WCUTU Tenant Handbook Development

Tenant Union
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WCU Tenant Union needs a handbook! We plan to adapt the Los Angeles Tenant Union (LATU) Handbook Vol II as our foundation. The LATU’s handbook popularity and shared California tenant legislation make it a practical starting point.

We have reviewed the LATU handbook and marked it up as follows in this PDF:

  • Yellow highlight: Content we believe applies to San Joaquin County tenants
  • Green highlight: Content that we believe does not apply to SJC tenants, and we need to verify, modify, or remove this language
  • Comments in the margins

Our next steps to update the Current Working Draft — Old version. This Doc already has all the text from the PDF.

  • Review and update the green-highlighted sections
  • Compare these sections to laws in Stockton/San Joaquin
  • Update the Google Doc version by:
    – Modifying sections to reflect local laws
    – Removing LA specific content
    – Addition SJC specific information

Updated on October 25th, 2024. Check version history for previous post.

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I confirmed the green portion with an article from The Modesto Bee.

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[Source: The Modesto Bee - Can a landlord enter your apartment or raise rent without notice in California?]

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Here is a more detailed explanation of what a landlord must do when providing advance written notice to end a periodic tenancy:

[Source: California Tenants: A Guide To Residential Tenants’ And Landlords’ Rights And Responsibilities]

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We talked about creating an online form that would allow people to generate letters to their landlords. I know there are probably a bunch of tools to do it but we should start compiling a list of tools here. This is free for up to up to 150 runs https://www.relay.app/ and might come in useful.

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I updated the initial post for clarity. In the future, I’ll make a task table and break down the handbook by sections so it is easier to breakdown the work.

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@NoraG just finished doing a rewrite of Chapter 3 of the Handbook and @ChristinaCherif is working on Chapter 5.

I made a short video explaining the editing process that we are currently doing. If you want to help edit the handbook, please take a look at the video and sign up for a chapter by replying here or adding your name to the google doc.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me!