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Balancing property owners’ and tenants’ rights is a delicate dance, especially in today’s tight housing market. 

Tuesday night, the City Council may take an initial stab at fixing what its members see as an imbalance under the law in favor of property owners. Councilmembers could vote to place a measure on the November ballot that would restrict landlords from moving into units occupied by long-term renters, under certain circumstances. 

While proponents say the ballot measure targets protection of the most vulnerable – the seniors and disabled – landlord supporters contend it is a measure which, in the end, would deny property owners rights that are sacred to Americans. 

“Where else in the world does a person not have the right to occupy his own property?” said Greg McConnell, a rental housing consultant. 

The proposed ballot measure, which the council can chose to modify Tuesday, says that landlords or their relatives who wish to move into an apartment they own must show that they are truly going to live there. So, they need to occupy the unit for three years. 

Landlord/relative move-in evictions would be prohibited when the tenants are at least 60 years old or disabled and have lived in the apartment five years or longer. 

Further, landlords would be prohibited from moving into an occupied unit if the tenant has lived there for five years and if the landlord owns a 10 percent interest in five or more residential units. This provision targets large landlords. 

At a recent meeting, Councilmember Linda Maio proposed two other provisions. One would require $4,500 in relocation assistance for low-income tenants whose landlords move into their apartment. The other is the exemption of a landlord who owns two units and occupies one. 

Rent Board Member Stephanie Bernay points out that seniors and disabled pay a disproportionate amount of their income in rent. If these groups of people get evicted from a rent-controlled apartment they can afford, they may have a hard time finding a comparable rental. A disabled person needing wheelchair accessible housing may find even greater difficulty in finding a new unit. 

Tenant activists proposed the ordinance to the City Council to combat what they say are the ill effects of the Costa Hawkins Act, which kicked in Jan. 1, 1999. The act allows landlords to raise rents as high as the market will bear, when an apartment is vacated. Tenant activists say this gives unscrupulous landlords an incentive to boot tenants out. 

Bernay says without these protections, Berkeley will change. 

“How can we maintain our diversity when an apartment rents for $1,300 and a house costs $450,000?” she asked. “We shouldn’t have a city of dot com (dwellers). Berkeley shouldn’t become a suburb of the Silicon Valley.” 

It’s the provision that protects long-term renters who are neither disabled nor senior citizens that irks McConnell. 

“The problem is that the ordinance is not intended to protect seniors and the disabled,” he said. “It’s just another attempt at regulation.” 

The result will be the opposite of the intended effect, he said. People will hesitate to rent to anyone over 50 years old. Further, rather than occupying one apartment, they will prefer to go out of the rental business, which is permitted under the Ellis Act. They can convert their apartments to “tenants in common,” where each of the tenants owns the apartments. 

“What everyone needs is not more regulations, they need more housing,” McConnell said.