BERKELEY — In a new effort to squeeze more homes into a chronically under-supplied market, officials here are zeroing in on the city’s low-hanging housing fruit — vacant buildings.
The Berkeley City Council this week voted to start fining some landlords who let their properties sit empty too long, hoping the move will help ***** the city’s housing stock and clean up its unsightly rundown buildings.
“We’re in a housing crisis,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin said Tuesday before the council vote. “We have a number of buildings in the city of Berkeley that are completely vacant, which is, frankly, criminal.”
The measure cleared its main hurdle Tuesday, but it requires one more vote by council July 24 before it will become final. If it passes, the measure will go into effect 30 days after the final vote.
As the Bay Area struggles under the weight of a crushing housing shortage, several cities have considered ways to turn ugly, vacant buildings into livable housing. Earlier this year Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan proposed
taxing the owners of empty buildings thousands of dollars a year, but she withdrew the measure before it made it onto voters’ November ballot. Instead she hopes to create a city registry of vacant buildings, which would require owners of empty properties to pay a registration fee — and if the building is a blight on the neighborhood — pay a fine. Kaplan expects the registry, which unlike a tax, would not require voter approval, to go before city council this fall.
There are more than 141 vacant residential buildings in Berkeley, with 400 empty units between them, Councilwoman Kate Harrison said Tuesday. Of those, 68 have been vacant for more than a decade. And that only includes buildings required to register with the rent control board — the city has no way to track the vacancy rate of newer buildings, or those that are otherwise exempt from rent control.
The proposal, which passed unanimously Tuesday, expands the city’s blight ordinance to include multi-unit residential buildings that have been empty for more than 120 days. Now landlords would be fined if their buildings are both empty and are an eyesore in another way — if they are falling apart, overgrown with weeds, or in drastic need of a paint job, for example. Fines start at $100 and are capped at $500 per violation.
Harrison, who says similar ordinances in West Sacramento and Roseville inspired her proposal, acknowledged the fines aren’t that severe and can still be brushed off.
“There are going to be people who violate it no matter what,” she said. But she hopes that most landlords simply don’t realize the impact their vacant properties are having, and can be persuaded to make changes.
Berkeley eventually may ramp up its crackdown on vacant buildings by proposing a vacancy tax like the one Oakland considered earlier this year. Such a tax, which would need to be approved by voters, is “certainly on the list for the future,” Harrison said.
Berkeley homeowner Eric Friedman, 47, spoke up during Tuesday’s council meeting to protest the ordinance he says falsely equates vacancy and blight. It should be up to a homeowner to decide how to use his or her property — not the City Council, he said.
“Just because something is vacant doesn’t make it a nuisance,” he said in an interview.
But 74-year-old Margy Wilkinson said in a city with 1,000 homeless residents, having so many vacant units is unacceptable. She sees many in her own neighborhood, which she hopes the expanded ordinance will take care of.
“I’ve been reporting vacant buildings to the city,” Wilkinson said, “and I have to say, it feels like nothing ever happens.”
