Tenants Fighting Eviction to Picket KP Market, Threatening Boycott

Oakland, CA — Beginning at noon on Sunday, Nov. 26, the Valley Street Tenant Council and Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) will picket KP Market, owned by landlord Byong Yu.

The tenant union will boycott KP Market unless landlord Byong Yu meets the tenants’ demands for dignified housing conditions, and ends constructive eviction at 2341 Valley Street.

In addition to owning the popular neighborhood grocer, Yu is a major Oakland landlord who enjoys a powerful role with the Koreatown Northgate (KONO) business improvement district.

Just behind his flagship business, however, Yu is subjecting his tenants at 2341 Valley Street to severe and protracted habitability issues in an attempt to empty the 41-unit apartment building.

The multilingual, working-class tenants of this rent-controlled housing have long complained to management and city officials about leaks, pests, security concerns, mold and lack of heating.

In the past two years, inspectors have issued Yu four notices of violation for missing radiators, chronic leaks, mold, infestation, and crumbling drywall. Still, Yu has refused to make repairs.

Now, more than 20 units in the building sit empty.

Early in the pandemic, Yu’s tenants formed the Valley Street Tenant Council in affiliation with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) to collectively resist the landlord’s constructive eviction, demanding repairs and dignified housing conditions for their families and neighbors.

“This isn’t a boycott — yet,” reads the tenant union’s picket handout. “To Byong Yu, our apartments are worth more with no one living inside. But we won’t be evicted!”

The council collectively petitioned the Oakland rent board (RAP), and their hearing is scheduled for Monday, Dec. 4.

Formal evictions are soaring since local politicians lifted pandemic-era restrictions, and landlords such as Byong Yu persist in using harassment and disrepair to displace tenants.

Landlords disproportionately mark working-class people of color for eviction. And whether or not the eviction proceeds through the court system, landlords often recruit the cops for assistance.

Across the Bay Area, tenants have organized into councils and associations to pressure landlords directly for repairs and rent reductions, and to fight against all forms of eviction.

With collective power, tenants can challenge the institutional drivers of gentrification — landlords and the real-estate industry, and all of their partners in office — for control over our own lives.

***

Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) is a member-run, member-funded tenant union in the San Francisco Bay Area. Area-based Locals organize tenants of given landlords into councils or associations, and the union pressures landlords directly to meet demands. Anticapitalist organization aligned with abolitionist and internationalist struggles, and a founding member of Autonomous Tenant Union Network (ATUN). Since the pandemic, membership has surpassed 600, and TANC has organized rent strikes and other actions, winning rent reductions.