Santa Cruz County Renters Union member Nic Laflin works on a banner for the group. The union seeks to empower tenants to work together to protect their rights. (Jesse Kathan — Santa Cruz Local)

SANTA CRUZ >> Moldy walls, slow repairs, huge rent hikes — all were standard aspects of renter life in Santa Cruz County, everyone agreed as they sat in the courtyard of a community center one Sunday in July. 

The group of locals had gathered at the Santa Cruz Hub for Sustainable Living in Downtown Santa Cruz, sewing colorful letters that spelled out “UNLOCK TENANT POWER” onto a black banner. The attendees, current and prospective members of the Santa Cruz County Renter’s Union, swapped horror stories of their various rental experiences. 

Nic Laflin, a member of the renter’s union, said they and their two housemates were charged rent during the month they were evacuated from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in 2020, even though the Bonny Doon home was choked in smoke and bordered by a raging fire. The home was ultimately undamaged and the housemates received a $50 discount for the month they were evacuated. 

Laflin now knows that they weren’t legally obligated to pay any rent for a home they couldn’t inhabit. “It was completely illegal,” they said. “In retrospect, I wish I had known about tenant organizing.”

Now, they’re trying to share what they’ve learned. “There’s a need for people to understand that they have power,” they said.

Over the last couple of years, the union coalesced as a successor to past, now defunct groups, like the Santa Cruz Tenants Association. In 2024, the new group chose a name and this year, launched a zine with advice on forming a tenants association. In November and December, they plan to hold trainings for prospective new members.

Santa Cruz has a long history of tenant activism. Renters unsuccessfully pushed for citywide rent control in 2018 with Measure M, which would have established an elected rent board.

This union isn’t pushing for policy change or legal action. Instead, they’re trying to spread a simple message: that renters can better assert their rights and navigate landlord conflicts when they band together.

The renters union

Some tenants who seek out help from the union are fighting what they see as illegal actions, like failing to address moldy rooms or rat infestations. Others are trying to better understand how to mediate conflicts with landlords who are obeying the law.

Bill, who has lived in Santa Cruz for 10 years, was nearly kicked out of his house of six years when his landlord decided to sell the house without much notice. After Bill and his housemates banded together to negotiate with their landlord, the sale was put off for a year to give the renters more time to find other housing. Bill asked to not use his last name to avoid retaliation from his landlord.

The renters union doesn’t see itself as a centralized organization for all renters in the county, but as a base and a resource for individual renters who need help, or for renters who share a landlord and want to form their own tenants association. It’s a similar model to the Los Angeles Tenant Union, which has assisted smaller tenant associations in fighting displacement and rent hikes.

Although other organizations in Santa Cruz offer legal help and resources for tenants, their bandwidth is limited.

Tenant Sanctuary, a group sponsored by the nonprofit Hub for Sustainable Living, has two part-time tenant-rights counselors and a recently-hired full-time attorney. The demand for legal representation dwarfs the organization’s capacity, said Program Co-coordinator Sam Creighton.

“The disparity in power between a single tenant and a landlord, it’s pretty large,” they said. “You’re paying a lot of money to somebody who has control over one of your basic needs.”

Collaboration with fellow renters in a shared building or home can help resolve issues outside of the legal system, she said. If a landlord is negotiating with 10 tenants rather than one, “it makes a big difference,” Creighton said.

Members of the Santa Cruz County Tenants Union sew a banner outside of community textile workshop La Fábrica in July, 2025. (Jesse Kathan — Santa Cruz Local)

Tenant organizing in UC Santa Cruz

For student LuLing Osofsky, collaborating with fellow tenants has been a way to feel less alone in a struggle against what she sees as unfair policies from UC Santa Cruz.

Osofsky, a Visual Studies PhD candidate, her husband, a graduate student in the History of Consciousness program, and their one-year-old moved into Family Student Housing on the UCSC campus in 2021. Although she found the aging building drafty and poorly-insulated, the rent was low enough to allow her family to live on two grad student incomes.

Despite the conditions, the university annually increased the rent.

In May 2024, the university announced a $65 increase. Many of the complex’s tenants began to push back, due to complaints over slow responses to address mold in many of the apartments. 

They also faced a larger concern —- the planned demolition of their homes to make way for new dorms, and a $600 rent hike in a new complex for student families on Hagar Drive. The new $2,500 rent, which includes utilities and parking, would amount to more than 70% of Osofky’s family’s monthly income, not counting unpaid summer months.

After the university announced the initial $65 rent increase, a friend of one of the residents connected the tenants to the Santa Cruz County Renters Union, which helped them rally other Family Student Housing residents, publicize the fight against the rent hike and eventually formalize the neighbors into a tenant association. 

The effort has found partial success since launching in 2024. The university now holds regular meetings with Family Student Housing residents to give updates about the new construction and the pace of repairs has steadily increased. But university staff haven’t shown any sign of reconsidering the rent prices in the new development.

The new rent is less than half of local market rates, and below the cost of building the new facility, university spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason wrote in an Oct. 22 email.

The buildings were scheduled to open in late 2025, but as the construction timeline has been pushed back, Osofky’s family has received confirmation that they will be able to stay in their home until she and her husband graduate in June. The new facility is expected to open in 2026, and current Family Student Housing tenants will be required to relocate once the new complex is completed, Hernandez wrote.

Although the tenant association’s biggest grievances, including the upcoming rent hike, remain unresolved, Osofky credits the group with helping unite neighbors in a common goal.

“I think forming a tenant’s association was really empowering for residents, especially residents that might not put themselves out there as much, or be as inclined to speak up for their rights,” she said. “What we’ve been able to achieve is definitely because we’ve organized collectively.”

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