She lost her home. She doesn’t want to lose her city council seat

By Alexei Koseff

OJAI — On a pleasant June evening, in the airy chambers of the quaint Mission Revival city hall, the council gathered to discuss the fate of one of their own.

It was more than a year since Suza Francina, a longtime councilmember in this small arts- and wellness-oriented town tucked into a mountain valley in Ventura County, lost her rental housing. Now she was staying with a friend outside her district as she struggled to find a new place to live. A recent grand jury report had concluded she was violating residency requirements and should be replaced.

When the meeting began, Mayor Betsy Stix pleaded with the assembled dozens in the audience, gray hair and glasses abounding, to commit to civility, respect, peace and love. “In our community, we can take the higher road and stop the finger pointing,” she said. “I’m going to urge everyone to just come together.”

Then the recriminations began.

One supporter of Francina’s read a poem declaring the city council “brought shame on our town and they have let us all down.” A caller invoked the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, suggesting democracy was at risk if Francina was allowed to keep her seat. Another councilmember angrily pushed back on rumors that he and his wife had filed the complaint that sparked the grand jury investigation. Stix herself quoted Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted former President Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents, to assert that the law should apply equally to everyone.

The proceedings were infused with the high drama typical of local politics, where every decision can become freighted with existential meaning.

This time, however, it felt perhaps true — a glimpse into a California that is increasingly out of reach, where the lack of affordable housing has distorted every facet of society and where millions of residents who once lived comfortably suddenly find themselves on the margins while those on the margins are pushed onto the streets.

“She’s a living, breathing example of the problem they are in denial about,” said Dee Reid, one of many friends of Francina’s who attended the June 13 meeting to speak on her behalf.

As the debate ticked past three hours — motions and countermotions and questions to the city attorney and then some more — Francina made a moral appeal to her colleagues: Consider her situation as a matter of justice for a renter who has fallen on hard times.

“Do you think Rosa Parks felt she was disobeying the law? I mean, look at all the laws that were changed through public protest,” she said. “There are absolutely numerous exceptions to upholding wrong laws. And this is a wrong law. It doesn’t work in reality.”

‘Here’s our reward. We can’t afford it’

For 67 years, Suza Francina has lived in Ojai. The gregarious 74-year-old moved from Holland as a child, sponsored by the family’s Pentecostal church, and arrived in a valley covered in orange orchards, as her father prophetically dreamed. After spending the 1967 “Summer of Love” in San Francisco, she settled back home, teaching preschool and yoga, writing and raising a family.

For more than a decade, Francina has served on the city council. An advocate for environmentally friendly building standards and more bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in this bucolic burg of 7,600 people, she is also the liaison to the county animal shelter and transportation commission.

And for the past 18 months, Francina has technically been homeless. When the house she rented for more than eight years sold in November 2021, the new owner kicked her out to remodel, leaving her with exceedingly few options.

Like so many California communities that rely heavily on tourism and that have historically attracted newcomers with the promise of convenience and contentment, Ojai is becoming too expensive even for many of its longtime residents. Housing development never kept up with demand, while guesthouses that once provided a more economical option are being converted into vacation rentals in spite of a local ban. With fewer young families able to settle in the city, the school board recently voted to close three schools due to declining enrollment.

“It’s ironic,” said Francina, who remembers renting her first home for $75 per month. “We worked so hard to preserve it and here’s our reward. We can’t afford it.”

If she hadn’t been worried about maintaining her district residency, Francina might have left Ojai altogether, moving in with her daughter or to cheaper housing outside the city limits. Her district — 2.2 square miles south of the highway that cuts through town — includes the golf course, the famed Ojai Valley Inn and city hall, but few apartments. A low-income development on the outskirts has a years-long waiting list.

Nevertheless, Francina had no interest in giving up her seat on the city council. She enjoys playing her part in preserving the beauty and small-town character of Ojai. She says it’s important to have an old-timer like her, who knows the history and the residents of the community, helping to make decisions.

“I’ve sat in apartments not in my district and thought about it long and hard,” Francina said. “But I took an oath.”

Hopeful leads for new homes evaporated because the rent was too high or they didn’t accept dogs — Francina has two — or the landlord backed out at the last minute. At one point, as she became more desperate, Francina nearly fell for an online scam where someone pretended to rent out a house they did not actually own.

“Finding a rental is like having a part-time job,” she said. “It took me almost a year to realize that what I was looking for doesn’t exist in my district.”

In the meantime, Francina put her things in storage, declared herself homeless and moved into a 140-square-foot room above the garage at a friend’s home, high up on a hill at the edge of Ojai.

The “cabin,” as she dubbed it because it felt like camping, had a killer view of the valley and no kitchen or shower. It was also across town from her district — but Francina figured she had taken sufficient steps to maintain her residency while she continued to search for a new place to live.

“It’s a gray area. It would be better if I was sleeping in my van,” she said. “But I did not rent a nice comfortable apartment in another district.”

‘Only homeowners will feel secure’

The issue of Francina’s living situation exploded last month, when the Ventura County grand jury published a report that determined an unnamed Ojai council member had moved out of their district in December 2021 and failed to establish a new residency there within 30 days, thereby vacating their seat under local ordinance.

The grand jury recommended that the city council immediately appoint a replacement until another election could take place — or, if the council member refused to step down, seek permission from the California attorney general to file a “quo warranto” lawsuit, a proceeding to determine whether someone has the legal right to hold office.

Francina had been awaiting the report since last fall, when she met with the grand jury. It’s unclear how she came under investigation, though she had never hidden her housing troubles and she was interviewed in local media about it. Keith Frost, foreperson for the Ventura County grand jury, declined to comment.

Ojai officials had 90 days to respond. A letter drafted by the city attorney rejected the grand jury’s conclusion — “The applicability of these requirements is unclear when a City Councilmember has classified themselves as homeless within their district and when the precise facts of the Councilmember’s residency status are uncertain” — though Francina hoped for further action.

She wanted the city council to amend the election code so that she could definitively keep her seat while she searched for somewhere else to live in her district. Political opponents were using her housing insecurity to push her off the council, she argued, and the ordinance had become a tool of discrimination against the voters who elected her and renters more broadly.

“If they do not amend this ordinance, only homeowners will feel secure on the council. That’s unethical,” Francina said. “You will not have a diverse council if they do not amend this ordinance.”

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