Honoring founding member

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MILT KRANTZ 1936-2022

Note from South Bay CLT board members, Sandy Perry & Liz Gonzalez

With great sadness we share that our beloved founding board member, Milt Krantz, passed away on November 21, 2022. Milt was eager to get work underway so that we could own property and live together in our land trust. In meetings, he described that he imagined driving through arches that had a sign reading: South Bay Community Land Trust.

Milt got involved with tenant issues when a tenant association was organized in 2015 at his senior housing complex, DeRose Gardens Apartments in San Jose. Milt quickly became a leader in the DeRose Gardens Tenants Association and played a key role in resisting unaffordable rent increases and ending abuses by management. Milt was also instrumental in advocating for transfer of the land DeRose Gardens was built on to ownership by the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, thereby preventing rent increases that would have resulted in displacement for most of the tenants. He became a tenant leader in the Affordable Housing Network.

Milt was one of the first San Jose housing advocates to point out the problem with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) formula that ties rents to the local Annual Median Income. This is particularly problematic in Silicon Valley, where extreme wealth inequality causes the Annual Median Income to rise much faster than the income of tenants trying to afford to live in LIHTC housing.

Milt was also a prominent leader in the San Jose rent control movement from 2015-18, successfully fighting for a reduced annual rent increase cap and a just cause eviction policy, to help keep people in their homes. Finally, Milt was one of the very first San Jose residents to advocate exploring Limited Equity Cooperatives and Community Land Trusts as tools for solving the housing crisis.

Not only during the intense housing activism of his later years, but also his decades-long career as a social worker, Milt acquired a well-deserved reputation for compassion and concern for the least of our brothers and sisters. We remember him for his accomplishments, but even more we treasure the cheerfulness, dedication, and sincerity that he brought to everyone he worked with in our battle to build a better world. May he rest in peace, we continue our work even more fervently with his memory driving us forward.