Berkeley candidate quits race, says he’s ‘priced out’ of housing
A housing advocate is ending his campaign for the Berkeley City Council, saying he could no longer afford to live in the city.
Greg Magofña tweeted that he was ending his run to represent District Four because his roommate plans to move out of the Bay Area within the year, forcing Magofña to look for housing outside of Berkeley because he is “now priced out.”
“I’m being forced to leave Berkeley, and it’s ironic because I co-founded an organization called the East Bay for Everyone in 2015, fighting for housing, to make sure something like this doesn’t happen,” Magofña told The Chronicle on Thursday morning.
“It just really hits hard when you have been fighting for other people experiencing displacement, and you — as someone with privilege and with a good salary — is displaced,” he said, adding that lived lived in Berkeley’s District Four for nearly 10 years.
Magofña is the director of development and outreach for the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, an organization that seeks to compel cities across California to adhere to state and local laws around housing production in an effort to get more housing built.
He previously worked East Bay for Everyone, which advocates for housing, transit and tenant rights, according to his website and LinkedIn profile.
In his Twitter announcement, Magofña said his experience of being priced out was not unique to the Bay Area, where the median home value in the San Francisco-OaklandHayward metro area increased about 32% from $1.1 million to $1.49 million in the past two years, according to Zillow data.
Magofña said he and his roommate pay $2,800 per month for a two-bedroom apartment and that he doesn’t qualify for low-income housing.
Now he said he hopes to find new housing where he doesn’t have to struggle financially for basic necessities and can save for retirement or potentially buy a home in the future.
“I’m at the point where I don’t want to struggle anymore,” he said. “Part of what my campaign was going to be is fighting for housing of all kinds because we need an ‘all of the above’ approach.”
In his tweets, he emphasized that he had the “mobility and resources” to avoid homelessness, overcrowded housing and long commutes.
“But so many do not, and those are the people we need to fight for,” Magofña said.
In Berkeley, which for so long had been known to be dominated by anti-housing politicians and residents, city officials are trying to build homes to ease the region’s housing and homelessness crisis.
The city must also plan to build 9,000 more units over the next decade to meet state housing goals.
On Thursday, the Berkeley City Council endorsed a recommendation for thousands of new housing units at two BART stations.
Magofña on Twitter thanked the residents, activists and city and state leaders who endorsed or donated to his campaign, and said that he plans to refund all campaign contributions.