A political action committee funded by local property owners is gathering signatures in an effort to put a measure on the November ballot that would change how landlord taxes are spent and make more types of homes exempt from rent control.
The proposal by the Berkeley Rental Housing Coalition is a response to another effort aimed at the November ballot put forward by the Rent Stabilization Board, which seeks to strengthen the city’s rent control ordinance and extend rent control to “golden duplexes,” which are duplexes where an owner occupied at least half the unit in December 1979.
Read the full property owners’ proposal and the Rent Board proposal.
If approved, property owners’ measure would direct 20% of business taxes of rental properties, which now fund a variety of city housing projects, anti-displacement funds and the Rent Board, toward a new “Berkeley Housing and Homeless Protection Account.” Funding from the account would go directly to landlords to help struggling tenants pay rent, in a similar manner to pandemic-era rent relief programs. The Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA), which funds the PAC behind the proposal, said the redirected revenue would generate about $1.2 million annually.
The 2.9% tax on landlords was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2016, despite a campaign costing the BPOA over $890,000 to oppose it.
The landlord group is marketing the proposal as a rent relief measure that would create a permanent pool of money for housing retention and aid. The city put about $5 million toward its existing Housing Retention Fund during the pandemic, and that money was quickly used.
The BPOA and the Rent Board are both gathering signatures for their opposing measures. If both make it the November ballot and pass, the measure with the most votes will become law. It’s one of two pairs of dueling measures that could be headed to the November election, along with a pair of parcel taxes that differ on spending for street safety infrastructure.
The majority of the property owners’ ballot language attempts to shrink the Rent Board’s power and oppose its possible expansion, while making some concessions. It would also remove compensation entirely for commissioners, who currently make about $1,400 monthly, according to Commissioner Soli Alpert.
The BPOA has long opposed the Rent Board’s attempts to include golden duplexes under the rent control ordinance. The Rent Board’s latest attempt to include them failed in 2022.
The property owners’ new proposal would expand the exemption for golden duplexes by changing the definition of “owner.” The Rent Board defines an owner is as someone with “at least 50% interest” in a home, but the property owners’ resolution would ease that requirement.
It also would add an exemption to rent control rules for single-family home rentals where the owner owns no more than two properties within the City. Currently, single-family homes are fully covered by rent control if they have current tenants who moved in before 1996, or have five or more rooms rented out individually with separate leases.
“Our ballot measure creates incentives for small owners to take that big leap into becoming a rental housing provider,” BPOA President Krista Gulbransen wrote in a statement. Gulbransen called the current regulations on single-family homes “heavy-handed.”
Accessory dwelling units, such as backyard cottages, are currently exempt from rent control, and the City Council in 2022 shot down the Rent Board’s attempt to place them under the ordinance. The property owners’ measure attempts to expand this exemption to include more than one ADU for a given property.
Both measures enshrine tenants’ rights to form unions and bargain in good faith with property owners, but the requirements to create the union are different. The Rent Board’s measure requires a petition signed by residents in more than half of the occupied units in a complex to gain these rights, while the property owners’ measure would require two-thirds of all tenants.
Members of the rent board criticized the landlord group’s proposal as misleading, and a threat to tenant protections.
“We are disappointed but not surprised that rather than making their case to the voters on their opposition to tenant protections, the landlords and wealthy special interests are presenting their assault on tenants’ rights as a good thing for tenants in order to confuse the public,” Alpert said in a statement.
Correction: The article initially said Rent Board commissioners make $1,400 annually. They make about this amount monthly, according to the Rent Board.
