Berkeley's rent control law protects rich and poor alike from the vicissitudes of the real estate market. Rent control subsidies should be confined to the truly needy.

There's a reason why Berkeley's apartments are falling apart: There's no incentive to fix them up. Why would you invest in something that offers no hope of return?

Rent Control exists in most of our nations, and indeed the worlds greatest metropolises, to secure affordable housing for all residents. With out rent control to level the playing field, the cost of housing, segregates society into its various and specific economic classes. Rent control is not simply another limit on the actions of landlords, it is a social intervention, that says it is unfair to allow one person the right to out bid another for their home.

The cost of housing is the result of supply and demand economics. When demand out paces supply, rents go up; and the quality of life, our residents can afford becomes impacted. Rent Control is however not a direct solution for the volatility and pressure of these highly desirable rental markets.

A direct solution would be to increase the supply of available housing, therefore relieving the "housing demand" pressure and reducing rental prices. To remove rent control before these concerns are addressed, would however be to deny the practical reasons and logic for establishing it in the first place. Only when supply has out paced demand, the vacancy rates have risen, and rental prices decreased, will the rather complex orchestrations of rent control become unnecessarily cumbersome.

Unfortunately the main push to increase the Berkeley housing stock has been funded by developers who think we want/need skyscrapers. Berkeley resident don't want Sky Scrappers. Berkeley resident don't want the shaded, and windy downtown areas that all other metropolises suffer, they like Berkeley's friendly sun filled human sized architecture.

There are other ways to increase density. Berkeley faces rental housing prices to match the busiest and most desirable metropolises. We can create the opportunity for the construction of more housing units through a couple of simple methods employed by some of these other metropolises. The general gist I propose is small beautiful homes. Small is human sized, and intimate. Smaller homes are easier to heat, warm and wonderful places to live. Smaller doesn't mean less room, it means less large rooms, and more small rooms. Where one standard to large house sits, could be a village castle cluster of 3-4 smaller 1200 sf homes.

--Decrease and or eliminate the minimum size requirements of residential units, and their bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, and bathrooms.
--Reduce or eliminate the required number of parking spaces per unit. The current parking requirements, sacrifice develop-able space for the right of all potential resident to posses a personal car, even if many never use those parking spaces.
--Raise the height limits in the one and two story residential areas, to two and three story height limits.

>>These methods would retain the open space, and natural direct sunshine that give Berkeley much of its unique charm. Additionally all of Berkeley,i.e. not just the developers, would be zoned to participate in and profit from the increase in housing density.

All arguments for dismantling rent control are compelling, but the most compelling is that it does not truly serve those in need. Only subsidies to individuals will do that---penalizing landlords will not provide the needy with affordable housing. The affordable housing business itself is an expensive one, so this way the City gets its affordable housing without having to pay for it. The rent board is a scary fascist group that tries to stir up trouble between landlord and tenant. I have seen this myself with officials trying to get tenants to say 'what's really happening' on the property as if some lie is being told to them by the landlord. It's abusive, and the landlord is actually funding the rent board. They treat landlords as the enemy--it's outrageous. End rent control and provide those in need with vouchers if they can prove their economic status.

It would be necessary to assure that the reasons for the reform were acceptable to both renters and home owners. Reworking the terms for exemption from rent control might be one acceptable reason.

you hardly give an impartial argument here. One paragraph against and a long diatribe for. Talk about stacking the deck.

Berkeley's rent control is working pretty well and to be commended.

Properties of less than four units owned by individuals shoul be fully exempt. In the fifties, many rooms or duplexes were bought by minorities for retirement income (and for company). This is still being done and these properties should not be subject to Rent Board bureaucracy or unscrupulous tentants.

Rent subsidies should be available to people that need it ... the money spent on the rent control bureaucracy should be directed directly to people. We might even see fewer people of color leaving Berkeley. It would be interesting to see a racial breakdown of those people living in rent controled apartments.

The question is posed as to weather it is time to reform the program or not. But it seems that there is some implication on specific ways to reform it, and that is not part of the question.

I am very cautious about deciding these issues with such broad strokes, given what we know about who influences city policies on these matters. We know that landlords and developers have a very favorable environment to benefit from.

That said, what is the objective? Do we want to protect the investment of the landlords, in general? If so, then we need to think very hard about what they have put into this investment. If, for example they have prop 13 property tax assessments on their rental properties, they pay very few prop. taxes compared to recent home owners, and therefore, it seems ludicrous that they be allowed to charge market-level rents. This is a sure recipe to distribute more wealth to people that already have it, and shift the burden of city revenue from prop. taxes to recent home buyers.

If on the other hand, we want to protect low-income people, we need to make sure we are not doing so at the expense of existing tax-payers. What does subsidized rents mean? That the city use property tax money to pay the landlords the difference between market-level rent, and what low-income people pay them for rent? This would be outrageously unfair to those of us that pay some really heavy property taxes. We don't want it to go either to help long-term low-income renters, or their landlords who want to make market rate profits.

We also need to make sure that whatever policy we choose does not make Berkeley a destination for low-income renters on a long-term basis (We can put a cap on low-income status renters to say 5/7/10 years -- as in, you can live on below-market rent for up to 10 years in Berkeley, but then, you will not receive the protections of rent control. This implies that we have social programs in place to help people stand on their own two feet financially, and/or move to a retirement center, etc.)

I have been a renter for many years, and recently an owner in Berkeley. The rent control laws never protected me from insatiable landlords. Knowing that there is a $3 million bureaucracy in place for rather ineffectual purposes is disturbing to me as a tax payer.

So, to sum up, get this issue discussed in much more detail, rather than this broad question. The way it is formulated, it seems obvious that the methods discussed will do nothing for the issue at hand, and just serve to shift money around to possibly the landlords. We really ought to think through these issues very very carefully before we start making real impact.

Market rent rates and incentives instead of mandatory control, benefits the landlords only.

I think it's time to re-examine and see what might be improved.

Rent Control is anti-landlord, and you don't get more rental housing stock by being anti-landlord, nor do you get more rental housing stock by keeping the rents so low that tennants with rediculously low rent never move out.

Rent Control steals the landlord's equity, which they are going to need to maintain the property, pay the taxes and handle other tennant issues.

Rent Control was created by a (person) who wanted to steal private property from the landlord, and give it to the City, falsely thinking Communism actually works!!!

The rate of rental increases over the years has not been realistic. An example of this can be seen by the amount that has been charged to each unit by the rent board.

In 1985 the rent board charged around $25.00 per rental unit per year for registration with the board. this year, the reg. fee per unit is about $175.00 per unit.
If you were to ask the rent board Commissioners why the fee has gone up so much, they would likely tell you because of inflation.
Well, hasn't the landlord's costs of doing business also increased during this time by about the same percentage?

The law, the way it is written, creates, rather than solves conflict.

Thank God for vacancy de-control, which is the only sane rule in this whole mess. Oh-yea, that was a State rather than a City law, and thank goodness State law trumps City law otherwise we Berkeleyans would have been in some serious trouble by this point.

The bloated budget of the Rent board should be used for direct help to the homeless not supporting another inefficient government agency. The present fraud charges shows what a useless agency with too much money will get up to.
Throw the bums out.

The rent control board does nothing - and costs the City millions of dollara a year that the City could use to actually subsidize the poor, not everyone across the board, wealthy included. Reform means a chance to target the help where it needs to go, not burden individual private residents.

Rent control and eviction controls should be:
a. Limited to multiple 4+ unit apartment buildings.
b. Raised at, not below, the cost of living increase for the area per year, with automatic increases equal to increases in city imposed taxes and fees.
c. Generally replaced by subsidies available to low income citizens who have voted here in the last two elections and have no arrest record, paid for from the whole tax base.
d. If the rent board is retained at all, it should be appointed like other city commissions.

GET RID OF ALL OF IT....IT IS TOTALLY ARCHAIC, OUTDATED AND HAS NEVER DONE WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSE TO DO EXCEPT CAUSE PROBLEMS, COST CITY TOO MUCH MONEY OR OPERATE AND HAS NEVER BEEN RESPECTIVE OF A DEGREE OF ALL OF BERKELEY CITIZENS, OWNERS VS RENTERS....IT IS A SHAMBLES AND NEEDS TO CEASE TOTALLY.

I will be glad to give up my rent controlled apartment and pay fair market rent as soon as all property is assessed at its current value.

My apartment is less under-priced than many homes in the hills - I can afford market rent (as I can tell by rentals in adjoining cities but can Berkeley landlords and property owners afford taxes based on their beloved 'free market'?

Rent should be fair to tenants AND landlords! If landlords are being penalized for having rentals in Berkeley, they are probably less inclinded to keep up the property because they get very little return on. To keep rentals at all, we need laws fair to both tenants and landlords. Students need the rentals to live in!

If we want to assist low income households with buying food, we don't restrict the price of food in stores, we give the low income household food stamps. If we want to assist low income households with housing, we should give the low income households housing vouchers.