Who’s paying for Berkeley’s rent control ballot measures?

In the highest-spending ballot measure campaign so far in this election cycle, much of the funding for the two competing camps has come from outside Berkeley — and, in the case of one of those camps, from outside California.

Many of this year’s 12 ballot measures have drawn funding from organizations headquartered elsewhere. But the committee campaigning for Measure CC has gotten over two-thirds of its contributions — $195,000 out of a total $235,250 — from the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors (NAR), according to election filings.

Measure CC and the opposing Measure BB each include numerous revisions to the city’s intricate Rent Control and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance. Broadly speaking, Measure CC would ease restrictions on city landlords, making new units exempt from rent control and establishing a fund to pay landlords directly when tenants cannot pay rent. BB would expand protections against eviction and new charges, lower the maximum allowable annual rent increase and make some new units in Berkeley rent-controlled. Both measures include frameworks for tenants to form associations, BB by a simple majority and CC by a 2/3 majority.

The NAR, by its own accounting, is the largest trade association in the U.S. Its political action committee has consistently ranked as the top-spending PAC in the U.S., according to data available on Open Secrets.

Proponents of BB have questioned why a national organization like the NAR — which was recently the target of a federal class-action antitrust lawsuit that ended in a nine-figure settlement, which has apologized for endorsing racially restrictive covenants in decades past and which opposed the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — would wade into a municipal ballot measure question.

“I would think that people would be concerned when you’ve got the largest, most powerful lobby in the country just dropping millions and millions of dollars across the state to prevent us from having the tools to stop the housing crisis,” said Leah Simon-Weisberg, treasurer of the pro-Measure BB committee and chair of the Rent Stabilization Board. 

Besides its contributions in Berkeley, the NAR has piped $5 million into the effort to stop Proposition 33, according to a CalMatters analysis. Prop 33, if successful, would repeal 1995’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

Measure CC’s supporters have said it makes perfect sense for a national organization to have a nationwide lobbying footprint.

“I think any national organization is responsible for the entire nation, and so money goes where they think it’s most important. And Berkeley has a very highly regulated rental industry,” said Krista C. Gulbransen, treasurer of the committee fundraising for CC and executive director of the Berkeley Property Owners Association. “I don’t think anybody would be surprised wherever there is extraordinary regulation there are people trying to make a better and fairer balance of those regulations.”

The NAR has also kicked in $100,000 to oppose Measure GG, which would impose a tax on natural gas use in most buildings over 15,000 square feet. That ballot measure is also on the expensive side this year, with opponents having spent $276,469 as of their most recent filing. The campaign against GG has raised more money than the campaign for CC but, so far, spent less.

Nearly all of CC’s other funding, $40,000, has come from the California Association of Realtors’ political organization, based in Los Angeles. It has out-fundraised Measure BB more than four to one. So far, the pro-BB camp has raised $52,069 and spent or owes $37,515; the supporters of CC have spent or owe $282,614, according to election filings.

Measure BB has also gotten most of its contributions from out of town, albeit from within California. Of its war chest, $15,000 came from the Southern California-based PAC that spearheaded Proposition 33 and another $15,000 from the UAW Region 6 Western States PAC, based in Pico Rivera.

“Tenants are workers, and workers are more and more, tenants,” Simon-Weisberg said of the donation from UAW and smaller ones from SEIU 1021 and the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. “People are demanding higher wages because they can’t afford housing.”

The campaign for CC became the target of an investigation by the Fair Political Practices Commission for allegedly failing to properly report the NAR’s first contribution, $35,000 worth of polling, in August, although that contribution appears in later filings. “We were made aware of the error on our part, and we immediately corrected it,” Gulbransen said.

The Berkeley Tenants Union announced Thursday it had lodged new allegations against the CC campaign of improper filing, failing to disclose major donors on literature and other violations with the Berkeley Fair Campaign Practices Commission.

“Each election, we face a few allegations, yet none have been found to have substantial merit. We are confident this latest complaint will be no different,” Gulbransen said in response to BTU’s announcement.

In the contest between BB and CC, there are echoes of the showdown eight years ago between two other ballot measures, U1 and DD, the costliest ballot measure campaign in Berkeley in that election cycle. The Berkeley Property Owners Association’s committee, the same one now boosting CC, poured $892,540 into the campaign for DD, against a relatively paltry $76,400 for U1, which nevertheless prevailed.

Both measures were meant to raise money for Berkeley’s Housing Trust Fund. DD would have raised a business tax on rents by 39%; U1 raised it by 166%, but exempted newly constructed units from the new rate for 12 years.

Gulbransen said intricate ballot measures like BB and CC, particularly when they conflict with each other, are a disservice to Berkeley and its voters. “I would really like to see all of us come together at the table for 2026 and come up with reasonable, agreed-upon changes,” she said.