In 2017, SV@Home worked closely with the residents of a downtown apartment building in Palo Alto, the President’s Hotel, facing mass displacement with no local protections. After passing an urgency ordinance guaranteeing relocation benefits to the tenants, the city council directed staff to look into ways to protect Palo Alto renters and keep them housed. Even with the relocation benefits, the conversion of the President Hotel from rental housing back into a hotel led to the eviction of many downtown residents, which sparked more calls for protection from eviction. 

SV@Home has been working with the City of Palo Alto since 2019 when we were a community partner in a city-initiated grant through the Partnership for the Bay’s Future (PBF). This partnership included a Challenge Grant Fellow, also funded by PBF, to provide additional staff capacity to the city to explore and develop anti-displacement and tenant protection policies and staffing capacity for a localized tenant-led advocacy organization, the Palo Alto Renters Association (PARA). Nine policies were presented to the Palo Alto City Council after being evaluated by staff, the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC), and the Human Relations Commission (HRC). These policies include a rent registry, expanding tenant relocation assistance, closing loopholes in state tenant protections, security deposit limits, and a fair chance ordinance. 

In 2021, the city council decided to proceed with six of the nine policies presented. So far, the city has adopted and implemented nearly all six policies. The rent registry is currently in the process of implementation, and the City is beginning to evaluate a Fair Chance ordinance now. 

A fair chance policy is considered housing justice and criminal justice reform. It prohibits discrimination based on criminal history. Although discrimination based on race, national origin, and disability is prohibited under state and federal laws, formerly incarcerated status is not a protected class. However, the state does provide some guidelines on what housing providers should do before considering criminal history in their decisions to rent out their unit to an individual: provide written notice of the policy, ensure that that criminal record is accurate, and only seek the record after the potential tenant has met the other qualifications. 

When a fair chance ordinance is adopted, it usually includes a number of exemptions for coverage. These exemptions are typically single-family homes, ADUs, and renter-occupied units where the landlord or existing tenant seeking a co-renter also occupies the unit. Some other exemptions that are considered are for affordable housing for certain types of criminal history and if the criminal activity caused the applicant to be registered for a lifetime on the sex offender list. The city plans to create a waiver should this requirement “effectuate an unconstitutional taking of property, otherwise have an unconstitutional application to the landlord, or is necessary to avoid an imminent risk of harm to the landlord, landlord’s agents, or other renters.”

At the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission, staff presented commissioners with two options: 

• Limit the use of criminal history in housing decisions with additional procedural protections for renters or
• A blanket prohibition on discrimination based on criminal history in housing decisions, unless required by law.

The first option would build upon state law and create a limited “look back period”. Landlords would have procedures to follow like giving tenants a conditional approval before checking criminal history, providing tenants a written copy of the report, and allowing tenants to provide an explanation of mitigating factors from the report. The second option would be a blanket ban on checking criminal history except when required by law.

Staff weighed the pros and cons of each. The options balance clarity and ease of implementation and enforcement with flexibility and the ability to tailor an ordinance to the city’s needs. The commission supported the first option, allowing more flexibility and a two-year lookback. The next step would be to bring this policy forward to the city council at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025.