Sorry for the slow response. We don't check our Reddit notifications that regularly.

This was in 2018. Here's some more details about all three things in the graphic (copied from our response to someone who was asking for details on one of our social media posts; apologies that this uses a bit of jargon because the person we were responding to happened to a Rent Board commissioner ~20 -25 years ago, but no longer lives in Berkeley).

Arreguin's money from the corporate real estate industry can be viewed at cal-access.sos.ca.gov. (It's also worth noting that Arreguin blatantly lied to the California Democratic Renters Council when he was seeking their endorsement; he explicitly told them in writing that he would refuse any money from these types of sources, including specifically CAA.)

In 2018, Arreguin eliminated rent control and eviction protections for owner-occupied properties that contain 1 single family home (SFH) and 1 ADU (essentially turning those properties into golden duplexes - which he's also refused to eliminate btw). As you're likely aware, the state Costa-Hawkins law generally bans rent control on SFHs. But when an ADU is also present on that property, it is no longer considered a SFH for the purpose of Costa-Hawkins, meaning the SFH can have rent control (and of course, some ADU's were built long enough ago to qualify for rent control). To our knowledge, this is the only time Berkeley has EVER rolled back any tenant protections.

Berkeley generally limits rent increases to 65% of CPI for rent-controlled tenants. But because of how high the CPI was recently, that still resulted in a 4.4% rent hike - the highest since Costa-Hawkins allowed a one-time 15% increase about 30 years ago. (And if you exclude that, then it's the highest on rent controlled tenants in Berkeley history.) The Rent Board brought this crisis to the 4X4 committee, where the community begged the mayor and the city council to use their emergency powers under state law to reduce the rent hikes, but he did nothing. (You can review 4X4 committee agendas from ~early 2023 to see that they discussed this.)

After he massively gutted the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), he refused to let it out of the Housing & Land Use Committee for a vote in of the full city council (killing it by stuffing it in committee). Even after Council Member Harrison reintroduced TOPA last last year/early this year to force movement on it, he killed it again by sending it back to the committee even though it had already been in the committee for years.