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From:FIA BayArea <br />To:publiccomment <br />Subject:Comment on Item 8A - Faith in Action Bay Area Leadership <br />Date:Monday, January 27, 2025 3:09:30 PM <br />You don't often get email from fiabayarea@faithinactionba.org. Learn why this is important <br />Monday, January 27, 2025 <br />Dear Redwood City Mayor Martínez Saballos, Vice-Mayor Eakin and City Council: <br />We are Redwood City residents and Faith in Action Bay Area leaders from more than <br />20 religious congregations and 8 schools in Redwood City. Like all of you, we care <br />deeply about Redwood City and its deserving reputation as a welcoming community. <br />That’s why we are so disappointed that the most recent Anti-Displacement Strategy <br />recommendations from City Staff do nothing to prevent the ongoing displacement of <br />our families, friends, and neighbors from Redwood City. <br />Over the past five years, we have attended many focus groups and given our <br />feedback to City Staff in multiple other formats. We connect with hundreds of <br />Redwood City residents each month in churches, schools, through our rapid response <br />hotline for both immigration and housing issues, through phone banking and door <br />knocking—including over 13,000 voters in 2024. We have shared our first hand <br />experience of the devastating impacts of this crisis on our children and families’ <br />health, education, family wellbeing, and community, all sacrificed in the name of <br />higher profits for corporations. <br />We know what action steps must be taken to prevent displacement and to keep <br />Redwood City residents at home in our community, and we have shared these <br />recommendations with the City for years. Yet City Staff are continuing to ignore our <br />recommendations and instead recommending another round of focus groups—as if <br />they don’t understand the scope of the crisis. <br />As community leaders, we refuse to participate in the charade of more focus groups. <br />As Redwood City renters, we need: <br />The right to return at the same rent after a substantial renovation, within a <br />strong just cause policy that provides greater protections than state law. <br />As community leaders, we worked with state legislators in Sacramento to pass <br />both AB 1482 in 2019 and SB 567 to strengthen it in 2023. SB 567 does not <br />provide renters with a right to return after a substantial remodel, and thus we <br />are confused as to how changes in state law affect Redwood City residents’ <br />need for such a policy.