UC Berkeley official leaves, cancels negotiations concerning student housing rent hikes

( KRON ) - One of University of California, Berkeley's student housing complexes has been enduring a game of ping-pong between its landlords and tenants regarding recent rent hikes and the alleged violation of some residents' union contracts.

After allegedly "abruptly leaving" the Zoom conference call for negotiations, University Village's Associate Vice Chancellor canceled the meeting. Now, residents are urging UC to negotiate with them — again — in good faith.

University Village, in Albany, houses over 900 undergraduate, graduate and post-doc students. Many are low-income residents facing debt from college loans or medical bills. Since they are older students, many also have children to care for.

On July 1, UCB imposed a $64 monthly parking fee, accumulating over $750 yearly. Rent prices have also increased 4% since July 4 - the third consecutive year UC has increased its yearly prices by 4%.

A memo to residents read in part: “All Resident, Employee, and Guest vehicles parking on the grounds of University Village are required to have a valid Parking Permit or payment of the Visitor Parking Fee.”

“Before implementing virtual permits, we had many incidents of parking by non-residents from the surrounding area. This fee will help cover the cost to better enforce these violations, and we have seen positive results over the past academic year,” Elisa Smith with Cal’s Department of Student Affairs told KRON4.

Since imposing the fees, UC Berkeley has allegedly issued "hundreds of parking citations" to University Village residents "in an effort to quash the residents’ organized effort to stop new parking fees and rent hikes at the Village,” Brad Hirn, UAW 4811 member, told KRON4.

Hirn said that since the new fees and citations were imposed, more than 300 residents have allegedly refused to pay them.

After rescheduling the meeting twice, on Tuesday evening, over 130 residents gathered to address the recent price hikes with UC Berkeley's Associate Vice Chancellor Jo Mackness to reach a "fair agreement on parking fees and rent price hikes," Hirn said, alleging the rent hikes are also a violation of union contracts.

Upon entering the Zoom meeting, Mackness "abruptly left," Hirn said.

"We prepared for weeks to reach an agreement with UC Berkeley, and they just walked out without even saying a word to us," said Ninel Melkonyan, a UAW 4811 member, parent, and resident at the Village. "It was incredibly disrespectful and disappointing."

"UC thought they could cite their way out of this, and now they're trying to dictate how we show up for our own meeting," said Melkonyan. "More than 300 residents are holding the line. Enough is enough."

In hopes of reaching the assistant vice chancellor, residents led a delegation to AVC Mackness' office on Wednesday afternoon the following day. They allegedly hand-delivered a petition with 300 signatures demanding "action for UC to resolve the price hikes and parking fees."

"After this meeting was rescheduled twice on July 11 and July 16, we were determined to be ready, bringing a negotiation team of 12 equipped with statements and testimonials," Hirn continued, "Empowered by the abrupt end to our meeting, we decided, as a Village, that we will continue to hold the line. We refuse to pay these new parking fees until UC negotiates with us in good faith."

These planned increases have been proactively communicated to our residents since February 2023. We wanted to give our residents plenty of time to plan accordingly, which is why we first offered virtual parking permits at no cost for the 2023-24 academic year with the notice that we would need to charge for the permits on July 1, 2024, for the 2024-25 academic year… If student residents are experiencing cost-of-living issues, we are encouraging them to work with our Financial Aid and Scholarships Office. Several programs and campus resources are available to help students finance the full "Cost of Attendance," which includes tuition and fees, books, and living expenses.

Elisa Smith, Student Affairs Coordinator at UC Berkeley

According to Hirn and UAW 4811 members, residents are proposing that UC offer "a base rent reduction to offset the new monthly fee, waive all citations issued in the last 12 months, and engage in negotiations in good faith."

Smith claims “these meetings were not negotiations,” as the new parking fee had already been implemented. As for the rent hikes, Smith claims UC “communicated well in advance to resident families and financial aid resources are available to student residents.”

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