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An Activist's Diary
I received an email this week from someone I talk with on occasion about housing and construction in Berkeley. It started with, “I learned from a friend of a friend who manages a 50 unit building that he has 50% vacancies…” The note goes on that the same person related that there are other buildings with 60% and 70% vacancies.
It is no surprise to have vacant housing with UC Berkeley essentially shuttered to on-campus students. The 42,500 students (the number I’ve been given) probably make up close to a third of the city population—and on Monday a proposal for adding 8,500 more is scheduled to be announced via the Draft Environment Impact Report on the University’s Long Range Development Plan. Without students we are swimming with vacant apartments, but we had vacancies before they left. It is probably overly optimistic to expect the 2020 census to tell us more, but I am hopeful.
High rents, a glut of vacant apartments, people on the street, politicians crying for the need for immediate action to solve the housing crisis, their rush for ordinances and resolutions to eliminate zoning codes, restrictions of what can be built where and the demand for evermore construction without oversight or public review. It is the new normal. It all fits perfectly into a housing market that isn’t about housing, but is about REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), buildings bundled, bought and sold. Housing has become the investment vehicle and it is the subject of the documentary film PUSH and the manufactured housing crisis. I highly recommend you join BCA for the virtual screening of PUSH listed in the Activist’s Calendar for Wednesday evening. I saw it last week.
This sets the stage for the special Monday afternoon Council Land Use Committee meeting. Councilmember Droste didn’t get the expected positive recommendation to move forward her Quadplex Zoning Proposal at the February 18th Land Use meeting. So many of us called in then that by the time we finished, the clock had run out. With the first step of ushering through the YIMBY proposal failing, a special meeting was called for Monday, March 1st with Quadplex Zoning as the only agenda item.
Councilmembers Droste, Taplin, and Kesarwani are listed as the authors with Mayor Arreguin listed as a Co-sponsor.
YIMBY stands for Yes In My Back Yard. This is a well-funded housing deregulation movement sponsored by big tech and the real estate industry. And the Bay Area State Assembly and Senate are saturated with supporters. Just look to Scott Wiener, Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner. The YIMBY agenda is to deregulate housing--an apartment construction boom will follow. The theory sold to the believers in the deregulation movement is that the initial high rents will stabilize and then drop, solving the affordability crisis.
Those of us who have been around long enough have seen how deregulation fails to bring the promised solutions, just like lowering taxes for the “job creators” never trickled-down to the rest of us.
Deregulation is a boon for the investors, but the fallout for those living under it is just the opposite. Look at Texas and the failure of the energy grid.
Councilmembers Droste and Taplin are leading the charge, with Robinson, Kesarwani, Bartlett and Mayor Arreguin signing on. Anne Applebaum in her book Twilight of Democracy, The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism writes of coming to terms with who her friends, acquaintances and colleagues had become. We need to come to terms with what the people we helped elect and voted for actually believe and how far they will go to further their careers.
Councilmember Hahn kept her cool as she questioned Droste on the Quadplex Zoning. Hahn described the Quadplex Zoning measure as a moving target that should be divided into “upzoning,” which allows bigger and more expansive development which makes the land more valuable, a better money-making vehicle for investors and speculators, and “ministerial approval” which eliminates public review of the project to be constructed. Ministerial review is often spoken of interchangeably with “by-right” which goes one step, further meaning there can be no objection. All of this is the moving target of deregulation.
Councilmember Robinson kept referring to “we” and Hahn asked, “who is the we?” It looked like Robinson was about to spill the beans on who else is involved, and then he caught himself.
This all boils down to: What’s the rush to flood the city with resolutions, referrals and ordinances turning zoning upside down, or more accurately eliminating building restrictions? Those putting forth such measures declare that the goal is to correct past wrongs of racism and exclusionary housing and to fill the desperate housing needs especially for the “missing middle,” people with a fine income, just not enough to buy the million dollar dream home.
Hahn announced at the beginning of the meeting that she had a hard stop at 4 pm. When the hour arrived and Hahn had to sign off, Robinson and Droste were almost gleeful in their good fortune that Hahn was no longer present. They floundered for a bit and then crafted a motion to take no action and to request the Agenda Committee schedule the Quadplex item for a special City Council meeting or work session. Council meetings can take action on items, while worksessions can’t.
And, that was Monday.
Thursday, March 4 was the scheduled regular meeting of the Land Use committee, and committee chair Robinson announced that only one item would be addressed,Taplin’s Resolution Recognizing Housing as a Human Right, but Hahn was back, with questions about what happened on Monday.
As it turned out, the motion which had been crafted on the fly by Robinson and Droste doesn’t fit within the committee rules. Council committees have four choices: a positive recommendation, a qualified positive recommendation, a negative recommendation and a qualified negative recommendation. The motion to take no action and forward the Quadplex Zoning to the full Council could not stand. Either it had to be corrected, or Droste could withdraw the measure from committee and move it directly to Council. Droste said she would discuss which action to take with the mayor later in the day. As for the rest of the meeting, there was discussion of the Housing as a Human Right item, but no action was taken.
Some notes requiring attention are buried in the Quadplex Zoning proposal. The property owner has no obligation to notify tenants of the sale of the property. This would deny tenants the ability to exercise the Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) if that measure ever passes.
TOPA is actually a great measure where tenants would have the first right to buy a building when it is put up for sale. Of course, deregulation as proposed in the Quadplex resolution would make the ground underneath any apartment building so valuable to investors and speculators that the price would escalate out of reach of the lowly tenants even if subsidies could be found.
There was another agenda item that was continued to a future meeting that needs tracking, the proposed Affordable Housing Overlay from Councilmember Taplin and co-sponsors Bartlett and Robinson. What this does, in short, is allow ministerial approval (counter sign-off by staff, no public hearing) for 100% low-to-moderate-income 7-story projects, and to allow for an additional 10’ density bonus (another story) to projects in residential neighborhoods (R-1, R-1A and R-2). It sounds wonderful at first glance, until one looks at the details, and this is where it gets loose.
The entire project could be rented to moderate-income households. Per HUD, that is people earning 80% – 120% of the area median income (AMI). Using the Berkeley Housing Authority’s chart as the basis for calculating the AMI for a 1-person household, the result is $91,375/year.
By that standard a person with moderate AMI is not poor, and would qualify for a unit as a moderate income earner, making the project sound as if it contributes to housing the poor while dancing on the edge of market rate.
See:
There were a few callers extolling the benefits of Quadplex Zoning on Monday and Thursday from the organization that used to be called BARF (Bay Area Renters Federation). It has morphed into California YIMBY and overlaps with East Bay for Everyone. These are true believers in trickle-down housing, that building everywhere without restraint will solve the problem of unaffordable housing for the many. Trying to change the mind of a YIMBY is like trying to convince someone wearing a MAGA hat that the election wasn’t stolen from Trump.
Patrick M. Condon was a true believer until he saw it didn’t work. I’m working my way through his book Sick City Disease, Race: Inequality and Urban Land. My walk partner asked me today what the translation for the Latin quid pro quo is. It is, according to google translate, “something for something,” a favor for a favor. This rush to eliminate zoning codes and deregulate housing looks to be a combination of an investment vehicle, true believers, and a favor for a favor for someone vying for real estate industry support for a coveted career move.
The last meeting to be covered is the Public Works Commission on Thursday evening. When I tuned in, the meeting was already in progress, with employees calling in from parking enforcement to speak against being moved to another department under the Mayor’s proposed BerkDOT.
I don’t share the enthusiasm that is coming from some quarters of Berkeley for the Mayor’s idea of creating a Berkeley Department of Transportation (BerkDOT) as a solution to racially biased policing. The entire restructuring of parking enforcement, currently under the police department, in order to end biased policing strikes me as a costly and ill-timed misadventure. It should be preceded by the work just beginning: Reimagining Public Safety. That task force meets this coming Thursday, March 11 at 6 pm.
Liam Garland has been tasked with developing the model for BerkDOT. As the new Director of Public Works, Garland is fulfilling his assignment. Just because we have a talented person assigned to lead a premature restructuring of the City organizational chart doesn’t make the timing any better.
I’ve listened to Liam Garland at a number of City meetings. At each, I am grateful that he was hired. He comes with an impressive resume of work experiences that would be rare to see in the position he holds in city administration. He was an elementary school teacher, later an attorney representing victims of housing discrimination. Garland will be introduced at the Wednesday evening Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association meeting at 7 pm.
I like to close with what I’m reading. Already mentioned is Twilight of Democracy, The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum 2020. I also finished Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, 2017. The best quote in Nomadland comes from the main character, Linda, who describes Amazon as “people buying stuff they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” Also, stacked on my iPad bookshelf is The Devil You Know, A Black Power Manifesto by Charles M. Blow, 2021
