Rent Board Commissioner Igor Tregub
Berkeley, CA

"Why I became an elected official"

While a student and tenant in the middle of my final semester at UC Berkeley, I suddenly found out that I had just a few weeks to move or risk losing a roof over my head. Rental units that I could afford, even in a densely populated city like Berkeley, are extremely hard to come by at certain times of the year, such as in the middle of a semester. Just as time on the clock was running out, I found one place and had to move in blindly, getting to know only one of the roommates at the time I agreed to move.

This experience left me with a realization of how little stability exists for tenants, even in a city that has strong rent control and eviction protection ordinances. I had some experience on local issues through my chairmanship on the Berkeley Commission on Labor, an appointed advisory body to the City Council, and role as an advisor on city affairs to UC Berkeley's student government. Therefore, I decided to run so that I could serve as a resource to tenants who did not have the knowledge to which I had access but had every reason to know their rights.

While I had not considered myself on a set path of running for office until I declared my candidacy, it served as a symbolic milestone to me. My parents brought me to this country at a young age to ensure that I would be able to experience the type of freedoms and opportunity that had been missing from my homeland. I was elected seven years after receiving my U.S. citizenship, a full circle that provides me with an opportunity to make a small pocket of this nation come in closer line with the democratic values upon which this country was built.

Challenges, Successes

However, being elected has not come without challenges. Berkeley has a public process that is second-to-none, and more PhD's than perhaps any other area of its size. This makes for a lively and informed electorate that has no problem telling you when it thinks you are wrong. One unintended consequence of this otherwise worthy trait is that political differences can frequently become personal, and policy battles occasionally take on a zero-sum tone. My greatest challenge has been cutting through the noise to offer a brand of consensus-driven yet principled legislating. I have sought ways to work with elected officials and members of the public with views that range across the spectrum (though, in Berkeley, most of them are some shade of progressive) without compromising away my core values. Last month, I was elected to serve as a California Democratic Party Delegate out of my assembly district. My endorsement list included people who are not typically perceived to be on the same side of the issues. I view this as the most encouraging sign yet that my style is beginning to take hold.

Due to a lengthy public review process and voluminous discussions with city staff, it takes years to achieve truly momentous successes, such as the uniform extension of by-right business hours near the UC Berkeley campus or the passage of the Berkeley Sweat-free Procurement Ordinance, which I achieved through roles outside of the Rent Board. However, in my present capacity, I can claim a few partial victories. I worked with Rent Board staff to create a Rent Board Fellows Program, which brings in college students who shadow our counselors, educate their peers on their rights as tenants, and work on projects, while receiving college credit. In March, my interns and I are slated to organize the first-ever public workshop on foreclosures in Berkeley. Finally and most importantly, we are inching closer to create an enforcement and financing mechanism for Berkeley's Soft Story Ordinance, which addresses retrofitting in seismically unsafe apartment buildings with a parking garage on the bottom floor. It is my hope that this truly life-and-death issue will be addressed by the end of my first term in 2012.