MEET THE SLATE
We are a slate of progressive organizers running to secure tenant protections and create a more affordable Berkeley for all. We believe that residents deserve a Berkeley Rent Board that fights to stabilize rent increases, protect affordable housing, and defend tenant protections. Our slate was chosen by the Berkeley Tenants Convention: a coalition of left, labor, and tenants’ rights organizations that come together alongside hundreds of Berkeley tenants to select a progressive, pro-tenant slate for the Rent Board.
Avery Arbaugh
BTU Chair & Tenant Organizer
Ida Martinac
Rent Board Commissioner
Nathan Mizell
Rent Board Commissioner
Vylma Ortiz
Attorney & Meditation Teacher
Derek Rodriguez
Student & Tenant Organizer
Berkeley tenants union chair & tenant organizer
Avery Arbaugh
Avery is a tenant in Berkeley who works as a Tenant Organizer for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. She is also the Chair of the Berkeley Tenants Union and head of the Berkeley Tenant Organizing Task Force.
She is a formerly homeless tenant who has faced landlord negligence, and has firsthand experience using the resources offered by the Rent Stabilization Board to advocate for her rights. Avery has also formed a Tenant Association in her building, which remains one of the largest unionized buildings in Berkeley. Through this, she utilized the power of that union to get health and safety problems – including a severe cockroach infestation and heating issues in the building – resolved, while negotiating a rent reduction for her neighbors. Her experience as a tenant strongly informs the urgency of her advocacy for tenant protections on the Rent Board. She has direct knowledge about the reforms needed to improve access to tenant services in Berkeley.
Across Berkeley, through her work helping hundreds of tenants form building-wide tenant unions under the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act framework, she has routinely encountered housing conditions unfit for life. From tenants who have developed medical issues and asthma as a result of black mold in their apartments, to mobility-impaired seniors forced to scale multiple flights of stairs during frequent elevator outages, time and time again, tenants are surviving in uninhabitable conditions and paying rents that are far too high. Avery is running to hold slumlords accountable, and to make housing more affordable for Berkeley tenants.
Rent Board Commissioner
Ida Martinac
Ida Martinac is an incumbent Rent Board Commissioner running for reelection to continue her work to make housing more climate resilient for all tenants, which has been her main goal as Chair of the Climate Resilience and Habitability Committee of the Rent Board. In a federally-hostile environment, this effort requires forging new paths, which takes significant time. Locating funding incentives for landlords to install solar power, for example, is an ongoing challenge. Ida understands that tenants are particularly vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and increasingly unhealthy air quality, and that they are unable to make structural changes to the buildings they live in. She supports expanding home owner-focused initiatives for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and weatherization to all housing.
Ida is an immigrant from Croatia and a single mom. She studied International Relations at City College of New York and Environmental Law at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, where she edited the 2006 Environmental Law Journal, which focused on renewable energy law and policy. Ida has dedicated her career to civil service, and is currently a shop steward with SEIU Local 1000. She also volunteered with both of Bernie’s presidential runs, and believes that it is up to Berkeley residents to organize and fight for a better future, rooted in humanity, justice, and sustainability.
Rent Board Commissioner
Nathan Mizell
Nathan Mizell is an incumbent Rent Board Commissioner who is running to continue his efforts to enforce justice for tenants facing eviction and unstable housing. He is a graduate from UC Berkeley’s Legal studies program. Nathan recently worked as a Law Clerk for Centro Legal de la Raza where he fought to keep tenants safe in their homes.
Nathan is passionate about equity for all Berkeley residents. He was proud to advocate for the passage of measure BB, expanding tenant protections and enshrining a tenant right to organize. He served as the Vice-Chair of the Berkeley Police Accountability Board, where he focused on fostering community trust through crucial police oversight efforts. Nathan served as Chair of Berkeley’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force where he led community efforts to holistically transform the city’s safety plans.
As a Rent Board Commissioner, he intends to continue fighting for equity and justice in Berkeley, prioritizing greater community awareness of tenant rights and stronger legal protections from housing discrimination, substandard living conditions, and illegal evictions.
Attorney & Meditation Instructor
Vylma Ortiz
Vylma Ortiz has worked as a Deputy Public Defender, radio host, and meditation teacher. She has lived in a rent-controlled apartment in Berkeley since 2006, where she and her partner raised two sons.
Having served as a Public Defender in Santa Clara County and as an attorney who worked at the Eviction Defense Center in the early 2000s, Vylma knows how important it is for people to have stable, affordable and habitable housing, and sees this as the foundation of a healthy community. Vylma believes that we need to treat housing as a necessity and not as a tool for financial exploitation. Since 2013, Vylma has been a host/producer at KPFA who breaks down complex ideas to get to the heart of the matters at issue.
Vylma is running to keep rent-controlled apartments safe and functioning and expand affordability options so that we can provide shelter to all of our Berkeley residents. She aims to address the current housing crises by protecting senior tenants, preserving existing low cost housing, and building and funding new homes – especially affordable housing for seniors, people with disabilities, essential workers, students, and others struggling to stay in our beautiful city.
As a Rent Board Commissioner, she will bring a depth of experience gained by working with people across differences to make sure laws are followed so that all can enjoy safe, habitable, accessible, and energy efficient housing. Vylma pledges to work to keep our city economically and ethnically diverse and to ensure that it is a city that works for all.
Student & tenant Organizer
Derek rodriguez
Derek Rodriguez is a student at UC Berkeley, an Army veteran, tenant organizer, and public servant running for Berkeley Rent Board. Raised in the Bay Area and shaped by his experience as an emancipated minor who joined the Army at 17, Derek has spent the last seven years in service to his country, his community, and the people too often left out of decision-making.
Before coming to Berkeley, Derek served on active duty in the U.S. Army, including overseas service in Korea, and now serves part time in the California Army National Guard. He carried that commitment to public service into local government, where he helped residents navigate housing issues, social services, and county programs.
Derek has served as Field Director for local and statewide candidates and measures, personally knocked thousands of doors, organized with workers fighting for unionization, and helped build grassroots civic power through the Berkeley Tenant Organizing Task Force. In Berkeley, he organized his own building, forming The Bishop Tenants Association, and currently helps educate tenants about their rights at workshops.
Derek is running because every tenant deserves safe, stable, and dignified housing. As a Rent Board Commissioner, he will take tenant protections enforcement seriously, review landlord petitions carefully, expand tenant organizing power, strengthen legal support against wrongful evictions, and fight to ensure rent protections work in practice –not just on paper —for students, workers, and families.