BERKELEY
Tens of thousands of victims displaced by the the North Bay fires have a place to stay in Berkeley after the city’s Rent Stabilization Board initiated an ordinance that allows property owners to offer their housing units at below market rates.
The succession of fires earlier this month spread over three North Bay counties claimed 40 lives and destroyed more than 20,000 homes.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin encouraged the city’s property owners to utilize the law, if they have units available. “So many people want to help, but may not know how,” he said.
The Berkeley law was first enacted in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and allows only temporary stability to victims of the fires.
Berkeley landlords can now offer units at below market rate for short period of time. Considerations for extending the short-term lease can be worked out between the parties.
ebcitizen.com 
By MW:
For various reasons, and including: one, all of the extremely overgrown trees in certain areas of Alameda County; and two, the skyhigh rates of alcoholism among Bay area firefighters, eventually we are likely to have in Alameda County a fire even much worse than the Great Oakland Hills Fire of the early 1990's, in other words the fire that killed approx. twenty-five people and destroyed approx three thousand homes.
For instance, I live in an unincorporated section of Alameda County, so therefore issues regarding trees in the area I live are largely determined by AC's Public Works Agency, and although the HOA also gets somewhat involved.
And you can drive around the blocks near my house and see plenty of trees and tree branches overhanging roofs, and in some cases even resting on roofs, and yet the submental retards in AC's Public Works Agency “know” those situations are “safe” and do not constitute fire hazards.
In other words, the submental retards in AC's Public Works Agency, and I assume also the alcoholics in AC's Fire Department, are so extremely stupid, that therefore they are incapable of comprehending that tree branches literally resting on the roof of a house does not constitute fifteen feet of defensible space.
Having observed it in action for a few decades, everyday I become more convinced it is an almost absolute requirement a person must be a liar and a crook and/or mentally retarded in order to become a high ranking manager in AC government.
Of course some of the suhmental retards that infest government are “sophisticated,” fancy talking, and “highly educated” submental retards, and with impressive credentials “proving” they are “experts,” and such as for example the creatures on the SEC who were too blind to see that Bernard Madoff for decades had been running a scam operation and big Ponzi scheme.
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