1. There is a need to protect tenants from evictions deriving from incentives to convert rental housing stock, including tenancies in common with rentals, to condominiums.

2. There should be a reasonable balance in the availability of rental and ownership housing in the City, and opportunities for individual choice in the tenure, type, cost and location of housing.

3. The City of Berkeley encourages intentional community formation integrated with home ownership opportunities and forms that reduce personal financial and legal risk.

4. The City of Berkeley discourages tenancies in common (TICs) as a less desirable form of home ownership because this form of ownership may be less separable while carrying greater financial and legal risks, despite initial costs appearing more affordable than condominiums, community apartments and stock cooperatives.

5. The City of Berkeley should provide a transparent process to facilitate conversion of rental and TIC units to condominiums, community apartments and stock cooperatives.

6. The conversion of rental units to condominium ownership reduces the stock of affordable rental units in Berkeley.

7. To mitigate loss of affordable rental housing resulting from conversion, the City of Berkeley will apply an affordable housing mitigation fee whose revenues accrue directly to the City’s Housing Trust Fund Program to construct, rehabilitate, or acquire permanently affordable rental housing in Berkeley, and to operate the program.

1. To take actions to protect tenants from large rent increases, arbitrary evictions, hardship from relocation, and the loss of their homes (Housing Element Policy H-3).

2. To preserve existing rental housing by limiting through regulation the subdivision of land for the purpose of converting rental properties to condominiums (Housing Element Policy H-7).

3. To prevent blight and deterioration of housing units resulting from deferred maintenance (Housing Element Policy H-11).

4. To encourage eviction prevention and fair and accessible housing (Housing Element Policy H-32).

1. A housing shortage exists which is inconsistent with the purposes of this chapter, and with the adopted goals and policies of the City as set forth in the Housing Element of the City’s General Plan.

2. Conversions permitted by this chapter will diminish the supply of rental housing affordable to low-income households, thereby creating undue hardships for low-income residents displaced by conversion, and will otherwise adversely affect the availability and cost of housing affordable to low-income families throughout the City.

3. An affordable housing mitigation fee imposed on conversions of existing residential rental units into condominiums (as defined in Section 1350 of the Civil Code and Sections 11004 and 11003.2 of the Business and Professions Code, respectively) will be used to mitigate reduction of the rental housing supply by funding preservation and development of permanently affordable housing for low-income persons in Berkeley.

4. The City Council further finds that the cost estimates regarding the amount of loss of affordability contained in the council report submitted to the City Council on November 10, 1992, and discussed at the hearing on this matter on November 10, 1992, as modified and reduced in March 1997, are reasonable, and the fees expected to be generated by the conversions envisioned herein will not exceed the total amount of these costs. The City of Berkeley shall maintain on file the detailed formulas and calculations that the City has made of this mitigation impact and its offsetting actions and fees contained herein and this document shall be made available upon request.

5. The City Council would not permit conversion of rental property to condominiums or cooperatives, but for the provision that the adverse effects of such conversions on low-income households will be mitigated by the affordable housing fee described herein.