Sixteen tenants at 2627 California Street, Berkeley now cooperatively own their 12-unit apartment complex after a year-long struggle to keep their homes.

The architecture of the building is U-shaped, with inward-facing apartments that frame a common garden. The multi-generational multi-family occupants grew as a community over the years, with 15 tenants who are Black. Most of the residents have been there for six to twelve years. The sale is a significant victory for affordable housing in Berkeley. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.