Profile: Jenny Guarino, City Council District 2

Jenny Guarino is taking on first-term Council Member Terry Taplin in West Berkeley’s District 2. See her website at https://www.jenny.vote/.

Jenny is currently a Masters student at UC Berkeley in public policy. Her focus is primarily on housing justice and tenants’ rights. Jenny is a leader for the local UAW on campus, holding roles including Head Steward and organizing research staff at UC. She worked for four years as a paralegal in the field of immigration law.

This year, she has been heavily involved in work to pass Measure BB, the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize. Other core areas of concern for Jenny include labor rights, alternatives to policing, street safety, and ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian human rights.

Jenny on Housing

Jenny’s housing policy centers on availability of affordable and accessible housing. Key to these goals is firstly to expand and protect tenants’ rights. These include the passage of TOPA, the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act, which has been stalled by the current city council. [See “The Promise of TOPA” in Volume I, Issue 3 of Berkeley Speaks.]

Jenny promotes the development of new affordable housing as well as “converting market rate housing into affordable, social, and cooperative housing.” She views homelessness and housing as “inseparably related issues…. We need to provide affordable housing to homeless residents and approach homelessness with compassion, not criminalization.”

In an interview with Berkeley Speaks, we discussed with Jenny her campaign plank to “remove barriers to building dense, multifamily housing near transit and along commercial corridors like San Pablo and University.” This is a complex issue that needs a lot of unpacking. What are the pros and cons of density? Are there, as Nico Calavita states in this issue, two kinds of density, hard density and soft density? [See “Middle Housing is Coming to Your Neighborhood,”] What is the actual benefit of locating housing near transit? What do we really mean by affordable housing, and as Margot Smith asks, also in this issue, as “affordability” can be for people earning up to $150,700 for a family of four, “who can really afford this?” [See “Profile: Margot Smith, State Assembly”] Is ”trickle-down housing” a real outcome of building market-rate housing that will actually benefit low-income people?

We agreed that there needs to be a deeper conversation in the months to come that delves into these interrelated issues.

Jenny on Labor

As a grassroots labor leader, Jenny is one of few council candidates bringing a union experience to her platform. In response to a questionnaire on her policy priorities, Jenny wrote:

Workers in Berkeley need to be paid and treated fairly. Berkeley has a good record of passing progressive labor laws, but a bad record on enforcement. The City has only one staff position budgeted to enforce all local labor law, and that position has sat vacant for years at a time.

I think it is the role of the City Council and Councilmembers to advocate for and advance the cause of labor, both protecting City workers rights and working to protect workers in the private sector throughout our City. We need to invest in enforcement and education about our City’s labor laws, and work to end the anti-labor stance of City management towards City workers.

Jenny on Public Safety

With regard to reform in our policing and justice systems, Jenny has stated:

I strongly support strengthening the Police Accountability Board (PAB), including requiring the City Manager and BPD to comply promptly with PAB requests for departmental records, and giving the PAB greater power over BPD policies. The City made great strides when it passed our recent Charter revisions creating the Police Accountability Board. However, it is clear that the Police Department and City Manager are violating some of the provisions of that law overwhelmingly passed by Berkeley voters. I would demand that the City Manager comply with law, and seek to pass a new ballot measure further strengthening the PAB, including ensuring that they have their own legal counsel separate from the City Attorney. I also would demand more robust compliance with our Surveillance Ordinance, and seek to strengthen it if necessary.

I support a ban on pretextual traffic stops. Councilmember Taplin, meanwhile, has reversed himself and stated that he no longer supports banning pretextual traffic stops because of a perceived utility in combating crime. We need to amend state law to allow for non-sworn officers to enforce traffic law so that we can de-police traffic enforcement. Meanwhile, there are some traffic and parking offenses we can move out of the police department.

Regarding use of force, I favor a ban on large capacity pepper spray, and a ban on all pepper spray in crowd control settings. For less-lethal projectiles, I know that the Berkeley police have used them inappropriately and unnecessarily at times in the past. I support working with the PAB to strengthen and enforce our restrictions on their use.

Jenny on Climate

Jenny has a full palette of proposals to move forward climate action.

Supporting the BAAQMD’s NOx standards, and opposing efforts to delay them or water them down.
Funding the Berkeley Building Electrification and Just Transition Pilot Program to implement the “just transition,” investing in improvements that simultaneously reduce emissions, improve the lives of poor and middle class residents, and provide good union jobs.
Adopting interim policy measures to fill the vacuum left by overturning of the natural gas ban.

Berkeley’s Measure GG will fund the just transition to electricity, replacing gas, and thereby cleaning up the air in private buildings. Measure HH will direct the City to clean up the air in government buildings. Jenny Guarino has endorsed both Measures GG and HH.