Housing People Can Afford

Written By Aidan Hill

Berkeley needs more homes. We also need a housing policy that lets students, workers, seniors, disabled residents, and long-term neighbors afford to live here and remain here.

I support building more housing, including taller and denser housing near transit, services, and appropriate already-developed sites. Production matters. Affordability, preservation, accessibility, and public infrastructure determine whether that production actually stabilizes Berkeley.

A bed is not affordable merely because it exists. Housing priced near $4,000 a month is asinine. A new building does not solve a housing crisis when its rents exclude low-income students, its construction removes rent-controlled homes, or its impacts are transferred to the surrounding neighborhood.

Displacement has a cost, and Southside keeps paying it.

Affordability is the measure

Housing policy should start with a direct question: who will be able to live there?

Berkeley needs permanently affordable homes, stronger preservation of existing rent-stabilized housing, accessible units, family-sized homes, and student housing that reduces pressure on the private rental market. Public money, public land, zoning benefits, and institutional agreements should produce public value that can be measured.

For UC Berkeley housing, that means rates designed around what low-income students can actually afford. UC should publish the complete monthly price of each housing option, including mandatory meal plans and fees, and report how those costs compare with student income and financial aid. Housing approaching $4,000 a month should never be presented as an answer to student housing insecurity.

Students are human beings. They are not sardines. A responsible housing plan provides privacy, accessibility, ventilation, common space, kitchens, reliable maintenance, and enough room to live and study.

Three priorities for housing and neighborhood stability

1. Preserve the homes and public spaces people already depend on

Berkeley should protect occupied and rent-stabilized housing before approving projects that remove it. When displacement cannot be avoided, residents should receive one-for-one replacement, meaningful relocation support, and an enforceable right to return at a comparable rent.

The removal of rent-controlled homes at 1921 Walnut Street shows why these protections matter. Housing production cannot depend on treating existing residents as disposable.

People's Park must remain open, unfenced, and publicly accessible. I will never vote to build housing on People's Park. Public space is civic infrastructure, especially in a dense neighborhood where thousands of people share limited open space.

My platform also calls for a stronger Small Sites acquisition program so nonprofit housing organizations and community land trusts can purchase vulnerable buildings before tenants are displaced. Berkeley should provide a dependable local contribution to that work and publish the results every year.

2. Use appropriate UC land before displacing another community

UC Berkeley owns land that can support housing without removing an existing community. The university should evaluate surface parking lots, already-developed sites, upper-story additions, and vacant or underused residential properties before targeting occupied rent-controlled homes or public open space.

UC's own planning record identified the former Tolman Hall site as a possible place for student housing. UC ultimately chose a major academic computing project there. That history does not prove the site was formally promised for housing. It does demonstrate that land use is a choice, and that UC must account publicly for those choices.

For every major project, UC should publish the sites it considered, the criteria it used, the number and affordability of homes each alternative could provide, and the reason each option was accepted or rejected. Housing necessity cannot be invoked only when the proposed site is a community space or an occupied building.

3. Make student housing affordable, habitable, and available year-round

UC housing should serve students with the greatest need. That requires low-income affordability standards, transparent pricing, enforceable repair timelines, disability access, and year-round accommodations for students who have nowhere safe to go during winter or summer breaks.

Students living in aging residence halls should not be asked to accept disrepair while new projects receive attention and resources. UC should publish building-level inspection results, repair backlogs, average response times, and a schedule for bringing existing housing into good condition. When major work requires relocation, current residents should receive safe temporary accommodations and the first opportunity to return to improved housing.

More housing requires more city services

New housing changes the daily demands placed on a neighborhood. Sidewalks, accessible routes, street lighting, drainage, waste collection, public bathrooms, transit, trees, public space, emergency access, and first-responder capacity must grow with the population they serve.

Berkeley should require a public infrastructure schedule alongside major growth plans. That schedule should identify the responsible agency, funding source, completion date, and measurable service standard for each improvement. The City should also report whether promised improvements were completed before approving another round of neighborhood impacts.

This is the governing difference between development and stabilization. Development counts units. Stabilization asks whether people can remain housed, move safely through their neighborhood, receive reliable public services, and live with the effects of institutional growth.

What I will do on the City Council

The City cannot unilaterally set UC rents or direct the university to build on a particular site. Berkeley still has tools it can use.

When elected, I will seek appointment to the City-UC committee and use the City-UC planning framework, settlement review, public records, formal comments, public hearings, budget negotiations, and Council resolutions to press for enforceable commitments and transparent answers.

I will call for an annual City-UC housing report that shows:

  • enrollment and campus housing capacity;
  • occupancy, vacancies, rents, mandatory fees, and meal-plan costs;
  • repair backlogs and average maintenance response times;
  • the estimated effect of campus demand on Berkeley's rental market;
  • every UC property acquisition involving occupied housing;
  • the alternative sites considered for major projects; and
  • the infrastructure and neighborhood commitments UC has made, funded, and completed.

I will also support appropriate infill on surface parking lots, underused commercial sites, upper floors, and other already-developed land near transit and services. I will pair production with tenant protections, preservation funding, accessibility requirements, and infrastructure commitments.

It is time for UC Berkeley to take care of its own backyard. That means housing students with dignity, repairing the buildings it already operates, using its land responsibly, protecting public space, and paying its fair share of the services its growth requires.

The choice before us

Berkeley can add homes while protecting the people and places that already hold the city together. Students can have affordable, year-round housing. Renters can have stability and a right to return. New residents can arrive to sidewalks, transit, sanitation, trees, and public services prepared to support them. People's Park can remain public.

That is my housing platform: build appropriately, preserve what people can afford, prevent displacement, and make institutions account for the costs of their decisions.

My name is Aidan Hill, candidate for Berkeley City Council District 7 in the November 2026 election. Read the full platform, share this plan with your neighbors, and vote for housing people can afford and keep.

Sources and further reading

Paid for by Aidan Hill for Berkeley City Council 2026, FPPC ID# 1481885.

Aidan Hill

Candidate for Berkeley City Council District 7, working for a cleaner, safer, more accountable Southside with housing, public space, and neighborhood needs at the center.

https://aidanhill.vote
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