Berkeley Group Bids to Loosen Rent Control

SAN FRANCISCO —  A 300-member group of Berkeley landlords and homeowners has launched an effort that would crush one of California’s strongest rent control laws.

The initiative by the Black Property Owners Assn. would exempt from rent control at least 11,428 Berkeley dwellings, or more than 70% of the apartments and houses covered by the city’s 10-year-old law, according to rent control officials. The measure could go before voters in November.

“You would effectively end rent control as it’s known in Berkeley,” said Joseph Brooks, executive director of the city Rent Stabilization Board. “You would have an across-the-board rent hike, from a low of a few percentage points to a doubling or tripling in some cases.”

The measure calls for exempting from rent control all single-family homes and any apartments renting for less than 65% of what the federal government considers fair market price for comparable local housing.

During a petition drive that began last Friday, the Berkeley property owners group gathered about 3,480 signatures, 1,000 more than needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. City officials must verify the names on the petition.

Rent control proponents say weakening the law would make affordable housing scarce. The initiative’s sponsors say the ordinance already has caused many small rental property owners to leave Berkeley. The proposed changes, they say, will help property owners get what they believe is a fair return on their investments.

The initiative would provide relief to landlords who had been charging low rents when the Berkeley ordinance froze rents in 1980, said Jim Smith, president of the property owners association, a group composed mainly of black apartment owners and homeowners. With only annual cost-of-living increases, owners are unable to make a fair profit and enough money to keep up their properties, he said.

“Ten years of rent control and deferred maintenance catches up to you,” Smith said. “Eventually, you get to the point where your building is in such bad condition you can’t get desirable tenants.”

Typically, monthly rental rates in Alameda and Contra Costa counties range from $533 for an efficiency to $1,068 for a four-bedroom apartment, a federal housing spokesman said. The initiative would remove rent control restrictions on efficiency apartments renting for less than $346, and on four-bedroom dwellings priced below $694 per month.

In addition to Berkeley, 12 California cities, including Los Angeles, enforce some form of rent control, said Ken Baar, a Berkeley-based urban planner and rent control consultant. Unlike Los Angeles, Berkeley and five of the other cities bar owners from hiking rents when an apartment or house becomes vacant.

As a result, rent control laws in Berkeley and the other five cities--Santa Monica, East Palo Alto, West Hollywood, Palm Springs and Cotati--are considered tougher than those in cities such as Los Angeles, according to rent control experts.

Proportionately, Berkeley and Santa Monica have four times as many dwellings with rents frozen at long ago levels than does Los Angeles, where longtime tenants are the only ones who pay below fair market value, said Allan Heskin, an urban planning professor at UCLA.

“The difference is between a rent control law, like Berkeley’s, that says you’re trying to maintain affordable housing, and one (such as the ordinance in Los Angeles) that says you’re trying to protect the current tenant,” Heskin said.

The initiative’s sponsors missed a June 11 deadline to guarantee the measure a place on November’s ballot. The only way to get the measure on the November ballot is for city officials to verify the signatures in less than the 30 days they are allowed by law, city officials said.

Whenever it appears on the ballot, the question is bound to grab voters’ attention.

“Rent control is the biggest issue in Berkeley, and this is a major effort at amending the rent control laws,” Smith said. “There will be a heavy turnout on both sides.”