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Editor's Note: The Planet has received a number of letters regarding the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council which Mayor Jesse Arreguin has called for this coming Thursday, March 25. Those who have the required computer access can contribute one minute of spoken commentary by Zoom starting at 6 p.m. You can also add your comments by email. Letters of less than 150 words will be read aloud by the city clerk. Below is an example of the best way to make a complicated comment without speaking online: a 150 word summary followed by a comprehensive letter which might (or might not) be read by the mayor and councilmembers. Here is an excellent example of such a letter:  

[short summary for the city clerk to read aloud at the meeting] 

I wish to express my very strong objection to the effort to remove the voices of Berkeley voters from the process of meeting our housing needs and our zoning and land use regulations. I trust my fellow voters to consider the needs of the entire community in a more just way than the lobbyists for developers and the construction industry. Please support the Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley's Regional Housing Needs Allocation at the 3/25 Special Meeting. 

Dear Mayor and Council members: 

It has been deeply disturbing to see the extent to which gentrification is changing the demography of our city. Berkeley families, some of whom have lived here for generations, are being driven out, especially those of color or modest income. Most Berkeley High grads cannot expect to be able to live as adults in the city where they were raised. 

Any observer who is paying attention can see that for-profit developers have influenced members of the Berkeley city council and their commissions over the past fifteen years to achieve this end. For-profit developers have no interest in serving Berkeley’s urgent need for low-income housing. Instead, they build "luxury” projects affordable only to wealthy non-residents. The fact that the Planning Department is supported by developers’ fees obviously rigs the system. 

Most recently, under cover of racial justice and the need for low-income housing, some members of the council have been working to reduce the participation of Berkeley voters and facilitate new residential development, but with no requirement for it to provide low-income housing. The hypocrisy is extremely offensive. We don’t need four units out of 20, or forty in 100; we need 50 to 100% below-median-income projects. 

Why is the council not demanding 100% median to low-income housing on the BART parking lot projects, as BART provided for San Leandro? 

Why is the city council not budgeting funds to assist non-profit developers to provide the housing we need instead of allowing market -rate projects to take up all the available sites? 

Are there interns at work searching for foundation and government grants to support the effort to increase Berkeley’s low income housing, since the glut of market rate housing has driven up rents across the city? 

I wish to express my very strong objection to the effort to remove the voices of Berkeley voters from the process of meeting our housing needs and our zoning and land use regulations. I trust my fellow voters to consider the needs of the entire community in a more just way than the lobbyists for developers and the construction industry. 

Please support the Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley's Regional Housing Needs Allocation at the 3/25 Special Meeting.