In California, disaster-triggered renter protections are a crucial victory that contributes to a just recovery for working-class people facing the climate crisis.
Just north of the San Francisco Bay, dense urban centers give way to rolling oak woodland hills and valleys, a lolling river nestled into old-growth redwoods, and a craggy California coast. Despite the picturesque image of wine country, marketed as a playground for tech and developer elites, vast wealth inequality sits just under the surface. Those who call Sonoma County home have inherited generations of extraction –– both the land and its people. Our home is a region shaped by fires, floods and extractive industries which, in the centuries following Spanish colonization and American Manifest Destiny, boom-and-bust business of railways, logging, cattle, quarries, and large-scale agricultural production. Sonoma County’s working class bear the brunt of these extractive industries, which now involves an unstable industry of luxury wine cash crops and tourism. Since 2017, Sonoma County has endured eight years of climate-related disasters, including catastrophic wildfires, heatwaves, and historic floods. The 2017 Sonoma Complex Fires put Sonoma County renters on the front lines of a housing crisis exacerbated by climate change.
Our homes are sacred, a refuge from economic and state hostilities we endure daily as working-class people. We know the rent is too damn high because we live it daily. Lost wages from smoky days, heat waves, flooding, and wildfires are a matter of life or death for renters. When disaster strikes, households that are already pushed to the edge with high cost-of-living burdens are forced to make impossible choices such as working in hazardous conditions to make the rent, or miss out on a month’s rent. When –– not if –– the next wave of fire, wildfire smoke, and floodwaters comes, and workers lose out on wages, renters shouldn’t have the added burden of dealing with an eviction or displacement from their home.
In response to these disasters, community leaders of the North Bay Organizing Project (NBOP) and Sonoma County Tenants Union, supported by allied organizations such as Legal Aid of Sonoma County, organized to secure a suite of disaster-triggered anti-eviction policies rooted in the values of a just recovery. A just recovery sees the opening climate change-fueled crisis as a unique opportunity to organize, bring renewed attention to root cause issues, and allow us to reimagine the future of justice for the people and the planet.
An Intersectional Approach
In the aftermath of an emergency, already cost-burdened households are more likely to sacrifice other basic necessities, such as healthy food or healthcare to pay the rent. Cost-burdened households pushed to the edge are often the first to experience evictions due to nonpayment of rent from lost wages or work. “By now, we’ve all seen those haunting images of agricultural workers, harvesting crops against the backdrop of raging wildfires,” says Beatrice Camacho, a community organizer and Director of UndocuFund. “We’ve heard directly from renters: without protections, they’re at constant risk of losing their homes, a threat that intensifies during disasters. Every single person deserves the right to recover and rebuild.”
Traditional emergency response systems and disaster aid rely on datasets that privilege the voices and perspectives of individuals who are easiest to collect information from: citizens, corporations and institutions, English speakers, and those who are amenable to contact with state and local governments. This gap in response exacerbates housing insecurity for the working poor and immigrant labor class, and complicates the road to recovery.
From the ashes of the Sonoma County Complex fire, the North Bay Organizing Project, North Bay Jobs with Justice, and the Centro Laboral de Graton convened to create the first mutual aid fund for undocumented and excluded workers in the nation, UndocuFund. In 2018, the North Bay Organizing Project and UndocuFund gathered data from intake forms in the six-month aftermath of the Sonoma Complex Fires which revealed that undocumented individuals faced unique barriers to their livelihoods after climate change disasters. Of those who sought aid from UndocuFund in the aftermath of the fires:
- 50% represented single-income households
- 90% of households were renters
- 27% of households reported being behind on rent
- $14.81 average hourly wage ($11.00 less than Sonoma County Average)
- 30% of individuals reported seasonal or temporary employment
- 75% of households reported lost wages or unemployment as a result of the fire
- 31% of households incurred debt as a result of the fire
- 21% of households reported food loss as a result of PG&E shutoffs
Undocumented communities represent a sector of an excluded class of workers –– that is, people who cannot access stable employment and whose economic opportunities are constrained by their immigration status or other significant barriers to employment. Excluded workers are disproportionately represented in low-wage industries like agriculture and service industries, trapped in a cycle of poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, and vulnerable to exploitation. Large-scale crises, such as wildfires or floods, heighten the contradictions, considering these workers represent “essential” sectors of the economy, but are treated as disposable by dominant industries and institutions.
In a 2020 report published by the North Bay Organizing Project, we concluded that local governments must center historically excluded and marginalized communities in their recovery frameworks to avoid perpetuating institutional racism in disaster response and recovery. Even statewide renter protections don’t go far enough to protect renters following economic upheavals of climate induced disasters. Systemic loopholes in the California Tenant Protection act leaves half of all Sonoma County renters unprotected from arbitrary eviction, harassment, steep rent increases, and displacement as a result of lost wages and market speculation. Any renter living in a single-family dwelling (which includes 51% of all renters in Sonoma County) is excluded from the protections of California’s Tenant Protection Act intended to protect renters across the state. Without stronger local protections that close these glaring loopholes, the large majority of Sonoma County tenants can still be evicted for any reason or no reason at all.
Crisis Requires Bold Intervention
As thousands of renters lost their incomes during the COVID-19 public health crisis, NBOP and the Sonoma County Tenants Union organized to localize an eviction freeze. Through deep listening, broad coalition support, and direct action, tenants secured a monumental local eviction protection ordinance that was stronger than the one in effect in the state of California at the time. This type of tenant protection was highly effective in reducing displacement in Sonoma County, particularly during the 2020 Glass Fire that also coincided with the widespread public health crisis.
Unlike San Francisco or Alameda Counties to the South, Sonoma County has no systemic tracking of eviction notices or landlord abuse. This dearth of data inspired the North Bay Organizing Project and Legal Aid of Sonoma County to develop a story map built on eviction data collected through public records requests. Through that project, we found that 30% of evictions in Sonoma County occur through no fault of the tenant or for no reason at all. According to data collected by Legal Aid of Sonoma County, sheriff lockout evictions dropped by 64% between 2019 and 2020 (from 503 in 2019 to 183 in 2020) under the COVID-era eviction moratorium (also coinciding with wildfire years).
Following the expiration of COVID-era eviction protections, tenant leaders and organizers of the Sonoma County Tenants Union and North Bay Organizing Project built and leveraged our coalition of housing legal advocates, civil rights groups, youth welfare service providers, labor unions, and environmental justice organizations to spearhead a new package of eviction protections. These protections would take immediate effect any time a county emergency is declared. Under the ordinance, no tenant in any part of the County could be evicted for nonpayment of rent for at least 30 days after the emergency order is lifted. The policy was designed to alleviate the significant financial burdens that working-class renters face due to lost income during emergencies, and to provide working families with the space and time to recover.
The ordinance was built on a legacy of grassroots organizing led by directly impacted people –– tenants, workers, and immigrants –– to ensure the public health imperative of stable housing during declared emergencies. Policies like this serve as a model for communities across the country that are impacted by climate catastrophe, as they transform the devastation of disasters into necessary lessons for the years to come.
The eviction protections the County passed last year ensured that all impacted people would be protected from displacement, regardless of where they lived and worked, and gave residents the support they needed after a disaster struck. However, during the North Bay winter floods of 2025, the Board of Supervisors of Sonoma County introduced carve-outs to the ordinance, narrowing the county-wide eviction freeze to only “directly impacted areas” during disasters. Weakening tenant protections just weeks after a declared emergency excluded the voices of those most impacted and ignored how people live and work in the agricultural landscape of Sonoma County. For example, a worker may lose hours or an entire day of wages because of rain or flood in one part of the region, but will still have to pay rent in a neighborhood that may not be “directly impacted.” We know that the impact of climate-fueled disasters extends beyond specific, directly affected geographic borders.
We recognize that to promote the longevity of progressive policies that uphold working-class dignity against the crises to come, we can’t win one singular policy. We must also develop grassroots leaders ready to govern and to monitor the enactment of policies while also measuring their impact on people’s lives. Without a strategy that also shifts the political landscape, our policy wins may be doomed by hasty carve-outs and loopholes. How ready will we be when the time comes again to harness our power, as we reshape justice for the people and the planet?
Solutions for a Just Recovery at the Intersection of Climate and Housing
“Being a member of the Sonoma County Tenants’ Union gives me more information to be able to defend myself. It is gratifying to see that people have the tools and courage to fight back and no longer suffer from abuse. This policy is a great change for me, my family, and the whole community.”
–– Zita Ramirez, Sonoma County Tenants Union
Respond, recover, reimagine. We believe that crises reveal an opening to shift what’s politically possible. Sonoma County’s disaster-triggered eviction moratorium at first seemed far from possible, but after years of shifting the narrative with decision makers, we set an example to ensure a more just recovery for working-class, immigrant, and excluded workers in our county.
In envisioning truly just climate futures, we must continue to build the power of a multiracial and intergenerational renting class to campaign and drive bold policy shifts that center just recovery following climate disaster. It will also be essential to test new models of collective governance and stewardship structures in land and housing toward community control.
We remain unwavering in our vision that low-wage, immigrant, and undocumented people deserve the right to a just and dignified recovery during and in the years following disaster, including:
- ending price-gouging after disasters
- developing leaders ready to govern
- creating policies that incentivize community ownership of land and housing, and
- realizing a new vision of social housing that prioritizes long-term ecological care and people’s dignity over profit
In the years to come, our right to a roof will face new threats: market speculation, environmental degradation, economic and racial inequality, and the long-term impacts of disaster capitalism. Our homes are our refuge and represent a critical site to defend against the polycrisis we have yet to face.
Our might isn’t measured through a single policy win, but rather through our collective commitment to develop grassroots leaders ready to govern with a sharp analysis and critique rooted in their own experiences. In community organizing, we are invited to root our praxis in our politics, and, if we’re lucky, we are also transformed in the process.