Latest news with #BASTA
Fox News
5 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Hunter Biden says he's started new job with California nonprofit
Hunter Biden revealed he started a new job working with a nonprofit homeless prevention and tenants' rights group in southern Los Angeles. The former president's son made the announcement during an interview with "Channel 5" podcaster Andrew Callaghan, which was posted to YouTube on Tuesday. "I just think there is such an opportunity to be of service right now – and not in, you know, some kind of melodramatic way – but I just, a lot of people that are, you know, getting the s--- beat out of them out there, right here in LA. And there is enormous opportunity for just normal people to do kind of heroic things," Biden said. "I'm working with a group now called BASTA, the homeless prevention, and I just started actually as director of development for BASTA, which is the leading homeless prevention and tenants' rights group in southern Los Angeles," Biden added. Biden told Callaghan that the organization protects people "from eviction, and we are the only group – at least in southern California – that represents undocumented and so we don't take any federal money." "It's not just El Salvadorean immigrants, it's Ukrainian immigrants that came here under duress from what is going on in Ukraine and find it really hard to find work because of the fear of employers. that they are going to disrupt their business because of ICE raids and things like that," the president's son also said. "Then they lose their income, and almost all of these people are families and children. And if you can keep someone in their apartment or their home you obviously also [are] keeping somebody off the street and homelessness. And what you find is that when a child becomes homeless, the road back to any chance of normalcy just becomes exponentially harder and harder." BASTA, on its website, said it was founded in 2005 and has now become the "most comprehensive tenant rights organization in Southern California." "We have more than 15 attorneys and 10 staff across four full-service offices, serving virtually every need of the tenant community (legal or otherwise)," the nonprofit said. "BASTA pioneered the strategy of bringing all eviction defense cases to jury trial, which is a right under California's constitution. Rather than having cases decided by a single judge, cases are decided by members of the community — including many tenants. The strategy works. BASTA has won more jury trials in eviction cases than all of the other organizations in Southern California combined," the organization added. Fox News Digital has reached out to BASTA for comment.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rents in Austin are going down, so why are eviction filings up?
Austin-area rents might have fallen recently, but the number of evictions filed by landlords has continued to rise. That's according to a recent report by tenants rights group BASTA, which found that eviction filings increased 36% last year in Travis County, to 13,210. That is the most eviction filings recorded in the past 10 years. The report comes as rents have continued to decline in the Austin region since a 2022 peak, a trend experts say is the result of a surge in the number of new apartment units coming online and a slight slowdown in Austin's population boom. Advocates and landlords disagree about why exactly eviction filings have continued on an upward trajectory despite lower rents. The authors of the BASTA report attribute the increase to a persistent affordability crisis for the region's lowest-income residents, asserting that rents have not decreased sufficiently to help the region's poorest make ends meet. 'The narrative that rents are falling everywhere, like a renter's paradise, has been all over the place in the media,' BASTA project director Shoshana Krieger said. 'But if you said that to a low-income tenant, they would not necessarily feel that is their reality.' Krieger said she is concerned by the stiff competition for the most affordable units, and the willingness of some area landlords to file evictions as a way to scare delinquent tenants into paying up. The BASTA report highlights 10 apartment properties that filed an outsized share of evictions. Filings are just a first step in the eviction process and do not always lead to judgments against tenants. BASTA's evictions dashboard shows that almost exactly half of the more than 96,000 evictions filed since January 2014 in Travis County resulted in a judgment. Austin's landlords have a different explanation for the ongoing rise in eviction filings. Emily Blair, vice president of the trade group that represents the city's property owners and managers, said that filings are still on the rise in part because there are simply more units on the market. But she also acknowledged that an end to government relief programs and increased household costs due to inflation have played a role. 'Our industry really is committed to helping keep residents housed,' Blair said. 'Evictions are difficult and aren't undertaken lightly.' Austin added approximately 26,000 new rental units last year, according to an assessment by Austin Investor Interests, a real estate analytics company. That increase drove down rental prices, the firm's founder, Robin Davis, said in an interview. In mid-2022, Davis said average rent peaked at about $1,742 per month. By late last year, it had fallen to about $1,400. But she noted that is still slightly higher than it was during the first quarter of 2021 – $1,332 per month – when a pandemic-driven population growth bubble began in the area. Combined with slow job growth and more stagnant wages, she said current rent prices might still be a burden for lower-income residents. 'That's kind of what we're facing — how low do they have to go to where evictions stop?' Davis said. BASTA says the problem could be addressed through rental assistance programs, prevention plans and other mediation efforts. That would not only reduce eviction judgments, it says, but also limit damage to tenants' credit scores and housing histories and reduce court caseloads. Krieger said it's up to the government and landlords to fund such efforts. The outlook on the government front is grim, said HousingWorks Austin Director Awais Azhar said. With the Trump administration moving to scale back all types of federal spending, including on affordable housing programs, the onus will fall squarely on the city, which has far less money to work with. 'The city of Austin cannot individually solve all eviction problems,' Azhar said. 'We cannot do this by ourselves.' This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Rents in Austin are going down, so why are eviction filings up?
