goes, "An injury to one is an injury to all." This injury to Priscilla for her use of free speech and advocacy for others framed as "disparaging remarks" is something we must take seriously. We can’t let rich and powerful landlords manipulate mediation programs and small claims courts to silence and punish us for trying to make the world better for ourselves and others.

Please donate to Priscilla to show her that you have her back, since she had yours every time she spoke up with her “disparaging remarks” at city hall in the year 2023. And be sure in the year 2024 to “disparage” injustices imposed by landlords however, wherever, whenever you can. It’s the only way to create the better world we all want.