Pro Tenant Slate Sweeps
Berkeley Rent Board Election
By Erica Terry

A pro-tenant slate that vowed to continue the reign of Berkeley's "progressive" rent stabilization board swept to victory in Tuesday's election.

With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, the five candidates of the Committee to Defend Affordable Housing won by a few percentage points over a slate of challengers.

The five open seats on the Berkeley rent stabilization board spawned two opposing slates of candidates - one strongly pro-tenant and the other "pro-housing."

The affordable housing committee slate - Sharon Maldonado, Selma Spector, Larry Harris, Stefanie Bernay and Mark Janowitz - pledged to continue the policies of a pro-tenant, pro-rent-control board elected in 1994. Prior to that a more pro-landlord group controlled the board.

“...rent control is a positive thing for home owners as well. It enables people to stay in rented apartments for a longer time and this benefits the whole community," said Bernay.

"Higher rents negatively affect the economy because renters have less spending money,” Bernay said. “This hurts businesses and is very dangerous for the economy."

Two other candidates on the slate - Janowitz, a tenant attorney, and Maldonado, a school teacher - are incumbents on the board.

The affordable housing committee slate also was opposed to a new state law that goes into effect on January 1, 1999 that will make it easy for landlords to evict tenants and charge higher rents.

The affordable housing committee slate was endorsed by council members Maudelle Shirek, Linda Maio, Dona Spring, Kriss Worthington and Margaret Breland, mayoral candidate Don Jelinek, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, former Assemblyman Tom Bates, and a number of left-leaning democratic party groups and labor organizations.

The opposing slate - the Committee for a Balanced Rent board - characterizes itself as pro-housing, not pro-tenant or landlord, and wanting a balanced rent board.

The members of that slate are Liz Hart, a tenant in central Berkeley who works for a rental housing agency; John Reynolds, a retired University of California, Berkeley physics professor, homeowner and 40-year resident of the city; Elson Nash, a lifelong Berkeley resident, homeowner and director of an organization that arranges university community service activities; Dave Herr, a UC Berkeley law school graduate, who is a renter; and Ruth Refkin, who owns a triplex she shares with tenants and who serves on the executive board of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay.

In one mailing to voters, the balanced rent board slate questioned why the Berkeley board spends $2.5 million and directs 19,000 units of housing, while the San Francisco rent board spends $2 million to oversee 180,000 units.

The balanced rent board slate was endorsed by Mayor Shirley Dean and council members Betty Olds and Polly Armstrong, Jim Smith, past president of the Berkeley Black Property Owners' Association, former city council member Mary Wainwright, and Doris Maslach, board member of the University Students Coop Alumni Association.

The rent stabilization board is financed by charging landlords an annual registration fee, the amount of which is determined by the board. The City Charter mandates that fee not be passed on to tenants by landlords.

The Rent Stabilization board consists of nine commissioners.