Berkeley Freezes Commercial Rent Hikes

SAN FRANCISCO —  The leftist Berkeley City Council, which once pledged to fend off the “Westwoodization” of Berkeley and prevent the displacement of low-income minority residents by Yuppies, may be moderating its hard-line stance against landlords.

Concerned about quadrupling rents, failing businesses and the proliferation of fast-food outlets along colorful Telegraph Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus, the council voted 8 to 1 Tuesday night to impose a 90-day moratorium on commercial rent increases and evictions and to require special permits when a new business replaces an old one or a merchant alters his store.

But the council stopped short of rolling back what one official described as Draconian rents, and city officials indicated Wednesday that they don’t really want a strict permanent commercial rent control law that would fix rents at a certain percentage.

Now, they said, they are willing to experiment with an idea that landlords have proposed as a permanent alternative to fixed rent limits--arbitration of individual rent disputes.

Temporary Freeze

“We just want to freeze things where they are while we decide what to do,” said Tom Hunt, chairman of Berkeley Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport’s Task Force on Telegraph Avenue. Newport, a member of the council, voted with the majority.

“We don’t want to stop change totally in the area,” Hunt said. “All we want to do is stop the worst forms of change--to allow the street to evolve gracefully.”

In expressing a desire for compromise, the council signaled that it is tempering its efforts to shape development on its own terms. In 1982, members of what was considered a more moderate council established fixed-rate commercial rent control along two blocks of Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood. Last month, the current council limited to 27 the number of restaurants along North Shattuck Avenue after members complained that the street, home of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant, was turning into a “gourmet ghetto.”

For decades, bookstores and poster shops comfortably jostled old staples along Telegraph Avenue like Jim Davis Sports, the Ship of the Andes imported clothing store and the Berkeley Market grocery store. Jim’s has gone out of business, the Ship has been threatened with eviction, and the 78-year-old market is barely breaking even, according to George Elhihi, its co-owner. Newcomers to the once diverse street specialize in cookies and ice cream--lots of cookies and ice cream.

“We don’t have the variety of retail goods available any more. Nobody comes to window-shop now,” said the task force’s Hunt. “It is beginning to look like all the other commercial strips in the Bay Area. And our city master plan says this is a major shopping district.”

Rent Quadrupled

Elhihi is typical of the hard-hit veteran merchants. Last November, his rent quadrupled from about $2,100 a month to $8,700.

Encouraged by the council’s action Tuesday, Elhihi is eager to try the landlords’ suggested arbitration on an experimental basis. If it works in his case, it may be embraced by the newly reasonable council as a permanent solution.

“We’ve just been trying to survive until something could be done about this,” Elhihi said Wednesday. “Now, I hope things will be OK. It looks promising.”

Hunt said a preliminary survey showed that rents have doubled and that one-sixth of the businesses along Telegraph have been replaced in the last two years. Had the council not acted, he said, another one-sixth would have been forced out of business by the end of this year because of high rents.

Deputy Vice Mayor Veronika Fukson, who voted for the temporary rent freeze and proposed arbitration of Elhihi’s rent increase, said the council would stand “totally behind” arbitration if residents and merchants agree with landlords that the process will solve their problems. She denied that the council has changed its political direction.

“We are starting where we always start--trying to talk,” she said of the council majority.