At a press conference Thursday, the residents expressed their discontent after the university imposed a $64 monthly parking fee on July 1 at University Village, a nearly 974-unit residential community for graduate students, post-doc researchers and others. Residents also received a 4% rent increase on July 1 — the third year in a row of consecutive 4% increases. According to the university’s website, residents at the Village pay between $2,090 for one-bedroom units and $3,455 for three-bedroom apartments.
“The households are refusing to pay the fee … to show the university that this is in fact a serious issue, and they can’t simply change the terms of their tenancy and start charging these new fees without coming to a fair agreement first,” said Brad Hirn, unit chair for UC Berkeley Academic Researchers at UAW Local 4811, a union representing graduate students.
More than 450 households at the Village are members of the UAW 4811, according to Hirn. Hirn, who is not a resident of the Village, said that UAW 4811 is “overall concerned about reducing rent burden for students and workers due to these new fees,” and that he is “supporting the residents in their efforts” with his background in tenant and labor union organizing.
On Monday, residents of the Village delivered a poster signed by over 270 residents to the offices of Associate Vice Chancellor Jo Mackness, who oversees Residential & Student Service Programs, communicating their decision to not pay the fees.
The residents are demanding the university to drop the fees, waive monetary citations over the past several months from increasing monthly rents and to reach a fair agreement on parking fees, rent increases and housing services.
“We would also like to see better transparency on how money is spent. Our primary playground is in complete disarray and dangerous for kids to play on,” Robin López, a Village resident, wrote in an email to KQED. “Part of [a] memorial for a past resident who was killed due to domestic violence has been removed and not yet replaced. There should be funds to take care of the bare minimum for a community full of children. We would also like to have reclaimed access to our community spaces.”
In a statement, UC Berkeley spokesperson Adam Ratliff wrote that the planned increases in parking fees had been communicated to residents in February 2023. Mackness had announced in April 2021 the university’s plan to increase rents by 4% each year for three years.
“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,” Ratliff wrote...
Full story at https://www.kqed.org/news/11993792/uc-berkeley-students-families-refuse-to-pay-new-fees-at-university-owned-housing.
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