[klipt]

...and now Berkeley rents will start rising to match San Francisco rents.

Plus if you want to live in the Downtown area, you'll be competing with students who want to be right next to campus. Since the spending power of a software engineer far outweighs that of a student, the students are going to get royally screwed on this.

[rms]

>...and now Berkeley rents will start rising to match San Francisco rents.

Downtown Berkeley is already pretty close to San Francisco rents. I recommend getting out of the zone where you are competing with Cal students. Near Ashby BART to be closer to nightlife and Oakland/San Francisco, or near North Berkeley BART for a safer, quieter existence.

[selectstar]

Some students.

Those provided for by family will see their parents/grandparents get screwed, and some of those parents may well be part of the software community...

[klipt]

True, I was thinking from the perspective of a grad student. I got a nasty shock when my "original tenant" housemate moved out and my rent jumped up 20%. (Berkeley rent control only applies while at least one original tenant remains, but I had no idea I was benefiting so much from rent control up to then.)

20% may not sound like a lot, but I'm pretty sure grad student stipends haven't gone up more than a few % over the same time. I wonder how much rent around a university can rise before the situation becomes unsustainable (the university either needs to provide subsidized housing, or it'll lose prestige as good students switch to universities that aren't surrounded by housing bubbles.)

[throwaway573829]

> I got a nasty shock when my "original tenant" housemate moved out and my rent jumped up 20%.

Thanks for posting this. I have a nice sunny one bedroom apartment for $1000/month a few blocks away from UC campus, which I'm only getting for that price because I pretended to move in with my friend, when in actuality he was moving out of the building after living there for around 4 years. So our names are both on the lease, but only I live there [1]. The prices in the building have gone up over 30% in the past few years - the units now rent for $1350+, which is still pretty cheap for the city.

Anyway, my friend was thinking of moving out on paper (i.e., getting his name off of the lease), but now I'll have to convince him not to do that. I doubt I'd be able to afford an extra $350 a month in rent on my stipend... I think I'll have no choice but to stay here for at least my entire grad school program to milk the rent control as long as possible, because rent really seems to be exploding in Berkeley. (Not to the extent that it is in SF, of course.)

[1] Throwaway account because I'm not sure whether this is legal. It's not as if the lease says "All tenants listed must be present in the unit for at least X hours per month", so in theory it doesn't seem like it should be illegal, but it seems a bit...sketchy.

[klipt]

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, check the Berkeley rent board website for actual laws etc.

I believe if your name is actually on the lease, you are protected by rent control the same way as the original tenants. What a lot of landlords (like mine) do is deliberately avoid adding new housemates to the lease, basically treating them as subletters who then aren't protected by rent control.

See: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Rent_Stabilization_Board/Home/G...

> The new roommates are considered subtenants of the original occupants as long as they do not sign a lease or rental agreement with the landlord

> Thus, a landlord may implement a vacancy increase (i.e., establish a new initial rent) by giving 30 days' written notice if (1) there has been a complete turnover of original occupants; (2) none of the remaining occupants lawfully resided in the unit before January 1, 1996; (3) none of the remaining occupants has signed a lease or rental agreement with the landlord