Tag Archives: Berkeley

DID YOU KNOW THAT A DOG ONCE ATTENDED UC BERKELEY FOR 4 YEARS AND GRADUATED?

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This is one of the strangest stories about UC Berkeley that I know of. Igor Fetch was a Labrador-Beagle-Husky mix. He was the house dog at Bowles residence hall. Igor was registered every quarter from 1972 until he graduated in 1976. On his application form, Igor’s ethnic identity was recorded as ‘K9.’ His keeper signed his name and took his tests. When Igor graduated, the dog’s sociology diploma was hung in Bowles lobby. Igor’s senior photo appeared in the school yearbook. Sadly, Igor died soon after graduation and was buried on the ground of Bowles hall. Igor is the only Bowlesman to be buried on the grounds. His granite grave marker is still there. Former UC students from the 1970s visit the grave and leave dog biscuits.

WHY YOUR GRASS IS NOT GETTING MOWED.

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I know that your grass needs mowing, but I have told my gardener not to come here. I want you to know that I am not doing this from neglect. Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is now illegal in Alameda County (and most of the rest of California) to hire somebody to mow your grass or do gardening work unless it is to “prevent a dangerous condition such as fire prevention or tree trimming and not for cosmetic or other purposes, such as upkeep.” (Alameda County Health Officer Order, Section 13. Definitions, ‘f’ Essential Businesses, ‘xiii’ Arborists, landscapers, gardeners.) I don’t understand why the health department isn’t allowing gardeners to mow people’s grass. ​​If a gardener is working alone and no one else is in the yard, where is the risk? ​Besides, the​ grass at Berkeley city parks and school playgrounds is getting mowed. ​I don’t see the logic of this, but nevertheless, it​ is​ the law.

WHO LIVES IN BERKELEY’S NEW APARTMENTS?

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There is an apartment house under construction on San Pablo Avenue at Jones Street called Jones Berkeley. It’s big. It contains 170 apartments and covers a whole block. They are renting apartments there now. Studio apartments are $3,000 a month. 2 bedroom apartments are $4,800 a month, and 3 bedrooms are $6,700 a month. Jones Berkeley. These rents are typical for the new buildings that are popping up all over town, and there are over 1,000 apartments currently under construction in Berkeley. Now – Jones Berkeley is not in a spiffy neighborhood. Across the street are auto repair shops and vacant stores. It isn’t near campus, it isn’t near a BART station, and unlike San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Berkeley does not have a lot of high paying tech jobs. There are no big tech companies or banks headquartered here. So – where do the people who live in buildings like this get the money from to pay rent like this? I can’t figure it out. Can you?

BERKELEY’S 25 CENT DISPOSABLE CUP LAW and the Law of Unintended Consequences

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Restaurants and stores in Berkeley are now required to charge customers 25 cents for disposable cups. It does not matter what the cup is made from. The charge is 25 cents whether the cup is polystyrene (which is not biodegradable), biodegradable plastic, cardboard, or even paper. If the cup is designed for single use, the charge is 25 cents. The restaurant gets to keep the money. The purpose of this law is to dramatically reduce the number of disposable cups used in Berkeley. However, I think this law may do just the opposite. You can buy 12-ounce disposable cups at Costco for 5 cents each. Restaurants in Berkeley can now sell those cups for 25 cents each. They are prohibited from charging less. That means that a restaurant in Berkeley can sell a disposable cup for 5 times the cup’s cost. That’s a huge profit margin! Restaurants don’t sell food for 5 times its cost. In other words, the city of Berkeley has given restaurants a financial incentive to use more disposable cups, just the opposite of the law’s intention! Some people bring their own cups with them when they go to coffee shops and restaurants, but relatively few people do that. I know quite a few Berkeley restaurants that are struggling financially. Now they can charge customers 25 cents for disposable cups that cost them 5 cents. What do you think they will do? I think they will do the obvious thing and use more disposable cups. This law does not require restaurants to have reusable cups, and many places that sell beverages, like convenience stores, don’t have dishwashers or any way to wash and sterilize cups. The Berkeley city council often passes ‘feel good’ laws like this, without thinking through the practical consequences of what they are doing.

HERE’S WHY STATEWIDE RENT CONTROL IN CALIFORNIA IS BAD NEWS FOR THE POOR.

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The California state legislature just passed statewide rent control. It goes into effect January 1, 2020. If you want to know what’s the problem with rent control, just take Econ. 101 at Cal. Whenever there is a shortage of a commodity, the price of that commodity will go up. (That’s in ‘Microeconomic Theory’,  the Econ. 101 textbook.) When the government fixes the price of a commodity, including rental housing, at a price that is below the market rate, it creates a shortage and make an existing shortage worse. (That’s also in ‘Microeconomic Theory.’) The truth is that it is hard to find a noted economist anywhere who supports rent control, even here in Berkeley.

Why is the rent in California so damn high? We have a huge rental housing shortage in California, and it is getting worse every year. In 1970, the population of California was 20 million. Today, it is 40 million. In 1945, the population of California was only 8 million. That means that for every 1 person who lived in California in 1945, there are now 5 people living here. Up until the 1960s, new apartment construction kept up with population growth, but then a gap started developing, and the resulting shortage has grown with time. This happened for a long list of reasons: the NIMBY movement ‘Not In My Back Yard’ started here. I know people who are perfectly willing to concede that we need to build a lot more housing, but they just don’t want that housing built near them. We also have high permit fees, restrictive zoning regulations, historic landmarking, environmental laws – including greenhouse gas emission restrictions, and lawsuits – lots and lots of lawsuits. And now we have to add to that list statewide rent control.

We need to build 200,000 new housing units in California every year just to keep up with population growth, but we are building less than 100,000 units a year, and this has been going on for over 20 years. Here in the Bay Area, the shortage is even worse. In San Mateo County, the heart of Silicon Valley, for every 4 jobs created over the past 10 years, 1 housing unit was built. It is this gap between supply and demand for housing in California that explains why house prices and rents are so high. We need to build a lot more rental housing in California, but who is going to build that housing and where will the money come from to build it? Rent control is not an incentive to build rental housing. It is a disincentive.

I have been expecting statewide rent control for a long time. It’s the reason why I never bought an apartment house. I prefer to rent houses and condos, which are exempt from rent control. I once owned a 3 unit property in Oakland, but I converted it to condos. Now that we have statewide rent control, I expect that a lot of apartment house owners across the state will convert buildings to condos and then sell them to owner-occupants, but that will just make the rental housing shortage even worse.


What happens to the poor? Statewide rent control in California is especially bad news for the poor. Whenever there is a shortage of a commodity that everybody wants, like housing, who gets it? Do the poor really get an equal shot at it with the rich? Suppose a landlord has an apartment for rent, and he receives 10 or 20 applications for it. Who is he going to rent to? How will he choose among the many people who want it? Will he rent this apartment to a wealthy applicant who can easily afford to pay the rent, or will he rent the apartment to a much poorer applicant, someone who can pay the rent, but only with difficulty? You know the answers to these questions. Whenever there is a shortage of something that everybody wants, it is the rich who get it first, and the poor who get it last, if they get any at all. Throughout the history of the world, this has never changed. You may not like that, but it’s the way things are.


Trump’s Trade War With China Is Making Things Worse. The California Building Industry Association estimates that President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports have increased the cost of building a new home in California by $30,000, a figure that they expect will rise. The National Association of Home Builders agrees, pointing out that over 500 types of products commonly used in housing construction are imported from China, including appliances, lighting, countertops, cabinets, tiles, nails, and laminates. The price of some lines of Chinese kitchen and bathroom cabinets has doubled since the trade war began. Needless to say, these costs are ultimately passed along to the people who live in newly constructed houses and apartments.

AM I A LANDLORD?

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The Berkeley city council voted unanimously last week to ban gender-specific words. That means that words like ‘landlord’ and ‘landlady’ are out. So – what am I supposed to call myself? Should I call myself a ‘landperson’? To me, ‘landperson’ sounds like a person who lives on the land, as opposed to a person who lives in the sea, like Aquaman. I suppose we can’t say Aquaman either in Berkeley. ‘Aquaman’ is gender-specific. I guess he’s now ‘Aquaperson.’ I asked an aide to a councilmember what city employees intend to call landlords now. He said ‘property owners.’ I told him that ‘property owner’ and ‘landlord’ do not mean the same thing. Most property owners in Berkeley are homeowners, not landlords. He said he knew that; however, a lot of the new words the council approved do not mean the same thing as the words they replaced. For example, according to the new law, a ‘sportsman’ is now to be called a ‘hunter’ in Berkeley, but those 2 words don’t mean the same thing. You don’t have to kill something in order to be a sportsman. A yachtsman is a sportsman. So is a professional soccer player. In most European languages, the word for ‘landlord’ doesn’t carry the emotional baggage of the word ‘landlord’, which sounds sinister and arrogant. You know, we aren’t actually ‘lords of the land.’ In most Latin-based languages, the word for ‘landlord’ means ‘proprietor.’ In French, the word for landlord is ‘propriétaire.’ That sounds far nicer than ‘landlord.’ In German, the word is Vermieter, which means ‘he who rents’. That also sounds nicer than ‘landlord.’ So back to my original question –  what am I supposed to call myself now?

$225 PARKING TICKETS IN BERKELEY.

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A ticket for illegal parking within 10 blocks of Cal stadium on football game days will now cost $225. These tickets used to cost $98, but I think this big increase is understandable. Cal students who live near the stadium have been charging people $100 to park in their driveways and on their lawns on game days. A lot of people coming to Cal games have been intentionally parking illegally on the street in 1-hour zones and at meters that they know will expire long before they return to their cars. They figure that a $98 parking ticket costs about the same as parking in somebody’s driveway, so why not? That’s why I say this big increase is understandable. Parking tickets should discourage illegal parking.

The Fraternities. My guess is that this big increase in the cost of game day parking tickets will have the full support of Berkeley’s fraternities. All of Berkeley’s frat houses are within a few blocks of the stadium. On the night before football games, the guys in the frat houses park their cars on streets outside the restricted zone. Then on game day they charge $100 to park at their frat houses, and some of the frat houses have a lot of parking spaces. Now that illegal street parking is going to cost $225, the fraternities will be able to charge more than $100 to park on game days, perhaps a lot more.

LANDLORDS DO NOT HAVE X-RAY VISION LIKE SUPERMAN.

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Once a year, I conduct a safety inspection of my Berkeley rentals and fill out a form, Schedule A, as required by the city of Berkeley. Below is an article that I recently wrote for the Berkeley landlord association newsletter regarding this form:

When I fill out the Berkeley Rental Housing Safety Inspection Program Schedule A, I would like to answer several questions with: “I don’t know. In order to answer this question, I would need the ability to see through walls, and I can’t do that.” There are a number of questions on Schedule A like that. For example, one question asks landlords if the wiring inside the walls of an apartment is greater (thicker) than 14 gauge. Well, undersized wiring is dangerous, but without the ability to see through walls, I have no way of knowing if there are undersized wires inside the walls of my rentals. I have good vision, but I can’t through walls. There are several other questions on this form like that. There is a question in the plumbing section that asks landlords if there are any vent pipes that terminate inside the walls of an apartment. Well, vent pipes that terminate inside walls is quite common in older buildings, and it can be dangerous, but without the ability to see through walls, I have no way of knowing for sure where the vent pipes go. I could guess, but the city isn’t asking me for my best guess. This form gives landlords only 2 ways of answering questions. A landlord can answer the questions with either ‘verified’ or ‘not applicable.’ There is no place on this form for landlords to answer questions with ‘don’t know’ or ‘unable to determine.’ Now before you laugh at this, remember – we landlords have to answer these questions and sign this form under penalty of perjury! I attended the meetings at which this form was originally put together, and I raised this issue then, but I was ignored. I keep hoping that someday the city of Berkeley will revise this form and eliminate questions that require landlords to have x-ray vision in order to answer them, but that never happens. It never seems to occur to the people who run this program that landlords cannot see through walls like Superman.


HALF PRICE SALE ON MISSPELLED U.C. BERKELEY MERCHANDISE.

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This morning, I went into a big store on Shattuck Avenue downtown that just sells licensed U.C. Berkeley merchandise. Next to the cash register was a table advertising half-off on all misspelled U.C. Berkeley merchandise. That caught my eye. At first, I thought this was a joke, but it wasn’t. I looked at the stuff in the display rack, and sure enough, everything was misspelled! See the photo below. The most surprising thing about this stuff is that it was all licensed by the university! This store doesn’t sell unlicensed knockoffs. However, even at half price, is this stuff really a bargain? Would you really want to walk around campus wearing a t-shirt that says ‘U.C. BERKLEY’ on it?
 
Johns Hopkins. At the Ashby BART flea market, there is a vendor that sells unlicensed baseball caps with ‘John Hopkins’ embroidered on them. I’m from Baltimore, and in Baltimore, spelling Johns Hopkins ‘John Hopkins’ is a very big No-No.
 
Miami University. I also saw a t-shirt for sale at the Ashby flea market with the Miami University logo on it, with a palm tree on one side of the logo and an alligator on the other side. Miami University is located in Ohio just north of Cincinnati. Although I’ve never been there, I am pretty sure that there are no palm trees in Cincinnati. Miami University is often confused with the University of Miami, which is in Florida, where they have lots of palm trees and alligators. They have alligators in Cincinnati too, but they are all in the city zoo, unlike southern Florida; where people often find alligators in their swimming pools. I don’t believe people find alligators in their swimming pools in Cincinnati. (I’ll have to confirm that with my relatives in Cincinnati.)

NEW GRADUATE STUDENT HOUSING COMES TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD.

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The apartment house at 2711 Shattuck Avenue is nearing completion and will be ready for occupancy soon. The entire building has been rented to the university, which will sublease individual units to individual graduate students. The apartments are all 310 square feet, which is very small. These apartments were built in China and arrived at the Port of Oakland in standard 8′ x 40′ shipping containers. The apartments came fully furnished and ready to move in. Each studio apartment will rent for $2180 a month and are all single occupancy (one student per apartment). This apartment house has no amenities aside from a coin-operated laundry room on each floor. There is no lobby, no yard, and no elevator. That means that if you live on the 4th floor of this building and have 4 or 5 bags of groceries, you have to shlep them up 4 flights of stairs as best you can. There is only one parking space (that’s not one parking space per unit. It’s one parking space for the whole building.) Pre-fab apartments from China are popping up in San Francisco and more are planned for Berkeley. Try to imagine what it would be like to live in an apartment that is only 8 feet wide.