Trump’s immigration crackdowns raise eviction risks across California

By Yue Stella Yu and Ben Christopher CalMatters In Los Angeles a Latino family sued their landlord and a real estate agent over illegal eviction only for an attorney to suggest they were likely to be detained by immigration agents before the situation could go to trial In Santa Rosa a mother of six children says she s struggling to pay the rent following her husband s deportation but fears eviction if she even requests to move into a smaller place from her landlord In Oakland renters have been appealed if they were legal by a landlord seeking to push them out Across the state the U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE has scooped up swaths of household breadwinners leaving their families scrambling to afford rent while grieving their absent loved ones But the impact of those operations stretches further The fear of deportation alone has discouraged countless immigrants from exercising their rights as tenants It s hard enough to be a tenant in California where rents are among the highest in the country Immigrants who are living illegally in the country often lack a reliable credit history and work low-paying jobs with tenuous benefits They already find it harder to secure housing pay more for the housing they do get are more likely to live in overcrowded conditions and may be more likely to face eviction President Donald Trump s intensifying immigration crackdown leaves those renters more vulnerable to eviction and exploitation which could plunge more immigrants into homelessness or overcrowding or even lead various to voluntarily leave the country housing rights attorneys and scholars say The fear of retaliation from landlords has created what advocates describe as a chilling effect on immigrant renters which substantially undercuts California s strong tenant protection laws noted David Hall co-directing tenants rights attorney with Centro Legal de La Raza a nonprofit legal aid group in Oakland You can have the preponderance protective laws in the world but if people are afraid to enforce those laws it s like for those people those laws don t exist he explained Higher housing hindrances Finding a house Making the rent Warding off eviction Every stage of navigating California s housing area is already more challenging for California s immigrant renters compared to their U S -born counterparts Undocumented immigrant renters have access to far fewer inhabitants benefits than U S citizens Even when benefits or services are available there s a lower rate of uptake among those who are living illegally in the country due to a lack of awareness and fear of accessing those guidance disclosed Thai V Le a research scientist at the USC Equity Research Institute Those immigrants are therefore more likely to be rent-burdened which experts define as paying more than of a household s income in rent As of two-thirds of undocumented renters statewide were rent-burdened compared to of all immigrant renters and of their U S -born peers according to the California Immigrant Facts Portal by the USC Equity Research Institute Once they find a place to rent tenants without legal immigration status are less likely to assert their tenant rights and more likely than others to cram into overcrowded housing leased by friends or family members Such arrangements often expose tenants to subpar living conditions deprive them of legal protections because their name is not on the lease and puts them at higher exposure of homelessness should even one of their housemates lose income disclosed Melissa Chinchilla a researcher with the Latino Strategy and Politics Institute at UCLA Seventy percent of foreign-born Latinos in California who are homeless lived in housing they did not hold the lease for compared to of U S -born Latinos a June assessment by the University of California San Francisco revealed And once an undocumented immigrant becomes homeless it is harder for them to regain housing Chinchilla declared They may not be able to provide a credit check she reported They may be paid cash So they may not have that history of their income Do they want to create waves All those fears and hindrances have been dialed up to as Trump has returned to the White House with more force and focus on aggressive indiscriminate immigration enforcement Under his administration the U S Department of Healthcare and Human Services the Internal Revenue Function and the U S Department of Housing and Urban Advance have agreed to share residents personal content with ICE which will soon see unprecedented levels of funding Proposed cuts to immigrants access to citizens benefits such as early childhood schooling strength care and housing programs threaten the livelihood of families who rely on those services Unfortunately people s worst fears are being proven reported Cynthia Moreno a senior evidence analyst with the Equity Research Institute Farmworkers work in a field outside of Fresno on June As deportations rise more undocumented workers are finding it hard to pay the rent Photo by Larry Valenzuela CalMatters CatchLight Local The Trump administration s widely publicized deportation blitz creates a much more vulnerable setting for people who already in the landlord-tenant relationship have a disadvantage revealed Marie Claire Tran-Leung an attorney at the National Housing Law Project a tenant rights advocacy group California s tenant protection laws are among the strongest in the nation They include a statewide cap on how much landlords can hike the rent each year limits on application fees and safeguard deposits and strict terms and conditions when a landlord moves to kick a tenant out On paper those rights apply to tenants regardless of immigration status A state law bars landlords from asking about or disclosing a tenant s immigration status to anyone including federal immigration agents It s also illegal for housing providers to harass or threaten tenants over their immigration status But not every tenant is aware of or willing to exercise their rights Even if a tenant has a really good landlord if in the back of their mind they are inevitably worried that the landlord could get them on the radar of ICE a tenant might be deterred or chilled from enforcing these rights Hall noted In the Central Valley attendance at tenants rights workshops has dropped as immigrants fear being targeted by ICE at large events commented Daniela Juarez a registered legal aid attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance Organizations have stopped advertising their Know Your Rights Workshops and counting on word of mouth instead for fear of becoming a target Others are choosing to only do workshops by appointment to not expose their clients she wrote in an email Overall they have all seen a chilling effect in services and are worried it will only get worse Families are also afraid to appear in court for housing-related issues as immigration agents regularly detain people at courthouses across the country In March news of such an arrest outside the Sonoma County Probation office rippled through the immigrant locality in Santa Rosa reported Patrick McDonell a housing attorney with Sonoma County Legal Aid We have a lot of clients who are basically willing to take a deal that is not the best deal that we could get them in order to not have to be present in a courthouse mentioned McDonell That s been true even in cases where he and his colleagues believe a landlord s accusations are bogus or legally insufficient he announced That person nevertheless is going to have to move out just because we know that we don t have a client who we re going to be able to take to court The fear doesn t stop there Asking for a repair Making an informal complaint Attending housing rights workshops Seeking a routine accommodation For undocumented immigrants families with mixed immigration status or anyone who might otherwise be concerned about drawing the attention of immigration enforcement agents such routine interactions have become more fraught Folks are really having to have a hazard assessment Juarez explained Do they want to create waves Do I want to make my landlord upset No silver bullet Fear of deportation is also dissuading immigrants from going to work or receiving inhabitants benefits which experts say could hazard economic repercussions across the state During Trump s first administration immigrants withdrew from federal food benefits due to fear of getting targeted by immigration enforcement or hurting their chance at becoming citizens Chinchilla noted she fears history will repeat itself Already Trump is asking states to share information about food voucher recipients prompting a lawsuit from California and other Democratic-led states This fear was already there I can only imagine how much more heightened it is now that we know it s a reality that people s information is really being shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement she reported Farm workers work in fields outside of Camarillo on July As deportations rise more undocumented California workers are finding it hard to pay the rent Photo by Larry Valenzuela CalMatters CatchLight Local Selected local governments such as Los Angeles County and the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles are establishing donation-funded programs to help immigrants make rent and other payments The state also has several immigrant assistance programs and California lawmakers authorized a million boost earlier this year to provide legal services to immigrants through nonprofit organizations But those dollars get spent down really fast and there s consistently more need than there are dollars in the account mentioned Hall the tenants rights attorney In rural California tools are scant and more scattered and hard to reach without a car Juarez revealed There s evictions everywhere there s just less help to combat them in our rural communities and we could use all the help we can get she noted CalMatters reporter Sergio Olmos contributed reporting