Developers would like to be able to tear down perfectly fine rent controlled buildings and replace them with fancy apartments for dot-com commuters.
But the current Demolition law says you can’t tear down rent controlled units, ever, unless they are pretty much uninhabitable, and unless you mitigate their loss by replacing them with permanently affordable units. So lately there have been a lot of applications at the Zoning Board claiming that units are not rent controlled. Through my role at the Rent Board and my work with the Berkeley Tenants Union, I have been showing up month after month to lead the fight to save these units and uphold the law. There is an 18-unit building on Durant which was 100% tenant occupied one year ago – now it’s empty, and the demolition application will be sent to Zoning soon.
What’s going on here?
It all began with the state law, Costa Hawkins. In 1996 the state outlawed the kind of rent control Berkeley voters had put into place, and also made it illegal to bring new buildings under any rent control at all. So new construction can’t have rent control, and any rent controlled units we allow to be torn down cannot be replaced. Yet our housing stock is growing older, and many owners do let their properties get into pretty bad condition. Our current law needs to be improved, but we also have to make sure we don’t lose affordable housing in the process.
In June 2013 the City Council considered a compromise draft of revisions to Berkeley’s Demolition Ordinance. The June draft had evolved from years of discussion, and the Planning Commission, Rent Board, and Housing Advisory Commission supported it. Unexpectedly, the City Council rejected the draft, and started suggesting changes in complete contradiction to the instructions Council had given City staff in December 2011.
Tenant activists and preservationists joined forces to urge our leaders to accept the June 4, 2013 compromise. The Sierra Club, NAACP, Neighborhoods Council, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, Berkeley Tenants Union and East Bay Community Law Center all spoke against the newer drafts. Most agreed that any change require one-for-one replacement of rent controlled housing with units permanently affordable to low income residents. After a couple of months of public meetings, the Demolition Ordinance disappeared from agendas.
We expect yet another version of the Demolition Ordinance to come before Council very soon and we will be there to make sure one-for-one replacement remains the law.