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A Redwood City rent control initiative moved closer to the November ballot last week after organizers submitted more than 7,300 signatures to the city clerk.
The Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance, backed by Faith in Action Bay Area, would cap rent increases, expand eviction protections and guard against landlord harassment. Organizers need about 4,500 valid signatures from registered Redwood City voters to qualify the measure for a citywide vote.
Redwood City Clerk Yessika Castro and her team hand counted 7,368 signatures at a public submission event at the Redwood City Downtown Library on Wednesday before forwarding them to the San Mateo County Department of Elections for review. The county has 30 days to verify whether enough signatures are valid.
“It’s kind of a day of celebration of all the hard work coming together,” said Martha Beetley, a volunteer organizer with the Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance effort, of the ceremonious presentation of signatures.
Faith in Action Bay Area, a nonprofit coalition of faith and community leaders, has spearheaded this Redwood City rent control and tenant protection measure, which would cap rent increases, protect renters from certain types of evictions and guard against landlord harassment.
In a previous effort, organizers gathered over 7,000 signatures for the measure, which did not qualify for the ballot because many of those who signed on weren’t registered Redwood City voters. This time around, the organization feels it’s “more prepared than ever” to ensure the ordinance qualifies for the ballot, according to a Faith in Action press release in the fall.
When Faith in Action initially filed the notice of intent, many voters who contributed lived in unincorporated parts of the county, like North Fair Oaks, or had forgotten to update their registered address, which caused the signature snafu in 2024, Beetley said in October.
“We learned last year that there are going to be invalid signatures no matter how hard and diligently we tried to talk to people about it because of the tricky business with the map,” said Beetley. To avoid a repeat of last year, the team worked to gather more signatures this go-around.
The intensified outreach this year included soliciting signatures from parkgoers, churchgoers and shoppers, as well as door-knocking and holding community events.
In the last 15 years, rents in older apartment buildings have more than doubled in Redwood City, according to an April report by Urban Habitat, a nonprofit that addresses socioeconomic inequality. Moreover, corporate landlords and real estate trusts own 87% of apartments in Redwood City, according to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.
Faith in Action says about 40,000 people will have greater housing stability if the measure passes.
William Gomez, a volunteer with Faith in Action, has served as a social worker in Redwood City for close to a decade, and currently works with the Redwood City School District to help connect low-income families with stable housing.
Over 2,600 K-12 students in San Mateo County are experiencing housing instability, with up to 20% of them “literally homeless,” unsheltered or sheltered in a temporary setting, according to a Stanford Gardner Center report.
The problem, he said, is that while wages for many full-time jobs continue to “remain the status quo,” inflation has worsened, rendering rent in Redwood City “extremely unaffordable.” He’s seen many families in the school district in “doubled-up” or “tripled-up” living situations, meaning two or three unrelated families squeezed together under one roof for financial reasons.
Tight living dynamics like these can have similar effects to homelessness, Gomez said, because individuals, and most importantly students, do not have a sense of space, privacy, and in some cases, safety.
“They’re living this precarious kind of situation and then these kids are expected to show up, engage, be attentive in school, and we’re seeing that it’s not happening,” Gomez said.
At least half of Redwood City renters are spending more than a third of their income on rent, according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas. From what Gomez has seen in his work with frontline families in the public school district, many are spending well over half of their income on rent.
“That reality leaves families with little to be able to then cover other basic needs,” Gomez said. “We know students who are showing up and sometimes wearing the same clothes.”
Strenuous living situations due to financial stressors can lead to maladaptive behaviors in classrooms, Gomez said, which public schools often don’t have the resources to adequately address, which can contribute to the “school to prison pipeline.”
“I know not just renters but homeowners want a strong, vibrant, diverse community and this ballot measure is a step in that direction,” Gomez said.
Residents and the city regularly report homelessness as one of the most pressing issues Redwood City faces, to which Gomez said can be reduced through proactive and preventative affordability initiatives, like the Fair and Affordable Housing Ordinance.
“What did we do to try to break the generational cycle of poverty?” Gomez encouraged Redwood City residents and officials to ask themselves. “Encampments, RVs, are always connected to something, way upstream… Those things just don’t happen because people will decide they want to be homeless.”
