Slashdot Mirror
Oracle Asked To Help Low-Income Residents Evicted For Its New Cloud Campus (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: Roughly 100 low-income families were evicted from an apartment complex on the land in Austin, Texas where Oracle plans to build a new 560,000 sq. foot cloud-computing campus. Some of the former tenants of Lakeview Apartments had leases through the end of the year, but were reportedly forced by owner Cypress Real Estate Advisors to move out early. Some have said their security deposits were not returned, and they have had no assistance as they've struggled to find comparably priced housing. Last week, some of those residents gathered near the site of their former home to protest and to appeal to Oracle for assistance.
Well, Oracle is not to blame.
The landlord is to blame if they used illegal means to evict the renters.
If the eviction was legal, well, you do have a problem with the local laws then, wouldn't you say?
Was there no other location in all of Austin to build, other than destroying this housing? No empty Texas Instruments factories, no half-constructed unfinished see-through buildings? Nothing that could really use destroying and replacing? No open land?
Actually, in many states the lessee has many rights, such as the right to continued used of the property throughout the duration of the lease, the lease holder can not step foot onto their property without proper prior notice, and many other bundled rights... which include, the quick return of security deposits held in a special interest bearing account, or a written and judge signed decree of why the money was not returned.
In this case, unless the residents agreed to something in return for the termination of their leases... such as a relocation amount, even a pittance of one, then they should have read the agreement better, they got all they are going to get.
Here is some Michigan precedence (some context IANAPL, that is a non-practicing lawyer, but went to law school, passed bar, patent bar, etc, but don't practice), when General Motors which had land near an airport, gave up said land for the expansion of the airport, the tenants of the land, and the owners were given money in return for their quick and timely removal from the land. The agreement for the lessees was 6500 dollars if they rented another property, and more if they bought another property. Granted, this was a move by General motors and the county, and the municipal government, and the owners of the airport. General motors owned the land, and rented houses on the land to their employees for ridiculous low rates... think 3 bedroom brick, ranch houses on 2 acre lots, for 250 dollars a month.
This was about 20 years ago, I know it firsthand, because my family worked for GM and at least 2 uncles, and my family were forced to move... we took the buy route, and even though we did not have much money, the relocation fund, and the first time buyers bonus, and other federal assistance, made moving into a newly built and financed house easier and cheaper than renting a new house or apartment. Big difference than living off of Uncle GM and their gracious cheap family housing, but the 12 grand, plus other assistance made the move easier.
Point is this, no one that leases property has the right to remove you from the property, you have secured property rights through the signing of a lease, it is in fact your leased property, within the limits of the lease. You have the right to quiet enjoyment, and the right to do whatever you want while you are there within the constraints of your agreement. As my law professor stated, property is a bundle of sticks, and a lease contains quite a few sticks (rights) to the property.
I would not be surprised if the property owner pulled a fast one, and got them to sign over, or paid them very little, and now they find themselves in a bind. I also presume that many of these people are not fully educated on the matter and the law, and that someone should have explained it to them better, as to what rights they do have, and do not have. And lastly, I presume, that some are old and infirm, and living on fixed incomes, and have no way to move easily, and may even have medical devices in place (oxygen generators, tub and shower handles, special phones or alert systems), which if this is the case, have an even harder time to move.
So, what we need, is an advocate for the lease holders, and Oracle could provide at a minimum that for goodwill and public perception, and may be able to help these people without handing out a single dime of their own money, just the cost of some local attorneys, who also probably want to do something to get their name out their in a positive way... it could be a win / win for everyone, if they start blaming the right people and accepting the responsibility of the right or wrong that has happened, that is a big if, but an easy fix.
I just believe a lot has been lost in translation, and a lot as been lost through the telling and retelling from many different points of view, and flavored by media bias (big company boot poor out of home), just tell oracle and the county, state, and local government to do their job and help the displaced understand what is available to them. Simple and easy.
Fascism, not, Socialism, not, Media piece during holidays that pulls the right heart strings, yes.
Unfortunately, the golem figured out that it could make the rune-writers make the runes say what it wanted them to say, and even get them to pretend the golem was a real boy, even a real boy with super powers, and could send them to the corn field if the golem became angry.