SFist: Rent Control/Prop 98: the Video

icbalaam

Tue, 27 May 2008 08:34:40 -0800

Yes to rent control! Yay!

bluecanary

Sat, 24 May 2008 19:05:00 -0800

Yes to rent control. No to my electricity going out every time I turn on the toaster and hair dryer at the same time. :-(

KWillets

Fri, 23 May 2008 22:04:16 -0800

I guess a sense of humor is one thing you can't rent.

paulhogarth

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:17:12 -0800

Oh, and I almost forgot. The Berkeley landlords were really pissed at us for doing that protest, so they flooded the Berkeley Daily Planet with letters to the editor defending their fundraiser. My favorite letter came from Berkeley landlord Peggy Schioler (who ran against me for the Rent Board.) Calling herself a "carnivorous landlady," Schioler said that it was a good thing that the Berkeley landlords went out that night to eat steak. "We could have been at home eating children," she said. Needless to say, I won that election against Peggy Schioler quite handily.

paulhogarth

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:15:02 -0800

Are those Berkeley landlords nuts to campaign for Prop 98?? I realize they hate rent control, but Prop 98 would also eliminate environmental protections and endanger public water projects. That's why even Arnold Schwarzenegger (who owns rent-controlled property) in Santa Monica, the Chamber of Commerce and Dianne Feinstein oppose it. You don't have to even like rent control to hate Prop 98. You just have to drink tap water. But then again, the Berkeley Property Owners Assoc. are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. When I was on the Berkeley Rent Board in 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, the BPOA decided to sue us because we weren't letting them raise rents high enough. To pay for their lawsuit, they had a fundraising dinner with filet mignon and smoked salmon at a restaurant in Berkeley called His Lordships. So we had a group of tenants do a protest outside their event by holding a plate of Ramen noodles. The media ate it up, quite literally.