We come into the COVID crisis after months of struggling to be paid enough to live in Santa Cruz, one of the most expensive rental markets in the US.
More than 80 of us were fired in the process, now scrambling without our second and third jobs. Undergraduates are choosing between grossly overpriced housing on a closed campus and the uncertainty of securing housing in a closed economy. Residents of Santa Cruz, losing their “non-essential” jobs, remain compelled to participate in the “essential” economy—paying rent to landlords.
Although all residents of Santa Cruz lived in a crisis long before COVID, it is especially acute and urgent now.
A group of Santa Cruz housing activists and organizers from the COLA movement at UCSC ask you to fill in this survey (droprentsc.com). We are developing a network of tenants, both affiliated with UCSC and not, to gauge the political will for tenant organizing in Santa Cruz around rent forgiveness, eliminating rent burden, and forming mutual aid networks.
If our county won’t introduce proper rental protections, if our employers will not pay us enough to live here, if our state won’t support us through the pandemic,
Then we will drop the rent ourselves.