Your rental payments pay for important city services through your landlords. These city services are billed on the owner’s property tax bill and are based on the square footage on record for the building. If your landlord is undercharged for these services, then city programs like schools, libraries, parks, paramedics, fire department and disabled services continue to suffer.

Now you can check if your landlord is paying appropriately and here are the steps.

1. Google your home’s address. Websites like Zillow and Redfin will list a value that reflects the public record square footage value of the home you live in. In rare cases, this value might be incorrect and would require further investigation to find the correct public record square footage value.
2. Go to the Alameda County Tax Collector’s website and look up your home’s address with their property tax look up tool. http://www.acgov.org/propertytax/index.htm
3. After you open your owner’s property tax bill, go to the Fixed Charges and/or Special Assessments on the right side of the bill. The first charge is usually CITY ST LIGHTING. Divide that number by 0.0108. The result is the square footage value the owner is charged for 9 of the taxes you see on that bill – which is all the taxes that have the 510-981-7200 or 510-644-8717 phone number.
4. If the Zillow or Redfin value from step 1, is greater than the square footage value from step 3, then your owner is undercharged and is not paying adequately for city services. Please let us know at equity@berkeleytaxes.info what you found, so you can help us advocate for reform!
5. If the Zillow value from step 1 is smaller than the calculated result from step 3, then your landlord is overcharged. If your landlord is not all that bad, you can also help us advocate for reform! Write to us at equity@berkeleytaxes.info.