We are excited to announce the launch of Evictorbook, a web-based tool that provides information about properties, landlords, and the complicated networks of corporate ownership. 

Corporate landlords often hide behind complex mazes of shell companies to avoid accountability while they push out low-income tenants of color. In Oakland, corporate owners were responsible for 25% of evictions over the past 5 years, while owning 8.9% of multi-family buildings. In San Francisco, corporate owners were responsible for 33% of evictions in San Francisco over the past 5 years, despite owning 12.5% of multi-family buildings. 

Evictorbook helps housing organizers, tenants, and community-based developers fight back against corporate landlords. It allows users to look up an address or corporation in San Francisco or Oakland and see which other properties are linked to the same owner. This information, alongside data about past evictions, code violations, and building permits, can help tenants and organizers fight back against harassment and abuse. The tool also helps community land trusts and other nonprofit developers proactively identify and evaluate properties for preservation and permanent affordability. On the Oakland site, users can even view pre-foreclosure and mortgage delinquency data to determine a property’s eligibility for new state funds like the Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program.

For the past two years, Urban Habitat, as part of the Oakland Preservation Table, has worked with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP) to develop this tool. The Oakland Preservation Table, comprised of ACCE, APEN, Causa Justa::Just Cause, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC), Enterprise Community Partners, Great Communities Collaborative, Public Advocates, Oakland Community Land Trust, and Urban Habitat, works with tenants to fight displacement, and take land and housing off of the speculative market and make them permanently affordable.

“People deserve to know who owns their community,” said Alex Acuña with the Oakland Community Land Trust. “Evictorbook will help communities most impacted by speculation to organize, fight to help us acquire properties, and keep people rooted in Oakland by bringing homes into permanently affordable community ownership.”