Another Terrible Tuesday Afternoon at City Council–Holding Vice-Mayor Cummings Accountable

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A long line of speakers urged faster action to protect Section 8 tenants in the last months of the year at Tuesday’s Special City Council meeting. I summarized in accusatory terms Vice-Mayor Cummings record in siding with the reactionary Watkins majority on tenant and homeless issues. Brown supported a Mathews weakening of the Just Eviction protection emergency measure, and the Council caved.

Tenants:  Hold Vice-Mayor Cummings Accountable

         Tenants need protection.  Whose vote blocked just eviction protections last January?  Justin Cummings [J.C.].   Who deserted the Progressive majority this special tenant protection session necessary and too late for those already evicted ?   J.C.    

Protecting tenants saves them from homelessness.   In April Ross Camp activists were driven away without adequate shelter as landlords are now threatening to do and doing.  The elderly, the disabled, the vulnerable.    Who promised “no evictions from Ross without adequate shelter?  Then obediently followed the false narrative of City Manager Bernal and his homeless-betraying assistant Susie O’Hara ?  J.C.   Whose key vote delayed any meaningful data on landlord costs, evictions, and rents?  J.C.   

Who scorned the pleas of the Clear View Court residents fighting corporate developer greed last meeting?   J.C.    Who won’t meet with activists on the tenant and homeless emergency?   J.C.  Who won’t hold regular office hours or answer e-mails?   J.C.   Will other tenants be driven out?  Deep into the Pogonip made dangerous with high winds?   Ask Justin Cummings.  His vote withholds protection.   

Desieire Quintero was a former tenant.  She took shelter at Ross Camp.  Bernal & O’Hara threw her out with no shelter.  She fought back in court.  Discredited City Attorney Reid Gallogly countered with lies. Two days ago, a falling tree in the Pogonip killed her as she slept.  Who drove her there?  J.C.   How many other displaced tenants will we lose from the community?   Whose name should we etch on that fatal tree?   If any vote and voice was key, it was J.C.  

Can tenants expect any real protections from the Watkins-Commings Council?   Ask the question, but your words must somehow pierce the deadly silence…of Justin Cummings..


TO DOWNLOAD AND/OR COMMENT, go to  https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/29/18827718.php

           MORE ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DESIERE QUINTERO, go to https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/28/18827673.php (After Fighting to Keep Ross Camp Open, Homeless Woman Killed When Tree Strikes Campsite)                                                                                 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/10/29/18827710.php#18827712 ( Alicia Kuhl’s Statement on the Death of Desieire)


           FOR A REVIEW OF HER STRUGGLE TO SAVE THE ROSS CAMP AND PREVENT THE TRAGEDY THAT HAPPENED TO HER AND FACES HUNDREDS OF OTHERS:  go to https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/04/23/18822934.php

(Federal Judge Orders City of Santa Cruz to Halt Closure of Ross Camp )