SV@Home is over the moon to see our own Emily Ann Ramos, Preservation & Protection Associate, recognized for her passion, dedication, and hard work to protect the South Bay’s most vulnerable residents! Last week, state Sen. Josh Becker named Emily the 2022 Woman of the Year for the 13th Senate District in California, hailing her work as a volunteer devoted to protecting the rights of tenants and ensuring access to stable housing. Becker said in a statement that her direct work with policymakers will help keep low-income families from ending up on the street. “I’m just not the type of person that would see a problem out there and not try to do something about it,” Emily said. “And there is nothing more daunting that our region is facing than the housing crisis.”
BY: Kevin Forestieri ┃Mountain View Voice
PUBLISHED: March 16, 2022, 1:30 pm
For years, Emily Ann Ramos has been on the front lines in a battle to address the regional housing crisis, assisting vulnerable tenants and supporting new policies to prevent widespread displacement and gentrification.
Last week, state Sen. Josh Becker named Ramos the 2022 Woman of the Year for the 13th Senate District in California, hailing her work as a volunteer devoted to protecting the rights of tenants and ensuring access to stable housing. Becker said in a statement that her direct work with policymakers will help keep low-income families from ending up on the street.
“I applaud Emily’s demonstrated commitment to finding fair and equitable solutions to permanent housing for all,” Becker said.
Ramos, who lives in Mountain View, said she originally planned to be a mechanical engineer but instead found herself immersed in local housing issues. She joined the housing advocacy group SV@Home last year, working primarily on ways cities and counties can protect tenants from eviction and losing their homes.
“I’m just not the type of person that would see a problem out there and not try to do something about it,” Ramos said. “And there is nothing more daunting that our region is facing than the housing crisis.”
Ramos joined SV@Home at a chaotic time, when statewide rent relief and eviction protection rules were constantly in flux. In some cases, key legislation to extend the moratorium would get rapidly drafted and voted on just days before the moratorium was set to expire, and wouldn’t always be consistent with local versions of the tenant protections.
Information was changing so fast that landlords and renters alike could barely keep up, Ramos said, and it was difficult trying to push up-to-date information out to people — particularly those who are on edge and stressed over a looming eviction.
“When you’re scared of losing your home you aren’t in a good state of mind,” she said. “It’s an unreasonable expectation to be calm and collected with the prospect of losing your home.”
Though Ramos has a heightened presence in Mountain View, her advocacy and research work can be felt across Santa Clara County. She has worked with the Palo Alto Renters’ Association (PARA) and helped it push for stronger tenant protections last year, which culminated in a suite of new city policies. A little over 40% of the population in Palo Alto is renters, she said.
Emily Ramos, who served on Mountain View’s Rental Housing Committee, has been recognized for her tenant advocacy work. Photo by Magali Gauthier
When it came to updating tenants on the frenetic changes to the eviction moratorium and rent relief programs, Ramos said she leaned on local groups to get the word out, including PARA in Palo Alto, Somos Mayfair in East San Jose, Livable Sunnyvale and Cupertino for All. Mountain View had more than a half-dozen organizations that blasted out information to tenants, she said.
Ramos was also on the forefront of rolling out Mountain View’s rent control program, and remains one of the few members on the city’s Rental Housing Committee since its launch in 2017. It was a difficult task, taking a divisive ballot measure and building it into a program that actually works. Emotions ran high at some of those early meetings, with landlords protesting the law as unfair.
The mood has since moved towards acceptance, she said. Early on it felt like the city was still debating the merits of rent control and whether to accept it as a permanent fixture in city policy.
“Now the middle ground is we have rent control, so how can we make it work? That’s a change now from what it was at the start,” she said.
With a regional purview, Ramos said it’s interesting to see what other cities are trying in terms of tenant protections, and which policies can translate well to other cities. She pointed out that the city of San Jose is looking at a program that would give nonprofits a first shot at purchasing rental properties on the market before developers or landlords. Local cities and counties could also consider Community Development Corporations as a way to spur affordable housing development, she said.
Although COVID-19 cases have plummeted and many of the public health restrictions have been lifted, Ramos said many renters are still reeling from the job losses of the pandemic and a loss of income that put them hopelessly behind on rent payments. California’s rent relief program was meant to pay off unpaid debt accrued during the worst of the pandemic, but the state has been slow to distribute that money.
While there is a provision in state law that allows renters to avoid an eviction for unpaid rent by showing proof that the state has been slow to pay off the debt, Ramos said that the protection is set to expire on April 1. There is an effort on the part of Santa Clara County to create some kind of stopgap at the end of the month, but nothing is set in stone yet.