{"id":3407,"date":"2026-03-21T15:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T15:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/tenants-sue-coronado-corporate-landlords-alleging-illegal-displacement-and-loss-of-affordable-housing-davis-vanguard\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T15:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T15:28:22","slug":"tenants-sue-coronado-corporate-landlords-alleging-illegal-displacement-and-loss-of-affordable-housing-davis-vanguard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/21\/tenants-sue-coronado-corporate-landlords-alleging-illegal-displacement-and-loss-of-affordable-housing-davis-vanguard\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenants Sue Coronado, Corporate Landlords Alleging Illegal Displacement and Loss of Affordable Housing – Davis Vanguard"},"content":{"rendered":"

CORONADO, Calif. \u2014 Current and former tenants of the Del Island apartment complex have filed a lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against the property\u2019s corporate owners and the City of Coronado, challenging actions they say violated state affordable housing laws and led to the displacement of low-income residents.
The case, Del Island Tenants v. 308 Orange, LLC, et al.<\/em>, was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, and names multiple corporate entities as defendants along with the City of Coronado.
According to the complaint, Del Island is a 29-unit apartment complex that has operated for nearly three decades as affordable housing for income-eligible residents under recorded covenants tied to public financing provided in 1996. Those covenants required that units be reserved for very low- and low-income households through Jan. 31, 2026.
The filing states that after purchasing the property on May 22, 2025, the new owners did not rent vacant units to eligible tenants or complete needed repairs. Instead, the complaint alleges, they began renovating vacant units without permits, offered tenants payments to leave, and pushed residents to vacate while planning to convert units to market-rate or short-term rentals.
\u201cMy family has been living in Del Island since 1990, so I was concerned when the affordable housing complex was sold to new owners, who then started renovating vacant units,\u201d said Kimberly Graham, president of Del Island Tenants. \u201cThen, last August, my neighbors and I received a notice offering us cash to move out of our home, all to enable the new owners to renovate and flip the affordable housing complex.\u201d
She added, \u201cI hope that Scott Darnell, also a long-time Coronado resident, and a principal in the five corporations that bought Del Island, will now work to ensure that the complex remains affordable for the long term.\u201d
The complaint states that at the time of the sale, five of the 29 units were vacant. It alleges that following the change in ownership and subsequent actions, 20 units are now vacant, increasing the vacancy rate from 17 percent to 69 percent.
Tenants also allege that the City of Coronado, which assumed responsibility for enforcing the property\u2019s affordability covenants as the successor to its redevelopment agency, did not act after being contacted about the situation. The complaint states that the city \u201cfailed to take any action to cure the violations of the covenants by the Owners.\u201d
\u201cThe City of Coronado failed in its duty to the tenants and the community,\u201d said Catherine A. Rodman, director and supervising attorney for Affordable Housing Advocates. \u201cThe City identified Del Island as a property at risk of conversion from affordable to market-rate, and was contacted by affordable housing developers interested in working with the City to keep Del Island affordable. Despite this, residents were displaced, and the community is at risk of losing much-needed affordable housing.\u201d
The lawsuit was filed by the tenant association with representation from Affordable Housing Advocates, the National Housing Law Project, and the Public Interest Law Project.
\u201cAs alleged in the lawsuit, Del Island\u2019s new owners are violating tenants\u2019 rights and depriving Coronado families of affordable homes during a rampant housing crisis,\u201d said Lila Gitesatani, staff attorney for the National Housing Law Project. \u201cCorporate landlords can\u2019t short change their legal obligations to their tenants just to line their own pockets. We\u2019re working with the tenants to ensure people are put over profits.\u201d
\u201cWhen the building owners accepted public funding to rehabilitate their private property, they entered into a contract with the City to keep the housing affordable and follow the laws of the state,\u201d said Melody Osuna, staff attorney for the Public Interest Law Project. \u201cBoth the City and the owners have fallen short in their duties here.\u201d
The complaint alleges that neither the current owners nor their predecessor provided the required three-year, 12-month, or six-month notices before the anticipated expiration of affordability restrictions, as required under California law governing the preservation of assisted housing.
Plaintiffs are asking the court to order the owners to comply with the recorded covenants, restore the units to affordable housing use, and provide restitution to tenants who left the property. The filing also seeks to require the City of Coronado to enforce the covenants and ensure compliance with state law.
The complaint further requests that displaced tenants be given the opportunity to return to their units and that remaining units be rented to income-eligible households in accordance with the existing affordability requirements.
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The Vanguard provides the Davis Community with incisive in-depth coverage of local government on a wide variety of issues. Since 2006, The Vanguard has provided Davis and Yolo County with some of the best groundbreaking news coverage on local government and policy issues affecting our city, our schools, the county, and the Sacramento Region.<\/p>\n

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CORONADO, Calif. \u2014 Current and former tenants of the Del Island apartment complex have filed a lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against the property\u2019s corporate owners and the City of Coronado, challenging actions they say violated state affordable housing laws and led to the displacement of low-income residents.The case, Del Island Tenants v. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}