Keep Southside Livable

Southside feels both sides of the housing shortage

Too few homes make people compete for limited space and push rents higher. The loss of an occupied lower-cost apartment removes a home that someone can afford today. Southside experiences both pressures at once. The market does not measure human need. It measures ability to pay.

Berkeley's housing allocation for 2023 through 2031 calls for 8,934 homes. Most of that need is for very-low-, low-, and moderate-income households. The City's 2025 report shows that Berkeley has permitted 2,117 homes since the beginning of the current projection period, but only 594, or 28%, were in those three lower-income categories.

At 1921 Walnut Street, long-term tenants left a rent-controlled building that was demolished for UC Berkeley's Anchor House. The new project added student beds. It did not replace the affordability or protections those tenants lost.

Production and preservation are not opposing goals. Berkeley needs both. The public measure should be how many homes are completed and occupied, how many are affordable at each income level, who remains housed, and whether neighborhood infrastructure keeps pace.

Berkeley needs more homes, but the market cannot set the goal

I support adding homes throughout Berkeley, including in high-resource neighborhoods that have excluded lower-income residents through restrictive zoning and high prices. Under the present system, market-rate projects will be part of that production. I acknowledge that added supply can reduce competition for existing homes. I do not believe market-rate production should be the center of Berkeley's housing policy or that the market should decide who gets to remain.

Berkeley should implement its middle-housing rules fairly and support appropriate infill on surface parking lots, underused commercial sites, upper floors, transit corridors, and other already-developed land near services. Fire, evacuation, water, and street capacity require objective, site-specific review. They should not become blanket reasons to exclude housing.

The approved project at 2274 Shattuck will replace the closed UA Theatre with 227 homes, including 23 very-low-income homes, while preserving and renovating the Shattuck Avenue facade and lobby. I acknowledge that decision and the housing it will provide. It is not the outcome I preferred. I believe the UA should remain a working downtown theatre. Preserving a facade and lobby retains part of the building's history, but it does not preserve the civic use that brought people downtown.

Market-rate supply can ease rent pressure relative to building nothing, but those benefits are neither automatic nor equal across income groups. My priority is housing held outside speculative markets: public housing, social housing, limited-equity cooperatives, community land trusts, nonprofit ownership, permanent below-market-rate homes, and supportive housing. Those models allow public need, lasting affordability, and resident governance to set the terms.

Cities should implement state housing laws in good faith. Local control matters because residents live with the consequences of planning decisions, but it should not become a general excuse to block needed housing or preserve exclusionary patterns. When a state law creates a documented local harm, Berkeley should seek a narrow, evidence-based correction. When state policy creates an opening for public or social housing, Berkeley should be ready with sites, partners, financing, and an implementation plan.

Approval is only the beginning

A housing approval does not guarantee financing, construction, utility connection, completion, or occupancy. Berkeley needs to identify the actual barrier at each stage and assign responsibility for solving it.

I will advance a housing-delivery package with coordinated preapplication review, objective standards, one written list of City deficiencies, and published review targets for code-compliant projects. Public, nonprofit, cooperative, and private projects all need a City process that identifies barriers rather than allowing them to drift between departments. A public dashboard should follow major projects from application through occupancy, showing the current stage, unresolved condition, responsible department or institution, and next deadline.

Within my first 100 days, I will convene a public housing-delivery working session with renters, homeowners, housing professionals, community land trusts, nonprofit developers, accessibility advocates, labor, and the responsible City departments. Its first product will be a published list of delivery bottlenecks, who controls each one, a correction timeline, and the measures residents can use to track progress.

Rules affecting housing should also be predictable and justified. I will evaluate point-of-sale mandates, transfer taxes, parcel taxes, and development requirements by their documented public purpose, total cost, who pays, available hardship protections, administrative burden, and measurable result. A policy should not shift costs without showing what public benefit it will deliver.

Intervene before displacement becomes homelessness

Berkeley landlords must file covered eviction notices and lawsuits with the Rent Board within three business days. That filing should become an early offer of help, with the tenant's consent and clear privacy protections.

When elected, I will introduce a Council referral asking the Housing Department to coordinate with the independently elected Rent Board and contracted legal-service providers. A renter facing displacement should receive a clear path to Rent Board counseling, legal-services referral, benefits screening, and Housing Retention assistance before the case becomes a housing emergency.

The public should be able to track households offered assistance, assistance accepted, evictions prevented, and housing retained after six and twelve months. Personal information must remain protected.

For people already living outside, Berkeley must provide safe shelter, storage, sanitation, accessible services, safe parking, and voluntary behavioral-health and substance-use care while permanent housing is developed. The City should expand permanent supportive housing on suitable developed sites, rehabilitate existing homes, use master leasing where it works, and coordinate case management with Alameda County.

Preserve and repair the homes people already afford

The lower-cost apartment that already exists is part of Berkeley's affordable housing supply, even when it does not carry a formal subsidy. Once that home is lost to demolition, speculative turnover, or institutional acquisition, replacing it can take years.

I will seek a dedicated Southside acquisition and preservation track within Berkeley's Small Sites Program. Community land trusts, nonprofit housing organizations, cooperative-housing partners, and resident-supported purchasers should be able to evaluate an occupied building before a sale closes.

In the first budget, I will protect Berkeley's current $3.8 million Small Sites process and seek a recurring local preservation contribution of at least $2 million per year, after confirming that funds are uncommitted and legally eligible. City funding should help qualified partners compete for County Measure A1, state, federal, bond, and tax-credit resources.

I will also propose a Healthy Homes preservation track connecting housing inspections, code enforcement, seismic work, lead and mold remediation, ventilation improvements, accessibility repairs, and energy upgrades. Where the funding source allows it, substantial public rehabilitation assistance should include temporary-relocation support, a right to return, limits on passing subsidized costs to tenants, and a defined affordability period.

Projects that remove occupied or rent-stabilized homes should publish what will be lost, what residents pay, what relocation and return rights apply, and what affordability will replace the homes. I will pursue one-for-one replacement of lost rent-stabilized homes at equal or deeper affordability wherever legally supportable.

Build public and permanently affordable housing

Housing should be treated as public infrastructure. Berkeley's long-term direction should be homes that are publicly or community controlled and permanently protected from speculative sale.

I will create a social housing partnership for public agencies, limited-equity cooperatives, community land trusts, and mission-driven nonprofits. These homes should provide strong tenant protections, serve a mix of income levels among households unable to afford market rent, and give residents a meaningful role in management. The partnership should produce new homes and preserve occupied buildings before their affordability disappears.

I will begin a current public feasibility analysis of stronger on-site inclusionary requirements, deeper income targets, accessible and family-sized homes, and when an in-lieu payment produces less local value than affordable homes within a project.

Homeownership is one form of housing stability, but it cannot substitute for public and permanently affordable rental housing. I support targeted down-payment and closing-cost assistance for first-generation and first-time buyers. When public funds are used, clear resale or shared-equity rules should help one household build stability while preserving the public investment for future buyers.

The City should expand permanently affordable ownership through community land trusts and limited-equity cooperatives, enforce fair-housing rules in lending and sales, and measure who receives assistance, whether they remain in their homes, and how long affordability lasts.

Make UC Berkeley account for its housing decisions

UC Berkeley's enrollment, housing prices, property acquisitions, and land choices affect the Southside rental market. The City cannot regulate the university in the same way it regulates a private project. It can demand evidence, participate in environmental review, negotiate agreements, use public records, and set clear public priorities.

I will request an annual City-UC housing impact report covering enrollment, campus beds, occupancy, full housing charges, mandatory fees, repair backlogs, off-campus demand, property acquisitions, occupied homes affected, and neighborhood commitments. UC should disclose the alternative sites considered for major projects and explain why each was accepted or rejected.

Student housing should be affordable, habitable, accessible, and available year-round to students who have nowhere safe to go during academic breaks. UC should publish the complete monthly price of each housing option, including mandatory meal plans and fees, and compare those costs with student income and financial aid.

I will use the City-UC planning framework, settlement review, formal comments, Council resolutions, public hearings, and budget negotiations to seek written commitments. I support housing at suitable developed and underused sites. I will not vote to build housing on People's Park. In a dense neighborhood, irreplaceable public land and accessible civic space are part of the infrastructure that makes housing livable.

Growth must improve daily life

Every major housing action should identify the transit, accessible streets, sewer capacity, lighting, sanitation, trees, public bathrooms, emergency access, and civic space it requires. Each commitment should name the responsible agency, funding source, service standard, and completion date.

New residents should not arrive to broken sidewalks, inadequate sanitation, delayed infrastructure, or public systems that were never funded for the population they now serve. Existing residents should not be asked to absorb those costs without a public plan.

This is accountable growth: more homes, a larger public and permanently affordable housing sector, clearer review, reliable infrastructure, strong tenant protections, and public reporting from application through occupancy.