A 23-unit Berkeley apartment complex where some residents have lived for more than four decades went on the market in March. On Tuesday, the City Council will decide whether to fund the program that could take it off again.

Mayor Adena Ishii is asking the council to add $1.3 million to Berkeley's dormant "Small Sites" acquisition fund — money that, combined with $2.5 million already sitting in the program from prior budgets, could help a local land trust buy the Sacramento Street property before an investor does. The vote reopens a genuine policy fault line: is Berkeley's scarce affordable-housing money better spent preserving the buildings that already have low rents, or building new units from scratch?

The row of duplex cottages stretching back from Sacramento Street in Berkeley was built by Ruth and Henry Frantz in the late 1950s. The Frantzes were the kind of landlords who invited tenants to stay for a gin and tonic when they dropped off rent checks, according to longtime resident Jeannie Kohl, who reported the detail to Berkeleyside. Over decades, the one-acre property became a close-knit community anchored by low rents and a shared backyard where tenants celebrate each other's milestone birthdays.

Kohl has lived there for 43 years. Her son Raymond Kohl-Grant, now 36 and a volunteer at the arts nonprofit Creative Growth, grew up in the unit next to hers — the two are connected by a door built into his closet. He was raised with severe autism, and the Sacramento Street community, Kohl told Berkeleyside, made that possible in a way few living situations could.

"It can be very isolating, raising a kid with severe autism — and I never felt isolated because I had the community around me," Kohl said, according to Berkeleyside's reporting. "I felt like I was a part of something, and I know a lot of people don't have that, who live in single-family homes."

In March, the property — now passed from the Frantzes to their niece — went on the market at $3.2 million. The listing describes it as an "add value opportunity with below market rents," which is how the market signals to investors that long-term tenants can be squeezed.

Berkeley's rent control laws mean existing tenants can't simply be priced out, and just-cause eviction protections offer additional shields. But the tenants know from experience elsewhere in the city that a new profit-motivated owner has tools a community-oriented one doesn't. "I couldn't stay in Berkeley," Kohl told Berkeleyside, "and Raymond's life is in Berkeley."

The Bay Area Community Land Trust wants to buy the building. The nonprofit, which currently stewards 98 units across 10 co-ops in Berkeley and Oakland, has used Berkeley's Small Sites program on three prior acquisitions — including a Solano Avenue building where tenants had faced eviction. Under the program, Berkeley provides acquisition funding to nonprofits; existing tenants stay, and when units eventually turn over they're dedicated as permanently affordable housing for low-income renters.

"The Small Sites program was designed exactly for situations like this," Matt Gustafson, BACLT's organizational director, told Berkeleyside.

The trouble is the program has been starved. Last year, the City Council narrowly voted to pull $1.4 million from Small Sites, with members arguing that Berkeley's affordable housing dollars should go toward building new units rather than buying old ones. Ishii's proposed $1.3 million addition would restore roughly that amount — and when stacked against the $2.5 million already in the fund, could go a long way toward a deal on the Sacramento Street property.

The acquisition-vs.-construction debate reflects a real tension in Bay Area housing policy. New construction of deed-restricted affordable units typically costs far more per unit and takes years longer to deliver than buying existing buildings with below-market rents. Critics of acquisition programs, however, argue that public dollars should expand the overall supply of affordable units, not just preserve the ones that happen to exist.

Berkeley's biennial budget, which the council takes up Tuesday, will determine which side of that argument gets funded — and whether the Sacramento Street community stays intact or becomes the next test case for just how well Berkeley's tenant protections actually work.

Reporting by Berkeleyside contributed to this article.