East Palo Alto has changed substantially in recent decades. Housing costs have grown at an out-of-control pace. To resist displacement, people are overcrowding to afford housing, over spending beyond 30% of incomes to stay in place, and enduring housing conditions that are not habitable to avoid retaliation from landlords. When households do get displaced, there are not many nearby alternatives and as a result people are forced to move far from EPA. The purpose of Opportunity to Purchase is to add an anti-displacement tool to protect EPA residents from being forced out of the city, by specifically targeting absentee landlords who don’t live in EPA but profit off of our community.