Meet SolI
Soli has spent the past six years on the Rent Board fighting to keep our community whole. Now he’s bringing that fight to the Berkeley City Council.
Soli Alpert is proud to serve Berkeley as the Vice Chair of the Berkeley Rent Board. He became involved in local progressive activism as a student at Cal, first with UC Berkeley Students for Bernie, which became the Progressive Students Association, and then with the campaign of Councilmember Kate Harrison in 2017. After her victory, he joined her staff as a part time Legislative Assistant. He was elected to the Rent Board in 2018 with the Right to Housing Slate. The following year, Soli worked with his coworkers to unionize the City of Berkeley’s Legislative Assistants with SEIU 1021, the union representing most City of Berkeley employees, and served as a steward and delegate for the union until 2022. He was first elected Vice Chair of the Rent Board by his colleagues in 2020, and re-elected in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Delivering for our community
As a Council Aide, Soli has advanced policies in support of workers’ and tenants’ rights, affordable housing and anti-speculation and anti-displacement, and open and transparent governance reforms. He co-wrote the Berkeley Fair Workweek Ordinance, which brought landmark labor protections to shift workers in our community.
As a Commissioner and now Vice Chair, Soli has collaborated on proposals to expand the coverage of eviction control to more Berkeley tenants, shone a light on government inaction to protect tenants facing dangerous and uninhabitable living conditions, and advocated for mitigations in City upzoning proposals to protect vulnerable communities from displacement. He is proud to have helped author the Empty Homes Tax with Councilmember Harrison, which was overwhelmingly adopted by Berkeley voters in 2022. He’s also used his position to advocate for international human rights, authoring a 2021 resolution opposing the forced evictions of Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah and the Rent Board’s 2023 ceasefire resolution.
Soli is also active in progressive Democratic politics, being twice elected as an Democratic Party Delegate from our Assembly District to the State Democratic Party Central Committee. He currently serves on the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club Coordinating Committee and as an Alternate Member to the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee. He is a member of Local Progress, a national coalition of local progressive elected officials, and East Bay DSA.
In his non-political life, Soli is an avid player of TableTop Role Playing Games, and can often be found rolling dice at Victory Point Cafe and Games of Berkeley.