Photos of the Candidates
Pro-Tenant Slate

Your Berkeley Tenants Union is getting busy this election season!

Members must pay their dues if you want to vote on endorsements. Dues are a sliding scale. Contact “info at berkeleytenants dot org” to learn more.

These days, BTU communicates about actions via emails and Facebook. Be sure to like the Facebook page you see displayed on the sidebar to the right!

Be sure that you are on the mailing list too!

BTU has monthly clinics for free counseling if you are in trouble. We are also working on several ballot measures, and of course we urge you to support the Pro-Tenant Slate for Rent Board. If you want to volunteer to help get activists from BTU and like-minded organizations elected to the Berkeley Rent Board, you can sign up here to assist the Right2Housing Slate:
https://berkeleytenants.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d3053fd94934e92d237a8b9e8&id=c69a08e63a&e=469b9ffc9e

ABOUT THE TENANT CONVENTION

The Berkeley Tenant Convention is a decades-old biennial event in which all Berkeley residents who fully support rent control are invited to nominate the progressive, pro-tenant slate for the Berkeley Rent Board. The sponsors of the 2020 Convention included the Berkeley Tenants Union, Berkeley Citizens Action, the Berkeley Democrats (NOT the Berkeley Democratic Club), the Cal Berkeley Democrats, the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America, Friends of Adeline, the Gray Panthers, the Green Party, the NAACP, Our Revolution East Bay, SEIU 1021, UAW 2865 (the UC student-workers union), the Young Democratic Socialists of America – UC Berkeley, and Young Democrats for Justice in Palestine – East Bay.

ABOUT THE CANDIDATES

Photo of 2020 Pro-TenantSlate
2020 Pro-Tenant Slate

The candidates chosen at this year’s convention are Dominique Walker, who works at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; Mari Mendonca, a lifelong Berkeley resident who was appointed to the Rent Board recently; Xavier Johnson, who is a legal fellow at Centro Legal de la Raza; incumbent attorney Leah Simon-Weisberg, who has worked for San Francisco’s Eviction Defense Collaborative and Tenants Together; and Andy Kelley, Communications Director at the California League of Conservation Voters.

They are calling their campaign the Right2Housing Slate.

You can watch the whole 2020 Tenant Convention on video at BTU’s Facebook page, and keep up with the priorities and activities of our candidates at their website: https://berkeleyrentboard.org

FOR MORE INFO

Tenant Convention Slate for Berkeley Rent Board
“About 615 electronic ballots and 95 paper ballots were cast, this is an unprecedented turnout. Because of the pandemic, most efforts were done online.”
http://berkeleycitizensaction.org/?p=1193

About Mari
“She is City Councilmember Ben Bartlett’s appointee on the city’s Housing Advisory Commission. She is a member of Friends of Adeline, a neighborhood group that is working to stop gentrification in south Berkeley and to help shape the area’s future as it undergoes new planning. She has also been involved with unions.”
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/10/29/mari-mendonca-community-activist-appointed-to-fill-rent-board-vacancy#:~:text=Mari%20Mendonca%2C%20a%20Berkeley%20native,17%20to%20appoint%20Mendonca.

About Leah
“As current vice chair of the rent board, Simon-Weisberg’s legal and policymaking experience is part of what makes her an important member of the board, according to Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín.”
https://www.dailycal.org/2020/07/05/a-valued-partner-leah-simon-weisberg-runs-for-reelection-on-berkeley-rent-board/

Help Right2Housing Slate in the Election
https://berkeleyrentboard.org

2016-RSB-convention-flyer-IMAGE-1200x1200FNLThe 2016 Rent Board Convention to select a pro-tenant slate for the elected Rent Board will be held on April 24th – THIS SUNDAY! – at the South Berkeley Senior Center on Ellis at Ashby. The gathering is sponsored this year by BTU, Friends of Adeline, the Berkeley NAACP, Berkeley Green Party, Berkeley Progressive Alliance, Berkeley Citizens Action, Socialist Alliance, the Peace and Freedom Party, CalSERVE, and UC Berkeley Students for Bernie Sanders.

The convention has been held each election year by a coalition of progressive groups for over 20 years in order to present a unified slate for the November Rent Board election. This year, there are 11 candidates for four seats. Because Rent Board Commissioner is the only elected office in Berkeley with term limits, there are only two protenant incumbents: Asa Dodsworth and Alejandro Soto-Vigil.
Candidate statements are on the convention website. Asa Dodsworth and Marcia Levinson did not send written responses. Sponsoring groups also send representatives to rate the candidates, interview them, and get more information about specific concerns of their membership. The convention site will also host the ratings and comments from community screeners, as well as the rules of the convention.

Candidate statements, screener feedback, convention rules:
http://berkeleytenantsconvention.net/

Candidates are:

Asa Dodsworth, Marcia Levenson, Matthew Lewis, Thomas Lord, Christina Murphy, Poki Namkung, Christine Schwartz, Leah Simon-Weisberg, Alejandro Soto-Vigil, Igor Tregub, Eleanor Walden. Dodsworth, Simon-Weisberg, Lewis, and Tregub have served on the BTU steering committee.

BEWARE! You must be inside for all candidate statements in order to vote. Folks not in by 2 PM may not get ballots. Convention starts Sunday at 1:30 PM!

DEMO_1106
Scenes like this will no longer be confined to Southside if revisions to the Demolition Ordinance allow destruction of small rental properties to build expensive commuter apartments.

DATE: November 5, 2013
TO: Planning Commissioners
RE: Demolition Ordinance

SUMMARY: Please preserve affordable housing by again recommending the June 4 compromise on the Demolition Ordinance. Please find attached our petition — with 270 signatures.

Respected Planning Commissioners:

The Berkeley Tenants Union is extremely concerned about proposed changes to the demolition ordinance. As you may recall, you already approved changes to this zoning code in the spring. We think it might be a bit confusing that this law is before you once again, so we have tried to provide a comprehensive summary with links to all relevant documents in this correspondence.

In December of 2011, the Berkeley City Council directed staff to draft amended language to Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 23C.08, the “Demolition and Elimination of Dwelling Units Ordinance.” (Document: Council Direction 12-6-11) In June of 2013, staff presented a draft that met all the requests Council made in 2011, and was approved by the Rent Board and the Planning Commission. The same draft has also been presented one month before, at the 4×4 Committee, and neither Mayor Bates nor Councilman Capitelli voiced any concerns with the draft. On June 4, it looked like Council was going to pass this compromise draft (Document: June 4 draft), until time ran out on the meeting.

Then something changed. The Council began to question the June 4 compromise, and considered a new draft, perhaps hastily prepared, presented at the July 2 Council meeting. (Document: July 2 Draft). The new draft appeared to be based on requests made by developer Equity Residential (Document: ER Letter to Council), who are now Berkeley’s largest landlord. Since Council got letters of objection from many civic groups, including the Sierra Club, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, Berkeley Neighborhoods Council, and Berkeley Tenants Union, they sent the Ordinance back to the Planning Commission and the Housing Advisory Commission.

What do these drafts say?

Currently BMC 23C says “controlled rental units” cannot be eliminated unless the owner “cannot make a fair return on investment by maintaining the dwelling unit as a part of the rental housing market” and that those apartments must also be “seriously deteriorated beyond the conditions which might reasonably be expected due to normal use.” It also says that demolished rent controlled units must be replaced with permanently affordable housing. (Document: DemoCURRENT)

Problems with the current law arose because the City Attorney decided that empty units which would otherwise be under rent control are not “controlled rental units” and therefore not subject to the rules above. This means any empty unit can be torn down with no mitigation for the loss of affordable older units which would be under rent control if they were rented. Such a policy encourages owners to leave buildings to rot, promotes evictions and harassment, and may violate not only the Demolition law, but also the voter-approved Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance. (Document: NPO)

To end the controversy about the interpretation of the law, the Rent Board and the City Council called for revisions, but Council also asked that new rules require “units are replaced with an equal or greater number of new units inclusive of the current number of existing affordable units.” (Document: Council Direction 12-6-11) Likewise, the June 4 draft required developers who tear down multiunit buildings built before 1980 (those covered by rent control) replace them with “designated below-market rate units equal in number and comparable in size to the demolished units.”

However, the July and August drafts do not call for one-for-one replacement of affordable rent controlled units with housing for low-income renters. The July 2 and August 30 drafts both require developers pay a fee into the Housing Trust Fund. However, the fee in the July 2 draft is about 10% of what it costs to build an affordable unit, and the fee in the August 30 draft is unspecified and thus could be changed by City Council at any time. (Document: Worse Aug 30 draft)

There are numerous other problems with the July and August drafts. For example, one scheme outlined by developer Equity Residential was included in the July draft. This calls for replacement units in the new building which would be “designated rent increase restricted” – however, the Rent Board (Document: Berkeley Rent Board letter) and East Bay Community Law Center (Document: EBCLC Letter) have both pointed out that this violates the state law called Costa-Hawkins, because that law banned any new rent control in California, even if you call it by another name.

In addition, later drafts contradict the voter-approved Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance and may be challenged in court if they are made law. (Document: NPO)

Several community groups have sent communications on this issue that raise various additional concerns, such as the wisdom of tearing down perfectly fine small buildings at all, and the environmental impact of encouraging growth through demolition. You can find copies of public communications from The Sierra Club, Berkeley NAACP, Berkeley Neighborhoods Council, and Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assn. on our website along with all documents we have linked to in the text above.

The real question here is what kind of community benefits does Berkeley need in exchange for allowing speculators to tear down a useable rent controlled building in order to build a bigger one with market rate apartments? This is not just about what legal mitigations a nexus study might allow. We can actually choose, as Berkeley did in the 1970s, to ban demolition altogether. BTU hopes you might realize that rent control has been Berkeley’s most successful affordable housing program, and that rent controlled units should be preserved, even if they are not rented at this time.

You can choose not to allow demolition – and you should choose this if there is going to be a long wait for a Nexus study.

Please see the attached petition, with 270 signatures. Please note that, following pages with electronic signatures and comments, there are scans of the paper petitions.

Please again recommend the June 4 compromise draft.

Sincerely,
Berkeley Tenants Union Steering Committee, on behalf of the tenants of Berkeley

P.S. All documents mentioned in this correspondence can be found here:
https://www.berkeleytenants.org/?page_id=773

Demolition Ordinance to Housing Commission ThursdayBerkeley’s Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) will consider several hot issues at their meeting on Thursday September 12, including mandatory retrofits of seismically unsafe apartment buildings and alarming changes to the demolition ordinance which would threaten rent control and lead to evictions.

The HAC will also hear an update about the exciting new program that offers energy efficient upgrades to tenants and landlords, a proposed ordinance declaring mold unhealthy in rental units, and changes to the affordable housing fees developers of new buildings must pay to offset the impact of unaffordable units on the community.

TENANTS, Come Out and Have Your Say!

South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis Street, at 7 PM Thursday

Demolition Ordinance
The Berkeley NAACP joined with other organizations like BTU and the Sierra Club in opposing new drafts of the Demolition Ordinance which don’t require rent controlled apartments be replaced with units affordable to low-income residents.

The Berkeley NAACP top priority recommendation in the Housing category for the report from their summer Town Hall meeting was, “Demolition Ordinance will include the replacement of all affordable housing that is demolished.” Unfortunately, there is a new draft of the demo ordinance that came out on August 30 which would allow developers to tear down rent controlled units, even those which are occupied or in good condition, and not replace them. The new draft allows developers to pay an unspecified fee which could be changed by City Council at any time.

BTU is standing by our request that Council approve the June 4th compromise draft, and we are still collecting signatures for our petition, which we will also present to the HAC.

https://www.change.org/petitions/berkeley-city-council-preserve-affordable-housing

NAACP Town Hall report: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_LPC/Item%2012.A.2_NAACP%20Corrospondance.pdf

Seismic Retrofits
BTU is determined that tenants should not be forced to pay a rent increase just because their building will stand up for 3-5 more seconds in a major earthquake.

Mold
Right now, Berkeley Housing Code Enforcement can’t cite for mold in apartment buildings because even severe mold, which causes asthma and other health problems, is not defined in our city codes as a hazard. This new law is based on one that has protected San Francisco tenants for years.

If you can’t come to the Housing Commission meeting Thursday, write to them care of kslee@cityofberkeley.info