Pro-tenant group says a landlord who has a seat on Oaklands housing cabinet is also the top evictor in the city, where a housing crunch has reached crisis levels
Leketha Williams was out of options. When the Oakland, California, mother was evicted and became homeless in May of 2010, she had just enough money to book a hotel for her and her two sons, then aged seven and 12.
In the following weeks, she worked to get her children to school on time each morning before carrying all of their belongings from one temporary home to the next, often forced to make dinners for the family out of hotel microwaves.
Williams had fallen behind on rent during a difficult financial period and had begged her landlords for mercy, writing in one handwritten letter: Please let us stay for at least a week because my boys do not have anywhere to go Do it for the sake of my boys.
But records show the sheriff ultimatelyforced her to surrender her apartment.
It was horrible, Williams, 47, recalled in a recent interview. I was very shocked They didnt give us no time.
Its possible that Williamss story could have turned out differently had she not lived in a building managed by William Rosetti. A review of public records by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a pro-tenant group, suggests that the Bay Area real estate executive, through his expansive portfolio of property companies and investments, is Oaklands number one mega-evictor.
The organizations research and an analysis by the Guardian reveal that in Oakland, Rosetti and his business firms have filed more than 3,000 eviction notices, which are the first step in removing a tenant. The data, along with accounts from evicted tenants, paint a picture of painful displacement and rising income inequality in Oakland, a city that is rapidly gentrifying amid the tech boom of nearby San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
These evictions and the rent increases are part of an ecosystem thats leading to a massive demographic shift of who can live in Oakland, said Erin McElroy, co-founder of the mapping project and co-author of a new report on displacement in the region.
Evictions arent the only way Rosetti may be having an impact on Oakland. The researchers were particularly shocked to discover that the apparent top evictor has a seat on Mayor Libby Schaafs housing cabinet, a body dedicated to promoting equity and affordable housing in an increasingly unaffordable city.
Williamss story is a familiar one in the Bay Area, where black residents have been displaced at alarming rates. By many measures, the housing crunch has reached crisis levels in Oakland, which has been deeply burdened by the migration out of San Francisco, the city across the bay known to have the priciest real estate in the country.