[Urbannizer]

Berkeley City Council approves housing developments that sidestep labor standards

The Berkeley City Council reluctantly signed off Monday night on two proposed high-rise developments that use a state housing law to sidestep local labor standards.

Two labor groups had called for Berkeley leaders to approve the projects but reject their developers’ attempts to use California’s “density bonus” law to dodge a union-backed ordinance Berkeley adopted in 2023 mandating that builders of large projects provide health care coverage for workers and apprenticeship programs. The state law requires cities to give builders exemptions from certain local regulations if their projects include affordable housing.

Developers Collab Home and Laconia Development say abiding by the ordinance would cost millions of dollars and mean they might never actually build the projects, a 20-story complex on Durant Avenue in the Southside neighborhood and a 23-story building on University Avenue in downtown Berkeley. Attorneys for the developers told the City Council that the state law grants them broad authority to bypass Berkeley’s mandates, and the city doesn’t have the power to block their use of it.

The debate Monday night centered on a 169-unit project at 2425 Durant Ave. from Berkeley-based Collab Home, and a project at 2029 University Ave. from Laconia, a Walnut Creek firm that proposed two versions of the project. One would include 240 units and have more studio and one-bedroom apartments; the other, with larger apartments, would have 160 total units.

Each project was approved by Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board, but those decisions were appealed by the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County and the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council. The groups argued Laconia and Collab Home were abusing the density bonus law, which they said was meant to apply to physical limitations on development, not labor standards.