I believe that housing is a human right and that treating it as a commodity ensures that not everyone will have a home. For half a century we’ve run a failed “market-based” experiment where needed affordable housing isn’t built, rent control is outlawed and undermined, and market rate housing is out of reach for a large segment of our community.

There are no shortcuts to fixing our housing affordability crisis. Solutions require sustained public investment alternatives, such as Measure O, which counteract displacing market forces, and asking private development to support affordable housing at a reasonable level.

Many of you communicated to the Land Use Committee that the recent "quadplex zoning" upzoning item lacked critical protections against market speculation and an affordability requirement and excluded community input through ministerial approval. Instead of removing community input, I am focused on developing objective standards that provide developers and neighbors with more certainty and reduce appeals, and providing for robust community input into our new Housing Element and General Plan. 

The item’s authors have submitted a new item that asks City Manager and Planning Commission to consider upzoning as part of the 2023-2031 Housing Element Update scheduled action during a special meeting on March 25 at 6:00 p.m. The new item is a relative improvement as it removes ministerial approval and reflects more on affordability. However, in my view, it downplays the profits to be realized through upzoning and places too much of the burden for affordability on you – the residents and businesses – rather than the out-of-town real estate interests that will realize significant profits from additional development without paying their fair share to maintain City infrastructure. 

Rather than support a proposal that doesn’t sufficiently address our affordability and displacement crisis or provide for the public input mandated by the state and our own general plan, I, Councilmembers Hahn, Wengraf and Bartlett have submitted alternative legislation to be heard on March 25. As we set out to plan for ABAG’s latest Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which asks Berkeley to plan for and produce 7,500-9,000 new housing units, we have an opportunity to do things differently. 

The legislation we introduced seeks to: 

• Center Berkeley’s RHNA planning process on achieving broad and protected affordability, to meet the needs of a humane, diverse and inclusive community.
• Ensure democratic participation and public input -- core Berkeley values -- are enshrined in our General Plan and state requirements
• Identify funds to hire culturally competent consultants to undertake a thorough, thoughtful, comprehensive/participatory process to meet the 2023 deadline for amending our Housing Element.

If you agree, you can let our colleagues know that by supporting a robust and meaningful process centered around respect for the people of Berkeley and the legally mandated processes. 

To access the meeting remotely: Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Android device: Please use this URL https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82133233284. To request to speak, use the “raise hand” icon by rolling over the bottom of the screen.  

To join by phone: Dial 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 (Toll Free) and enter Meeting ID: 821 3323 3284. If you wish to comment during the public comment portion of the agenda, Press *9 and wait to be recognized by the Chair.  

Sincerely, 

Councilmember Kate Harrison

"There's not a big appetite to do things that actually don't do anything to fix the problem," said Republican Senator John Thune (SD).

"I'm not attracted to something that doesn't work," said Republican Senator McConnell.

What doesn't work? Republican insistence on doing nothing about gun control doesn't fix the problem. Time after time, multiple people are being gunned down. Even before we can grieve over the last mass murder, another gun rampage has happened. Doing nothing, time after time, doesn't work.  

Let's do better. Let's regulate gun use like we regulate automobile use: license gun owners to use their weapons after they pass a safety test, a background check, and gun inspection. The law should require periodic license renewal, as well as insurance for any damage done by the gun owner. 

Gun ownership is enshrined in the 2nd Amendment, yet, use of these weapons can and should be regulated.

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.

ADUs [Accessory Dwelling Units]are being approved administratively that are far above what people expect from such housing units and which are harming existing tenants.

On October 20, 2020, the City administratively[ministerially or “by right”] granted a permit to build a 4-bedroom, 1,005 sq ft ADU in the front yard of an existing multi-family building at 2915 Harper Street. The ADU eliminated the front yard setback of the existing building at that address along with the five parking spaces for existing tenants, including the access used by a wheelchair-bound disabled man. The only notice to tenants was a note in their mailbox to move their cars to enable the construction.

On November 19, 2020, during the Rent Stabilization Board’s Public Comment Period, six speakers told of the distress and problems encountered by residents due to this construction and how it was handled. It is said that the City has published a one-page summary of ADU regulations…. A long search by BNC has failed to find such a document. However, we have been told that it indicates that the City has decided that detached ADUs on multifamily lots that do not exceed 16 feet in height may be of unlimited size. This is truly an important issue throughout Berkeley.

[T]he State issued ADU Handbook, updated December 2020… states that while ADUs must be permitted, “any limits on where ADUs are permitted may only be based on the adequacy of water and sewer service, and the impacts on traffic flow and public safety.” (Emphasis added).

The experience of 2915 Harper is the canary in the mine where any and all zoning features will be waived. This speaks volumes as to how residents can be expected to be treated in the future.

—Berkeley Neighborhoods Council[excerpts from their February 14 open letter to the Berkeley City Council]

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) handed a $155,250 fine to Sutter Health's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center for several coronavirus-related workplace safety issues, including the death last summer of a registered nurse, union officials representing the hospital's workers said Monday. 

Cal/OSHA launched an investigation into Alta Bates' workplace safety protocols after nurse Janine Paiste-Ponder died from COVID-19 last July. The investigation found multiple violations, including the failure to supply N95-grade respirators to Paiste-Ponder's unit. 

"Janine and many other nurses were calling on the hospital to address their many infection control concerns but their pleas for safety went unanswered when Janine ended up being exposed," said Mike Hill, a registered nurse and hospital's chief representative with the California Nurses Association. h "It is heartbreaking Janine had to die before these problems were taken seriously enough for a state investigation," Hill said.  

Cal/OSHA issued at least eight citations following its investigation, according to the CNA. 

Violations included failure to properly isolate COVID-19-positive patients, requiring nurses to reuse masks, failure to notify health care workers of COVID-19 exposure in a timely manner, failure to test asymptomatic workers and failure to execute a formal disease exposure control plan. 

A spokesperson for Sutter Health, which is based in Sacramento and operates two dozen hospitals and numerous specialized care facilities in Northern California, said the organization has already appealed the citations. 

"None of the findings are specific to the passing of our beloved colleague," Sutter Health said in a statement. "We continue to mourn her loss and are disappointed that her memory is being used for political gain." 

"We are glad that Cal/OSHA corroborated these warnings and complaints that we've been raising since the first days of the pandemic, but what's most important is to organize and ensure Sutter learns something from all this," Hill said. "We need to protect health care workers and patients from suffering harm in the first place, not after people have already died."

So, it’s finally time to try to explain Pandemic Putsch 2.0. In brief, that’s the energetic effort emanating from Sacramento to upzone, de-regulate, and otherwise alter the state of California’s land use laws to enable developers to maintain and enhance their coveted 15-or-20% profit level while the voters are distracted by COVID-19.

The generalissimo at the head of the invading army, the force that’s trying to wrest control of planning and regulation from local governments, both of activist cities like Berkeley and sleepy suburbs not at all like Berkeley, is San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener. His second in command is Berkeley’s own state senator, Nancy Skinner. In loco generalis for Berkeley is Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who has put together a majority bloc on the Berkeley City Council for his foot soldiers with Vice-Mayor Lori Droste as his subaltern.

The underlying principle of this crusade, or at least the ostensible one, is the old Neoliberal credo that a rising tide lifts all boats. A remarkable percentage of politicians, both Dems and Repugs, claim that if we build enough expensive housing the “housing crisis” will be over. Eventually those fancy digs will trickle down to the impoverished, they imply. Milton Friedman is alive and well in Sacramento,

One more time: there is no universal housing crisis in California, let alone in Berkeley. The population both here and in the state is decreasing. We are way ahead on market rate (expensive) housing.What we don’t have is enough housing located in the right places for our underpaid essential workers—and that’s an economic crisis, not a supply shortage.

We don’t pay people who work here enough to live here, and that’s a sin and a shame. But it’s not exactly hot news. 

More than two years ago, a story by Jeff Stein in the Washington Post nailed it, as regards the rental market. Here’s an excerpt: 

Since last summer, rents have fallen for the highest earners while increasing for the poorest in San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Pittsburgh, Washington and Portland, Ore., among other cities. In several other metro areas — including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Miami — rents have risen for the poor and the rich alike. The ongoing increase in prices for low-end renters poses a challenge for city officials who have vowed to lower housing costs for working-class residents already struggling with tepid wage growth in the U.S. economy. City officials have said a boom in luxury housing construction would cause rents to fall for everyone else, arguing that creating new units for those at the top would ease competition for cheaper properties. In part based on that theory, cities have approved thousands of new luxury units over the past several years, hoping to check high rents that have led more than 20 million American renters to be classified as “cost burdened,” defined as spending more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing. 

But although some advocates say the dividends could still pay off for low-income renters, others say more direct government action is needed to prevent poor residents from being forced out of their cities or into homelessness. They have called for the federal government to help construct more affordable units, or offer greater rental assistance for poor families. 

“For-profit developers have predominantly built for the luxury and higher end of the market, leaving a glut of overpriced apartments in some cities,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. “Some decision-makers believed this would ‘filter down’ to the lowest income people, but it clearly will not meet their needs.” 

 

What’s happening in Sacto? A whole lot of bad bills are in the works, and they’re starting to move through the pipeline. Just last Thursday the Senate Housing Committee passed through two objectionable proposed bills: SB 10 (Wiener) and SB290 (Skinner). 

And what are these bills? In brief, Wiener's SB10 allows developers to bypass the California Environmental Quality Act to build 10-unit market rate buildings just about anywhere in existing cities, and even worse, to allow city councils to revoke citizen initiative-passed land use protection ordinances, like the Berkeley one which bans building on parklands. Skinner’s SB 290 weakens the requirement that for-profit developers provide a minimal amount of affordable housing if they use the density bonus law, which permits larger and larger projects. 

The problem with Pandemic Putsch 2.0 is that there are many bad bills coming and going in Sacramento under ever-morphing names, and it’s hard to keep track of all of them. A very useful aid for this task is supplied by Livable California, a statewide volunteer advocacy organization whose pro-bono lawyers study each new entry for undesirable hidden consequences. They produce an admittedly opinionated website which attempts to cover all the holes in the news from the state capital. Their thumbnail analyses of current legislation can be found at https://www.livablecalifornia.org/california-state-legislation-bills-2021-livable-california/. 

Meanwhile, back in Berkeley, we’re dealing with a manufactured emergency which is being invoked by the mayor to call a special city council meeting on Thursday. That’s a remarkably insensitive choice, since at least three councilmembers plan to celebrate Passover with family over the next weekend, which typically entails a good bit of preparation. 

Councilmember Harrison has already said she won’t be able to come because of a long-planned family Passover event, and she’s sponsoring one of the two items on the agenda, a call for thoughtful long term planning for Berkeley’s housing needs. Sophie Hahn, her co-sponsor on the proposal (along with Councilmember Ben Bartlett) might or might not be able to attend, since she also observes Passover with her family, as does Councilmember Susan Wengraf. 

The other item on the agenda calls for dramatic and abrupt change to the city’s single family zoning districts, upzoning to allow anywhere from four to 10 units on sites where now there’s but one. At a meeting last week the mayor was asked by a string of public commenters why he was calling a special meeting in such a rush, and his answer was approximately “because I have the power to do so.” 

So there! Très un-cool. 

Sponsors of the quadplex upzoning measure are Councilmember Droste (Author), Mayor Arreguin (Author), Councilmember Kesarwani (Author) and Councilmember Taplin (Author). Councilmember Robinson has already indicated his support, which makes it a done deal with a five-member majority, supporting former Mayor Dean's Brown Act violation charge that they've been illegally conferring out of public view about pending legislation. 

The Zoomed Berkeley City Council meeting will be open to spectators this Thursday at 6 p.m. in case you’d like to judge for yourself or even comment for exactly one minute. 

Here’s the Zoom link for computer access: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82133233284 

And the phone connection if you can’t join by computer: 1-699-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 821 3323 3284 

Don't forget, you will be allowed exactly one minute to make an intelligent coherent explanation of why you think the city should or shouldn’t upzone everything right now or else. If you go over, the mayor will zap you. 

Not too hard, right? Be there or be square.

Mayor Jesse Arreguín and his council allies are setting up city residents to take a fall. This Thursday, March 25, the Berkeley City Council will discuss the new state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). What Arreguín has so far failed to mention is that to avoid penalties, the city must meet the RHNA affordable housing targets for low- and very low- income housing in Berkeley. Those targets will require the city to find about $1.6 to $2.2 billion dollars in subsidies, depending upon your cost assumptions. That is not a typo—yes, I mean billions. 

The RHNA process was set up by the state Department of Housing and Community Development to help cities plan for housing at all income levels. The latest targets were recently approved by the executive board of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), led by ABAG president and Berkeley's own mayor, Jesse Arreguín. By failing to notify Berkeley residents of the magnitude of the problem, Arreguín has displayed a shocking degree of disrespect for the voters who elected him. 

The RHNA targets require Berkeley to entice developers to build 8,934 housing units, including 3,854 low- and very low-income housing units. To hit those targets the developers would have to build 6,350 housing units in market-rate developments with 20% affordable inclusionary units, a total of 1,270 affordable units. 

The city would also have to find non-profit developers to build the remaining 2,584 affordable housing units in 100% affordable housing developments. The cost of those 2,584 units at $750,000 each is $1.94 billion. Today Berkeley has 51,523 housing units. Building the RNHA-required 8,934 units would be a 17.3 percent increase in the city’s housing stock. (For those of you who speak Excel, you can find a spreadsheet model here). 

Berkeley residents are being set up to take a fall because this affordable housing won't get built. Cities and non-profit developers are not going to find the necessary funding in the form of grants and federal tax credits. The main problem is that most of California’s 58 counties and 482 municipalities face the same predicament, so competition for funding will be fierce. 

The affordable housing goals were seldom met under previous RHNA cycles. But under new policies from Sacramento, built upon Senator Scott Wiener’s bills SB 35 and SB 828, cities that don't meet their housing targets by issuing building permits are penalized by having their zoning standards overruled and developers’ fantasy projects fast tracked. 

The cost of $750,000 per unit seems high, but that number is confirmed by the 62-unit affordable housing project being built next door in Albany. This article cites a similar number. In LA’s Carson City, a former luxury apartment building is being converted to “workforce” affordable housing for about $500,000 per unit. The cost of converting old motels to housing for the homeless under Gov. Newsom’s Home Key initiative is reported to be $350,000 per unit. 

What if Berkeley adopted a “build, baby build” strategy and somehow forced developers to build enough market-rate housing, with 20% inclusionary affordable units, to hit the target of 3,854 affordable units? That would require total of 19,270 housing units, a 37.4 increase in the number of housing units in Berkeley. 

This approach is hopelessly impractical in our emerging post-Covid world. On the demand side, with rents that have fallen about 25-30 % in San Francisco, developers are risk averse about going on a building spree. On the supply side, Covid-related bottlenecks have dramatically raised the costs of building materials. Even in the best of times cities cannot force developers to pull permits and build, and these are far from the best of times. 

But even if the “build, baby build” approach could hit the target, it would miss the point. One good thing about the RHNA goals is that they get the balance just about right. Due to the grotesque income inequality in our society, California needs to be producing about one affordable unit for every market-rate unit. 

As our economy grows, we’ll need more housing at that 50/50 ratio. If developers keep building at an 80/20 ratio, the housing mismatch problem will never be solved. Low-income household will continue to be cost burdened and forced to double-up in overcrowded housing units. 

The Berkeley city council needs to stop goofing around with the idea of building 2-4 unit “missing-middle” infill housing. Affordable housing requires economies of scale. Albany’s 62-unit building is on the small side. Even YIMBY big shot Senator Wiener admits this, “You don’t put subsidized affordable housing as a duplex. It doesn’t pencil out. You have to have a certain scale of density for affordable housing.” 

It’s time for Berkeley’s voters and taxpayers to stage an intervention with their city council. Council members need to stop patting themselves on the back and start doing some math. The residents deserve some answers, and the council members have some explaining to do. 

The basic problem:

At present, the city of Berkeley is playing with the idea of removing all single-family zoning (R1 & R2), and opening those areas to more densifying (up to four-plex) development. One reason is a complicity of single family zoning with redlining and housing segregation. Also, “four-plex” is not required to consider including affordable units.

Because of the way the housing economy has been financialized, any development or reorganization (“build build build” or “up-zone single-family areas,” et al) that does not directly meet the needs for affordability of working people and low income communities makes the situation (aka the “housing crisis”) worse. “Worse” means that the rich (corporations) become even freer to do what they want with our world, and the options of low-income families become more restricted and impoverishing.

Here is an outline, and partial explanation, for why this is the case. 

Some historical mileposts in housing financialization  

During the crisis of 2008, many of the larger banks and financial houses, like Deutscher, BofA, Goldman Sachs, had accumulated foreclosed houses. Some banks made the decision to leave those houses off the market, unreconditioned and unrented. Millions of houses just sat around, rotting. 

After the crisis of 2008, real estate corporations found themselves able to buy huge numbers of real estate holdings in foreclosure auctions. From somewhere, various Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) appeared with loads of cash, and created enormous pools of real estate (REO Homes LLC, Community Fund LLC, REIT, etc.). 

In 2011, some financiers (quoted in the PUSH film) decided that they needed a resource to plunder. They turned to single family houses for that purpose. Housing became a resource to be mined, like copper or aluminum, and passed on to lower corporate forms. These financial firms became like mining companies. extracting mineral resources from the ground. 

Financial capital then combined the pools of real estate compiled by the LLCs with monetary funds (e.g. pension), and turned the whole thing into something represented by securities that could be sold and on which to speculate. Real estate ceased being a commodity for these corporations and became corporate assets. That had been the same process that led to the 2008 crisis, with its invention of mortgage-backed securities, and the subprime mortgage boondoggle. The financial corporations were now playing with “housing-backed securities.” 

Ten years ago in the BayArea, some people claimed that the housing crisis was a “shortage of housing.” Build housing, they said. But the Berkeley population was roughly the same as it had been in 1980 (around 115,000). Nevertheless, market rate housing was built–around 1100 units. Now, ten years later, we face the same “affordable housing crisis,” except that now, there is a glut of market rate housing. More developments will mean nothing for the people who need affordable housing. But it will be very enriching for the financialization process.  

The concept of “affordable housing” is defined as housing for which a family expends no more that 30% of its income. That means that housing is related to people rather than markets. That is what “human” means in “human rights.” 

The current stratification of financial interests 

With respect to the growing pools of real estate assets, local LLCs continue attempting to make a profit on their houses (through rentals or sales of refurbished units). Larger real estate corporations would buyu membership in these LLCs, as investors, and take control, transforming the LLCs into assets for themselves. Those real estate corporations in turn became sources of financial value for the still larger housing-financialization corporations (Blackstone, Carlyle, Clayton, TPG, Public Storage, and others). The securities issued by these financialization corporations then represented the increase in value of the entire financial structure that had been imposed on housing. Those at the top do not care what happens at the ground, where we live. Whether we find housing or not, or whether people get evicted or not, is immaterial for them. Their "real" interests lie in trading housing securities. 

Those securities become a source of speculative profit for securities investors (who are mainly corporations, not people). Many are attracted to those securities because prices will go up as assets increase (through construction, housing development, increased land values, urban densification, rent increases, and house commodity speculation). Whatever increases the value of those assets (houses, land, LLCs) makes money for those trading in real estate corporation securities. That means that pressure is put on housing itself, and housing management, to do nothing that would reduce value increases (like building affordable housing, or doing major but unseen maintenance). 

In addition, companies and corporations can borrow money from banks on the basis of their asset value. The greater their assets, the more they can borrow. Borrowed money gives them leverage in investment and other dealings. Corporations will do whatever they must to keep their securities prices up, in order to support their debt structure. 

Today, as a result, this "industry" has become really big. Blackstone owns more than 300,000 buildings around the world. REO Homes LLC owns hundreds of houses in West Oakland. The major real estate financialization corporations now control somewhere around $217 trillion in real estate value, which is about four times the size of the whole world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

This gives you a hint about the relation between the productive economy (GDP) and the financial economy. 

Consequences and Contingencies 

When houses and buildings are left empty: -- three things happen. 

1- Insofar as a building is one of hundreds commonly owned as assets by a single company, to leave it vacant means that rent can go up on other units in response to lower supply (the vacant building). As rent levels rise, the corporation’s asset value goes up. 

A solution: limit the number of houses one company can own to a small number. 

2- The asset value of the larger “housing financialization corporations” (the top level of the financialization pyramid) increases with the increase in asset value of the lower real estate corporations (of which the top corporations own a share). Each increase in asset value generally pushes securities value up. 

3- The direct owner of vacant buildings in the pool (the LLC itself or a proxy person) takes a tax write-off, which is the least of the benefits the real estate industry gleans from leaving houses vacant in its pool. 

The result: the housing situation, well under control by corporate power, makes money. The “affordable housing crisis” that working people and low income families face gets worse. 

A solution: a vacancy tax on houses during an affordable housing crisis. 

TV ads: “I want to buy your house” 

Today we see advertisements by outfits with down-home names offering to “buy your house.” They will pay cash, after making a cursory inspection, with no closing costs, no repairs, no fees. Just cash for a house. With huge financialization going on with respect to single family housing, this looks like a mop-up operation. And nothing will make it more attractive to home owners than the fear that the neighborhood will be taken over by developers building fourplexes. 

That is a fear that the up-zoning proposal will play into, which the speculators will be counting on. The pressure to give in to speculators will be enormous. The end result will be more total control over housing by financialization corporations. 

Up-zoning, the Trojan Horse of financialization 

At a time when finance capital has decided to make their money based on financialization of housing (by bundling and securitizing single-family houses), any scheme that will lift zoning regulations will make it easier for the real estate financial corporations (working through speculators) to absorb the rest of the supply. That is the gift that up-zoning promises to give the real estate corporations. Given the increase in land value (when single family houses are replaced by four-plexes), the attractiveness that it will bestow on housing securities will lead to price increases across the industry. 

As Patrick Condon’s research has shown, urban densification that increases building or development will result in increased value for that land (land price inflation). It will thus also result in increased rent levels. [Condon: land value is the biggest decider of housing prices.] The pressure from financialization corporations (much more powerful than mere developers) to minimize affordable housing on that land will be strong. In the face of up-zoning, cities will face a hard fight to provide affordable housing in place of single family dwellings. They will have to make the mitigation fee escape hatch a lot heavier. Nevertheless, in an “affordable housing crisis,” only affordable housing will provide a solution. 

One stop-gap measure Condon proposes is a land tax. Taxing the land will slow or stop development that increases land value, and ultimately bring land values down. He then proposes that the city use that tax money to buy the land and build affordable housing. 

The sociological research by Othering and Belonging 

The sponsors of the up-zoning measure have used some research from U.C. Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. I fear they have misused that research. While the O&B paper they cite relates to the sociology of the present state of single family zoning, it only points to a correlation between such zoning and increased racial inequity in family asset levels, education, health care, job opportunity, etc. It suggests that single family zoning provided a conducive environment for the imposition by white supremacy on different communities. It does not claim that the zoning was a cause of racial inequities. 

Western cities grew around single family housing because there was space, cheap materials, and slow growth. Even the area that was once the heart of the black community in Berkeley, ironically, is still a predominantly single family or duplex housing area. Racial inequities were brought to neighborhoods by white privilege, white hegemony, and white desires for segregation which redlined areas which were already zoned. In that opportunist sense, zoning played a role in racial inequity in cities. But the white people who originally settled these cities brought their racism with them. They didn’t invent it through zoning. 

Summary 

The four economic states a house occupies 

Lodging – a human right, prevented from being so by property rights, which supersede the human. 

A commodity – a thing sold on a market as property, or whose rent is established on a market somewhere else. Commodification puts an end to housing as lodging and turns it into an economic category. 

An asset – a capital value that lists in a company’s portfolio as part of its asset value, and on which the company can raise money by borrowing. A house ceases to be a thing and becomes a ledger entry. 

A security – the securities traded by housing financialization corporations both represent and determine the value of the underlying houses through its dominance over the layers of economic organization between those houses and the corporations. Financialization puts an end to houses as commodities by turning them into assets. 

Conclusion 

What cities do to resolve their “affordable housing” crises, if not done at the level of lodging, will only fall prey to corporate financialization, and thus work against itself. 

The statistic about real estate financial value being greater than global GDP indicates that the global economy is today in two parts, a productive economy, in which things of social value are produced (GDP), and a financial economy, in which money makes money through various forms of speculation. 

Housing as a human right means setting housing in relation to humans as lodging, and wresting it free of being a commodity, a corporate asset, or a corporate security. 

Ever since non-Black Berkeley City Councilmembers led the way in contending that single-family (R-1) zoning is inherently "racist" and "exclusionary," I vowed to do a little research on Americans' actual housing preferences by ethnic group. I clicked through a collection of Google search hits, and found two pertinent articles. These provide some interesting data, excerpted below. Here are the highlights: 

• Purchasers of all four ethnicities overwhelmingly chose a detached, single-family house, with preferences ranging from 76% to 82%. (NAR report just below, based on 2019-20 purchases/sales).
• The slight variation in those percentages is directly proportional to the (discouragingly familiar) variation in groups' median household incomes. Since these are purchase data, it's logical to assume that preferences for detached single-family homes were similar across all groups, while the small variations in behavior reflects purchasers’ settling for what they could afford.
• Actual 2013 preference data, from actual and prospective buyers (NAHB 2014 report further below), gets even more interesting. Desired home floor area was inversely proportional to whiteness: White buyers wanted a median of 2,197 sq. ft.; Asian buyers wanted 2,280 sq. ft.; Hispanic buyers wanted 2,347 sq. ft.; and Black buyers wanted 2,664 sq. ft.
• In the same 2013 survey's "most unwanted” dwelling features, "High density community" ranked #3 worst among white respondents, #7 among Asians, #3 among Hispanics, and #4 among Black respondents. (The only consistently less-desirable housing features were "Elevator" and "Golf course community," which ranked #1 and #2 worst across all groups.)

If Berkeley elected officials really wanted to meaningfully improve access to housing, they'd be looking for ways to improve the affordability of the housing types people really want. Not recklessly hollowing out the city's zoning, to promote automatic approval of more eyesores like the ginormous "Buy Right house." 

Such monster structures, built out to property lines, threaten basic public goods like sunlight access and views for everyone. Preventing such abusive tragedies of the commons is why zoning laws were first developed. As Joni warned all of us in 1970, amid a previous building boom: Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. 

Also: Please hold off on encouraging any “golf course community” housing, especially with elevators. 

(National Association of Realtors) 

Based on NAR’s Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2020 data, an annual survey of home buyers and sellers from July 2019 to June 2020. 

…
Home Characteristics Purchased by Race/Ethnicity 

National Association of Home Builders, April 1, 2014 

(Based on a 2013 nationwide survey of recent and prospective home buyers.)
… 

Differences in Housing Preferences Due to Race/Ethnicity 

Most “Unwanted” Features Across Racial/Ethnic Backgrounds 

The Republican minority in the Senate seems determined to use the anti-democratic filibuster to block all Democratic legislation. The filibuster is not enshrined in the U.S Constitution. It could be easily be eliminated by a simple majority vote in the Senate. 

This is especially important given the Republicans have silently admitted they have failed to persuade voters on important legislators matters. The only way forward is to install barriers restricting voter rights, in states containing predominately people of color. At least 253 laws in 43 states have been enacted to restrict voter rights. It is certain that extreme gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states will enhance voter suppression. Eliminating the filibuster has never therefore been more urgent. This insidious practice has long empowered white supremacists to protect and extend slavery and segregation. When Congress was founded the House and Senate required a simple majority to pass a bill. 

The filibuster has its roots in anti-democratic witchcraft. It order to protect Vice President Aaron Burr, facing murder charges for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel Burr suggested the Senate skip its “previous question” rule, creating a fatal loophole in Senate procedures, ultimately allowing the minority party to obstruct progress by endlessly extending debate h what was later dubbed the filibuster. Decades ago, former Louisiana Senator Huey Long, in an attempt to block a confirmation, recited salad dressing and oyster recipes during a 15-and-a-half-hour filibuster. 

Former South Carolina racist Senator Strom Thurmond used a sauna to dehydrate himself so he wouldn't have to use the bathroom, allowing him to speak for more than 24 hours straight during a filibuster intended to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Do we really need to continue this anti-democratic pantomime? We, the taxpayers pay our legislators an excellent salary with great benefits to advance the needs of the American people and the world at large. It is time to toss the legislator buster in the dustbin of history, Please call your senators and demand action,- kill the filibuster!

Prelude to a Reprint
Two months before the Pentagon's brutal pening assault on Iraq in 2003, I posted the following AlterNet article. I'm reposting it today to mark the 18th anniversary of the bombardment of Baghdad that marked the criminal beginning of yet another Forever War.

Background:

In the weeks leading up to the March 20, 2003 US attack on Baghdad, Alternet published an article titled “Shock and Awe: Guernica Revisited.”

I wrote the piece after discovering a planning document for the Pentagon's “Shock and Awe” attack that revealed how the US planned to strike Iraq's capitol, Baghdad, with 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the first 48 hours. In the AlterNet article, I drew a comparison with the infamous 1937 attack on the Basque town of Guernica, which was brutally targeted by six German bombers during the Spanish Civil War. Published on January 28, the AlterNet exposé appeared to have struck a chord. Or, maybe two.

(1) A tapestry reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (depicting the horrific slaughter of Basque civilians) had been on permanent display at the UN building in New York. But, because of its prominent placement, the anti-war masterpiece would have appeared in the background during Colin Powell's February 5, press-op to announce Washington’s war plans. Before Powell's scheduled appearance, the painting was covered with a blue cloth and hidden behind Security Council flags.  

(2) The Guernica comparison may have had another, more consequential, impact. In the run-up to the US attack, a decision was made not to follow the complete “Shock and Awe” game-plan. On March 20, 2003, the Baltimore Sun confirmed that: “The war was supposed to start with about 3,000 precision-guided weapons ripping through the night sky over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.” As bad as the US assault was, it could have been much worse. 

I'd like to think that the AlterNet article might have had something to do with that decision. 

(January 26, 2003) — Forget Osama. Forget Saddam. The Pentagon’s newest target is the city of Baghdad. 

US military strategists have announced a plan to pummel Iraq with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. Many of these missiles would rain down on Baghdad, a city of five million people. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century’s Guernica. 

On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed. 

The Pentagon now predicts that the Iraq blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. “The sheer size of this has never been . . . contemplated before,” one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad.” 

The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan “Shock and Awe,” a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration. 

The concept of Shock and Awe was first developed by the Pentagon’s National Defense University (NDU) in 1996 as part of the “Rapid Dominance” strategy. The strategy was first used in Afghanistan.  

In their 1996 NDU book, Shock and Awe, authors Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade wrote of the need to mount an assault with “sufficiently intimidating and compelling factors to force or otherwise convince an adversary to accept our will.” 

With an unsettling air of appreciation, Ullman and Wade invoked the haunting images from “old photographs and movie or television screens [depicting] the comatose and glazed expressions of survivors of the great bombardments of World War I. Those images and expressions of shock transcend race, culture and history.” 

Shock and awe also were the emotions that Americans experienced on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, like the 9/11 terrorists, Bush and Co. are planning a similar act of almost unparalleled ferocity — a devastating premeditated attack on a civilian urban population. 

Bush seems determined to follow in the footsteps of Hulagu Khan and Tamerlane, the Mongol warlords who laid bloody waste to Baghdad in 1258 and 1401. 

But destroying Baghdad will not uncover hidden chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (if, in fact, any exist). Destroying Baghdad will not capture, topple or kill Saddam Hussein. Shock and Awe’s expressed goal is simple: in the words of Harlan Ullman, to destroy the Iraqi people “physically, emotionally and psychologically.” 

Ironically, this was also the goal of the Nazi strategists who destroyed Guernica. The town had no strategic value as a military target, but, like Baghdad, it was a cultural and religious center. Guernica was devastated to terrorize the population and break the spirit of the Basque resistance. 

Surely cruise missiles have been programmed to demolish the Baath Party Headquarters, presidential palaces and Republican Guard compounds. But have missiles also been preset to obliterate the al-Qadiriya Shrine, the Tomb of Imam al-A’dham and the Mosque of Sheik Abdul Qadir al-Ghailani? 

We now know that there was no military need to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaski. The detonations were intended to demonstrate to the world — and to the Soviet Union, especially — that the US had a functioning superweapon. Having sole possession of “The Bomb” gave Washington the power to dominate post-war world politics. 

Similarly, the destruction of Baghdad seems designed to underscore Bush’s belligerent warning to the rest of the world: “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” 

Washington’s new National Security Strategy describes an America dominating the world militarily, politically and economically. 

In a report published a month before the US presidential elections, the conservative Project for the New American Century insisted on instituting a “global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” 

This ringing endorsement of hyper-imperialism was co-authored by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Jeb Bush, none of whom (with the one exception of Rumsfeld) ever volunteered for military service. 

Today, thousands of citizen volunteers from around the world are converging in Iraq to stand as nonviolent “human shields” in hopes of forestalling a US assault. The brave men and women in this international “Peace Army” include anti-war activists, religious witnesses, retirees, US military veterans and members of families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attack. 

The World Food Program is warning Yemen is heading towards the largest famine in modern history, with the U.N. agency projecting around 400,000 Yemeni children under the age of 5 could die from acute malnutrition. Saudi war planes continue to drop their lethal US payloads on a predominately civilian population. The tight Saudi embargo is preventing fuel and food from reaching the starving population , making the Saudi’s, and the US guilty of war crimes. 

Jane Ferguson reporting for PBS Newshour and CNN senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir says Yemen is a “hell on Earth.” Their courageous reporting inside Yemen describe the devastating impact of the war on civilians. The widespread fuel shortages is affecting all aspects of life. On the road to Hodeidah port, Nina witnessed hundreds of stalled food supply trucks unable to move because of the chronic shortage of fuel their cargoes rotting in the sun.The Port of Hodeidah is the supply gateway for the rest of country and was usually bustling with activity prior to the US-Saudi backed embargo. It is now eerily silent.  

Since the Yemen war started six years ago, families have been in dire financial freefall. The fuel blockade has severely impacted all civilian life.The unpaid physician at a local hospital showed Nima one of his critical patients in the therapeutic feeding center. A 10-year-old girl whose growth has been so stunted by starvation, she could no longer stand. Parents are so distraught watching their children of hunger.Busy hospitals are running out of the vital fuel that keeps its generators running. If they stop hundreds of patients will surely die. 

President Biden could use the power of the presidency to bring this insane civil war to an end. First he should apologize for decades of US interference in Iran’s internal affairs acknowledging the CIA-British MI6 theft of Iranian oil and orchestrating a coup to overthrow democratic leader Mosaddeq in 1953. He should then restore the 2015 nuclear accord with no preconditions, and immediately lift the crippling sanctions. The Iranian people should not suffer because former President Trump in a fit of pique chose to unilaterally withdraw from the 2015 nuclear treaty. Following normalization of relations with Iran, President Biden should broker a cease fire and peace treaty with the Saudis and the Iranian backed Houthis. To use soft language of recalibrating US relationship with Saudis is tantamount to maintaining the unacceptable status quo. We should NOT be allies with a nation which continues to live in the stone age relegating the role of Saudi women to a life of servitude.

put your head against the bark

of any tree in People's Park

they'll say what they're standing for

this is the garden that stopped a war

find a place to rest your head

plant a simple flower bed

all are welcome rich and poor

this is the garden that stopped a war



Chorus: this is the garden they tried to take

we are the people they tried to break

this is the landmark we're standing for

this is the garden that stopped a war

 

music dance and food to share 

smiling people everywhere 

sing together cry no more 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

wander through the sparkling grass 

set your thoughts adrift at last 

watch the clouds come back to shore 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

Chorus: this is the garden they tried to take 

we are the people they tried to break 

this is the landmark we're standing for 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

clouds that dance across the sky 

waltz with birds that dip and fly 

seagulls circle bow and soar 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

put your head against the bark 

of any tree in People's Park 

they'll say what they're standing for 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

Chorus: this is the garden they tried to take 

we are the people they tried to break 

this is the landmark we're standing for 

this is the garden that stopped a war 

Affluent people who've had money their whole lives lack understanding of what it is like to try living on nine hundred dollars a month. Although we have it cushy in comparison to people living in a third world country, or to living on the street with nothing, it is still a struggle to live as a low-income individual. To add insult to injury, we are insulted. Most affluent people believe that low-income people are scum. In a writer's group I briefly attended, the woman who led the group was complaining of low-income housing being built near her. I was in her writer's group and maybe she was unaware that I am of low income. Not unexpectedly, I didn't last in her group. 

Life circumstances of low-income people are deprived and difficult. Getting a car repair done becomes a major difficulty when a mechanic wants to have nine hundred dollars to do a brake job. Not all poor people know how to work on their own cars; and we don't all hang out in the crowd of those who do. Disabled people, even if we knew how to do simple repairs, may not be physically up to the task. 

As a prank, someone in my neighborhood let some of the air out of my tires. I went to a gas station and put the air back in. Doing this entailed physical exertion because you need to jam the air hose very tightly against the valve stem, and you have to do this while bending or kneeling since the tire is close to the ground. And, by the way, I'm physically in poor condition. There is no chance that I would've gone to a tire store for that purpose, be charged for the privilege, have more of my time spent, and be handed a fabrication of something being wrong with the car that isn't. 

What does the stimulus check mean? It means a lot. It means relief--from the continuous state of the edge of being broke. It means being able to afford a few things that we would otherwise have to do without. One hopes it means that the money can be used to create a lasting improvement in life conditions. For example, if you wanted to start a home-based business, the money could be used for business classes, licensing, insurance, and advertising. If you want to do conventional employment, the money could be used for work clothes. If you owe money on credit cards, this could be paid off, and you would, for a month or two, be without the burden of monthly minimum payments. If you wanted to go whole hogg, you could go on a spending spree at a dollar store. 

Additionally, if we need something, it is not prohibitive to buy it. When broke, you could be up against not being able to buy an item on short notice because of not having the money to pay for it. 

COVID affects our budgets because we must periodically buy masks and hand sanitizer and because we may be ordering a lot of our food and other necessities delivered to reduce chances of getting sick. 

The main point is that the stimulus check doesn't need to be just a handout; it can be a hand up. And when we receive the money, I advise using it in ways that will have lasting benefit. 

On March 9, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan labor bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. One of the bill’s most significant provisions is a repeal of state right-to-work laws that Republican majorities have used to undermine unions, a crucial pro-Democratic constituency, across the country. That’s why enacting state right-to-work laws is a top Republican priority. 

The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, permitted a state to pass laws that prohibit unions from requiring a worker to pay dues, even when the worker is covered by a union-negotiated collective bargaining agreement. Thus, workers in right-to-work states have less incentive to join and pay dues to a union. Unions can still organize in right-to-work states, but they have to convince individual employees that putting roughly 2% of their income toward union dues is worthwhile. As a result, unions have less clout vis-à-vis corporations. Right-to-work, or as some have called such laws, a right-to-work for less laws, have been enacted by 27 states. 

A Bloomberg Law Analysis found workers in right-to-work states compared to non-right-to-work states have lower union membership rates, less work stoppages, and less hourly wages. (According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $1,144 in 2020, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $958.) Bloomberg concludes: "The statistics suggest that right-to-work states are succeeding at limiting union strength in terms of membership, organizing, and unrest, but are seeing nonunion workers unable to gain ground on union workers in terms of earnings—even more so than in non-right-to-work states.” 

Why do we need unions anyway? Because they are essential for America. Unions are the only large-scale movement left in America that serve as a countervailing balance against corporate power, acting in the economic interest of the middle class. But the decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. You may take issue with a particular union’s position on an issue, but remember they are the only real organized check on the power of the business community in this country. 

Thanks to collective bargaining, union members have higher wages and better benefits. In addition, union membership actually raises living and working standards for all working men and women, union and non-union. When union membership rates are high, so is the share of income that goes to the middle class. When those rates fall, income inequality grows and the middle class shrinks. 

Corporations did not all of a sudden give workers two days off each week, which we now call weekends, or paid vacations and sick leave, or rights at the workplace, or pensions, or overtime pay. Virtually all the benefits we have at work, whether in the public or private sector, are because unions fought hard and long against big business who did everything they could to prevent giving us these rights. 

Labor membership is shrinking. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, participation in labor unions in 2019 continued their decades-long decline. Union membership in the American workforce was down to 10.3% from 10.5% in 2018. In 1983, unions represented about 1 out of 5 workers; now it’s 1 in 10 workers. Probably due to the pandemic, however, in 2020, support for union membership is up to 65%.  

Right-to-work laws are anti-union and contribute to a shrinking middle class and wealth inequality. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans probably won't support the House PRO Act and will use the filibuster to defeat it. If Democrats don’t want the PRO Act and the rest of their agenda landing in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s legislative graveyard, they will have to bite the bullet and eliminate the Senate filibuster rule. 

It is not clear, however, that the Senate Democrats have the 50 votes plus the vice president’s vote to eliminate the filibuster rule; Senators Joe Manchin (D.WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D.AZ) have defended the filibuster as part of what they assert is a longstanding Senate custom.  

The cure for political dysfunction is majority rule. Senate Democrats have work to do.

A Wednesday Like No Other

Off to do some shopping at the Shattuck Avenue Berkeley Bowl last Wednesday, we pulled into the last parking spot on nearby Newberry Street. Since I've been chased away from Newberry before—by the oncoming ruckus of a city street-sweeper—I checked the local No Parking signs. Sure enough, they warned drivers that no parking was permitted from "9 AM to Noon. 3rd Wednesday Each Month."

And it happened to be the third Wednesday in March. But when I took a closer look at the sign next to my parking spot, I noticed it read: "No Parking. 9 AM to Noon. 3nd Wednesday Each Month."

I briefly wondered what my chances would be to beat a no-parking ticket because it was issued on the "3nd." (And how would you pronounce that? "Thurcond"?) 

The Greatest Hate States 

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently released its annual "Year in Hate" report, which identified 838 klan/nazi/nationalist/supremacist/confederate groups active in the US. According to SPLC's Hate by State app, California (a large state with a large population) ranks near the top with 72 active identified hate groups festering within our borders. The list ranges from the Proud Boys and the Counter Jihad Coalition to the Western Hammerskins and the Golden State Skinheads. (The good news: California scores seven fewer Fürher front-groups than in 2017.) 

According to the SPLC's Hate Map, every state is infected by the vicious virus of intolerance. Only seven states were found to have only a single hate group. Those seven are Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont. 

On a per-capita basis, America's Most Hateful States are: Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. 

No Jury Trials for Supervillains? 

Minneapolis prosecutors are having a difficult time seating a jury to consider the fate of former city police officer Derek Chauvin, the cold-hearted cop who kept his knee on George Floyd's neck and ignored the dying man's pleas. The problem is that it's proving next to impossible to find potential jurors who (1) know nothing about the case or (2) know about the case but haven't come to any conclusions about guilt or innocence. (It doesn't help matters that, in this racially-charged case, the former police officer is also, literally, a white Chauvinist.) 

The jury juggernaut raises a disturbing judicial question: If a crime has been so widely publicized that no potential juror harbors any doubt whatsoever that the accused is guilty, that could make a jury trial impossible. 

And if there were no jury trial, would that mean that the accused could not be tried, convicted, and jailed? And, if that were the case, wouldn't it follow that some criminal genius might realize that the way to evade prosecution would be to intentionally engage in a crime that was so clear-cut, so self-evident and so widely publicized that a "fair and open-minded" jury could never be convened? 

There may already be a recent precedent for this kind of "above the law" Supervillainy. This inability to prosecute well-documented and egregious "supercrimes" could wind up being called "The Trump Exemption." 

Palindromes that Bear Repeating 

Palindromes are words that read the same forwards or backwards. Words like: Civic, Dad, Kayak, Level, Madam, Mom, Pop, Poop, Noon, Racecar, Radar, Redder, Refer, Repaper, Rotator, Rotors, Sagas, Solos, Stats, Tenet, and Wow. 

And there are even palindromes that are whole sentences: 

A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.
Dammit I'm mad!
Never odd or even
A nut for a jar of tuna.
Poor Dan is in a droop.
Sit on a potato pan, Otis.
Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts
Are we not pure? “No, sir!” Panama’s moody Noriega brags. “It is garbage!” Irony dooms a man—a prisoner up to new era. 

More surprises lurk online at: https://examples.yourdictionary.com/palindrome-examples.html 

The Films of Mark Kitchell 

Local filmmaker Mark Kitchell checks in with some good news. "We have restored Berkeley in the Sixties. After thirty years of degrading video masters, we digitized from a film print. It’s much sharper and color-corrected by the master, Gary Coates. He brought up the blacks, which made the interviews look like I’d intended, with dark backgrounds to focus on faces. I urge you to have a fresh look at a well-loved classic." 

And that's not all. Kitchell's crew also has digitally refurbished the filmmaker's other two documentaries—A Fierce Green Fire (about the environmental movement) and Evolution of Organic (about the rise of eco-farming). Here are links: Berkley in the Sixties: Google and iTunes. A Fierce Green Fire: Google and iTunes. Evolution of Organic: Google and Itunes. 

On March 15, all three remastered films were released for online screening on Amazon, Apple TV / iTunes, Google Play / YouTube, and Vudu. (Rental: $3.99/4.99. Purchase: $12.99/14.99.) 

Meanwhile, Kitchell's YouTube Channel is featuring Archival Gems and Deleted Scenes from Berkeley in the Sixties, including these Kitchell favorites: "The Hells Angels volunteering for Vietnam; the Free Speech Movement’s Mario Savio receiving a clip-on tie for a birthday present the day after getting dragged off the stage of the Greek Theater by his tie; Ken Kesey at the Acid Test Graduation; runaways in the Haight; and the Black Panther Free Breakfast program. Deleted Scenes include: an early cut of the Black Panthers scene; Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign in California, which ends in assassination; the unraveling of the Democratic Party; the nascent Peace & Freedom Party alliance with the Black Panthers, doomed by nominating Eldridge Cleaver for President only to have him spurn it as he turns toward revolution." 

The Films of Mark Kitchell website provides additional text, photos, and trailers for each film and a store for purchasing digital streams ($20) and DVD’s ($40 including shipping). And Kitchell is offering a bonus: (1) "My student film, The Godfather Comes to Sixth St., about the impact of filming of The Godfather Part II on my Lower East Side neighbors" and (2) a sample reel for the forthcoming film, Cannabis Chronicles. 

Extinction Inc. Humans Versus Butterflies and Whales 

Over the past four decades, bees and butterflies have been in a steady, deadly decline—thanks to rising temperatures and rising use of chemical pesticides. Populations of Monarch butterflies have seen a 97 percent loss over the past 40 years. It's even worse in coastal California where the Monarch population has fallen by 99% with populations of irreplaceable Monarchs in an accelerating free-fall for decades and now vanishingly near a final collapse. A December 2020 count of California's overwintering Monarchs found barely 2,000 survivors. Extinction seems tragically imminent. 

At the same time, humpback whales—one of the largest creatures on the planet—are also at risk, having seen their historic migration paths disrupted by warming oceans. (Somehow, in a recent statement of concern, the Yale Climate Connection construed this calamity not as a threat to the humpbacks so much as a threat to tourism related to the "whale-watching businesses.") 

And how about polar bears? With the loss of floating plates of sea ice, the bears are finding it harder to find places to rest while they swim for food in the warming waters. Instead, we now see pathetically thin survivors desperately climbing the rocky inclines of coastal slopes in hopes of dining on the eggs of seabirds. 

Here's a thought: What if we gathered up all the tons of discarded plastic that are polluting the world's oceans and used the indestructible plastic mass to create small, artificial ice bergs. These platforms could then be released in northern waters to give the starving bears something better to cling to than an outcropping of seaward rock. 

Haaland for the Heartland 

New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland has won confirmation to a new post as director of the Department of the Interior. Haaland thus becomes the first Native American appointed to a cabinet position—and who better to serve as a steward of the land than a Native American whose ancestors have occupied the land for 35 generations—that's about 900 years or more than three times longer than European squatters have been a presence on the continent. 

It's a long overdue and profound gesture in the direction of justice. Caring for the land is rooted in the nine-century-long history of Haaland's indiginous ancestors. If buffalo could dance, the prairies would be echoing with their hoofbeats! 

If you would like to sign a card congratulating Haaland on her confirmation as president Biden's new Secretary of the Interior, click here. 

Note: Every vote against Haaland's nomination was cast by a Republican and everyone who voted for Haaland was a Democrat—with the exception of three Senate Republicans who voted to dub Deb the new Interior chief. Bravos to Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and Dan Sullivan (Alaska). 

A Gender-bender Poem 

The Gender Addendum has become all the rage these days. A friend of mine just checked in with a long email letter. At the end of his message and below his signature, he added "he/any." 

Hence, this poem: 

The rise of gender pronouns is pronounced 

"He" "she" "him" "her" are now announced. 

But given multiple-personality-disorder-plus 

Can I address myself as "we" "them" "all of us"? 

Calling a Trumpublican to Account 

Public Citizen's Robert Weisman had some choice words after hearing Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's GOPish reaction to a question about the armed mob that broke into the Capitol building on January 6. 

Referring to the unruly mob of insurrectionists, Johnson told a right-wing radio host: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.” 

"Just a few points, senator," Weisman responded:
• If you love this country, you don’t attack its most symbolic building in a murderous attempt to overturn a democratic election and install an authoritarian regime.
• If you respect law enforcement, you don’t scream obscenities and abusive epithets at police officers who are guarding the Capitol. You don’t viciously attack them with flagpoles, crutches, bear spray, fire extinguishers, makeshift clubs, metal barricades, and your own fists. You don’t leave 140 of them wounded and three dead.
• If you would never do anything to break the law, you don’t participate in an unprecedented act of sedition that is by definition illegal. 

Compounding his white-populist scenario, Johnson added that, had he instead seen “tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter” activists inside the Capitol, he would have been “a little concerned.” 

Johnson assured his critics: “There is nothing racial about my comments.... This isn’t about race, this is about riots.” Prompting Weisman retort: "But not the insurrectionist, white-supremacist riot on January 6, I guess." 

"Racist rhetoric has been normalized by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, and, above all, Donald Trump," Weisman noted. "It has been normalized because Republicans permit it, refuse to denounce it, and—in too many cases—actually subscribe to it." 

With an abiding faith in the power of redemption. Public Citizen is inviting public citizens to appeal to the GOP with a simple message to our senators — especially — Republicans: It is your duty to demand, at a minimum, that Ron Johnson apologize. 

Facial Stereotypes and the American Zeitgeist 

Have you noticed the two great visual tropes used in the promotion of animated films? You see them on display in every new release from Disney to Pixar. The first is the image of screaming bug-eyed, sub-sized, child-like avatars screaming in terror as they plunge through the air in free-fall. Somehow, it's understood that this translates into a subject for hilarity. People who laugh at the videos of strangers slipping on banana peels or getting whacked while stepping on garden rakes, respond to the depiction of a cartoon avatar's abject fear as if it's amusing (and secretly empowering) to watch some weak creature getting punked. (If there were a phrase for this, it might be called a Schadenfreudian Slip.) 

The second (and more widely promoted) image depicts the film's heroe(s) standing warrior-like in bent-knee readiness, generally brandishing a weapon (usually a sword or spear) and glaring back at the world with the patented "angry-happy" face—involving furrowed brow, clenched eyebrows, and a sidewise smirk that combine to send the message: "Watch out! I'm dangerous and powerful. I'm not afraid. I'm superior and I know it!" 

Perhaps sociologists can explain why promoting these two provocative emotional extremes seduces viewers and translates into box office gold. Could it be something as simple as (1) Hollywood knows its potential audience lives in constant, unconscious dread and (2) wants to feel as invulnerable as a ripped-and-ready, all-powerful Superhero? 

Elizabeth Warren's Got the Goods on US Billionaires 

According to Team Warren, over the past pandemic-paralyzed year—a year that saw hundreds of thousands of small businesses close while millions of people lost their jobs and benefits—America's billionaire class saw their wealth balloon by $4.2 trillion—a 40 percent increase. 

Warren insists that her plan for an Ultra-Wealth Tax "wouldn’t break the bank of any of these guys, or anyone else who has a fortune worth more than $50 million." And, if you'd like proof, she's come up with an app for that. "See for yourself by checking out this interactive visualization. You’ll see how much richer Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jim Walton have gotten since the pandemic started"—and how much they would pay under Warren’s Big Bucks tax plan. 

(NOTE: The online infographics are a bit tricky. You have to scroll down to reveal the abundance of data-boxes that reveal the expanding wealth of each billionaire.) 

Bidenomics Versus Reaganomics  

Berkeley's redoubtable Robert Reich has no doubts when it comes to the benign impacts of progressive taxation. In a March 14 opinion piece for the London Guardian, Reich (who served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration) wrote: "Bidenomics beats Reaganomics and I should know – I saw Clintonomics fail." 

As Reich noted: "Trump obliterated concerns about government give-aways. The CARES Act, which he signed into law at the end of March 2020, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he calculatedly attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000." 

Biden's been taking tons of GOP heat for the $1.9 trillion tab on his CARES Act but, as Reich observes, "Trump’s biggest giveaway was the GOP’s $1.9 trillion 2018 tax cut, under which benefits went overwhelmingly to the top 20%. Despite promises of higher wages for everyone else, nothing trickled down. 

"Meanwhile, during the pandemic, America’s 660 billionaires—major beneficiaries of the tax cut—became $1.3 trillion wealthier, enough to give every American a $3,900 check and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic." 

Meanwhile, Reich noted, under Biden’s plan "more than 93% of the nation’s children—69 million—receive benefits. Incomes of Americans in the lowest quintile will increase by 20%; those in the second-lowest, 9%; those in the middle, 6%. 

"Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this unites them. Some 76% of Americans supported the bill, including 63% of low-income Republicans (a quarter of all Republican voters). Younger conservatives are particularly supportive, presumably because people under 50 have felt the brunt of the four-decade slowdown in real wage growth. 

"Given all this, it’s amazing that zero Republican members of Congress voted for it, while 278 voted for Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich." 

Goodbye Q from the Founders Sing 

The week started with the Council Agenda and Rules Committee meeting Monday afternoon, with planning for the March 30^th regular City Council meeting, and then descended (at 39:29 on the recording which is posted online)into Mayor Arreguin’s plan to fast-track the Quadplex Zoning proposal launched by Councilmember Lori Droste, which had already run into trouble.There has been an uproar from the community about its contents. 

Councilmembers Rigel Robinson and Droste voted to pass the quadplex item out of the Land Use committee, in violation of committee rules, after Councilmember Hahn had to leave the meeting at a time she’d announced when it began. In addition, former Mayor Shirley Dean filed a Brown Act complaint against the proceedings. The Brown Act is a state law which protects public access to meetings of California government entities. It prohibits behind-the-scenes discussions by a majority of members of legislative matters which they will vote on. Faced with these complications, Droste rescinded her most recent draft of the Quadplex Zoning item, so Arreguin set the path to push it through. 

Here's the dialogue recorded at the Agenda Committee on Monday: 

Arreguin: As noted as I advertised last Monday [March 8,2021] We had discussed the prior item [Quadplex Zoning] that was submitted by Vice-Mayor Droste which was rescinded. I’d announced at that time my intention as the Mayor to call a special meeting of the City Council and I have the power to do that under municipal code, to take up an item that will be submitted this week…” 

Arreguin then turned to Councilmember Wengraf (at 42:56 into the recording) . 

Wengraf: Yes I’d just like to ask some questions. To my knowledge nobody has been invited to this meeting on the 25^th. It happens to be an extremely inconvenient time for me…the other thing is that the way this is being framed these are the only two items that are being considered in terms of the housing element, which is really giving short shrift to all the work we’ve been doing…I want to make sure that our housing element represents a community vision…so, are you suggesting that the community vision and the community engagement process happen entirely at the Planning Commission and that Council not ... 

Wengraf: I’m just trying to figure out if this meeting, 

“I think we’re veering off topic” 

“I have the power as mayor to call a special meeting of the Council and I’m availing myself of that power…” 

“well ok, as you said, you have the power to do that.” 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zq7y9dh8dnzxmyr/AAB5RiBjmc_ym-8xpv1e10XOa?dl=0 

Vancouver Professor Patrick M. Condon writes, on page 12 in Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, “…the smartest people in the development game are the land speculators, men and women who make a handy living out of hunting up land that might soon be ‘improved’ by the provision of a new highway, a new transit station or a change in allowable land use…” 

The final agenda for the March 25^th special meeting has now been posted. If Arreguin follows his usual behavior pattern, he will bring in some supposed compromise at the last minute which the public will not have a chance to see before the meeting starts. He will suggest that it includes all the important points, when he will have, in fact, gutted the Hahn, Harrison, and Bartlett measure. Let’s hope I’m wrong. Here’s a link to the agenda, which provides links for zooming in to the meeting by computer or by telephone: 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/03_Mar/City_Council__03-25-2021_-_Special_Meeting_Agenda.aspx 

Coming out of this pandemic year, not everyone is suffering from losing their job, their business, is unable to pay the rent, or make loan payments. There is a segment that is seeing their wealth expand. The suffering of others along with upzoning makes for a perfect investment buying opportunity for available capital. Is that what is going on here? There are “helpers” in the background for framing how to propagandize upzoning. 

There was another item in the planned agenda for March 30^th, a resolution on the Rights of Nature which passed out of the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) with a qualified positive motion. "Qualified" means that the original motion required some changes to pass. In this case, the rewording placed the obligation of ensuring the rights of nature on the city instead of on the residents. 

Wengraf suggested moving the motion to consent. Arreguin said he was personally opposed. Hahn said she had some questions: What does "the rights of nature" mean? It means shifting from thinking of humans as masters of the universe to being part of the natural living world. 

Elizabeth Kolbertl author of the Sixth Extinction, has a new book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. It is about human action and the attempts to clean up the consequences. Maybe someone mentioned here should read it. 

(As regards “master’, I should be counting the number of times Arreguin uses, “I have the power.” ) 

After this start not much else seemed to matter this week, except the financial reports on Tuesday evening giving the costs of not maintaining infrastructure. Liam Garland, the new Director of Public Works, is picking up the pieces left by not maintaining our streets. Garland gave the bad news that continuation of years neglecting to maintain streets in good repair is rolling into $1 billion. He also pointed out that the poor condition of the streets has a personal cost too for bicyclists and pedestrians trying to navigate them and in damage to cars driving over them. 

The Thursday morning Land Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee ran over until 1:35 pm, 3 hours of discussion about the Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). This has been in the making long before the pandemic started a year ago. There is a lot that sounds good, but, as one attendee said, there really should be a side by side comparison between what tenants lose versus possible gains from TOPA. There also needs to be more than 1 minute given to callers that referenced problems with TOPA as enacted in other cities like Washington D.C. . I would like to see side by side presentations on the pluses and minuses of TOPA with robust discussion, not one minute sound allowances. Personally, after Thursday I am back on the fence wondering whether TOPA is a bad or good idea. Then I wonder, if it passes, will it really benefit any more than a handful of people with what looks to be a future of immense profits for land speculators? 

There are a few thoughts I would like to leave with you. 

With all these proposals for housing, I looked up what is available from the 2020 Census. So far it is just gross numbers and we don’t have specific details. But California is losing population, a trend that started after 2017. United States Census Bureau figures can be found at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/technical-documentation/research/evaluation-estimates.html What we know makes one wonder why so much population growth is projected by planners. The apparent trend certainly fits with all the vacant local housing. 

It’s spring, gardening might be on your mind even if it is limited to pots instead of a plot of land. The California Native Plant Society has a website with the page Restore Nature One Garden at a Time (https://calscape.org/) One of my neighbors is really into native plants supporting bees, butterflies and birds. It is delightful to spend time there. 

Last, I always like to finish with a book. I put down my heavy reading for a week and picked up Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore published in 2011. It’s a collection of autobiographical personal stories, some sad, some funny and overall enjoyable and an informative read. It’s also uplifting for those of us who like to make as John Lewis said, “good trouble.” 

Worth Noting:

The week ahead is no ordinary week and there are meetings that need your attention and comment.

Monday the Agenda and Rules Committee meets at 2:30 pm with two agenda items both which are explained below,

Tuesday at the City Council meeting starting at 6 pm. Item 17 under action is about the Joint Subcommittee on Objective Standards for Implementation of State Housing Law which was formed and met, but was unable to reach agreement leaving work unfinished and includes request for $200,000 for consultant.

Thursday at 6 pm is a special City Council meeting with two competing items on the agenda regarding how to approach adding housing. My vote is item 2. Item 2 on the agenda from authors Hahn, & Harrison co-sponsor Bartlett. Item 2 explains Regional Housing Needs Allocation and defines a public process. The other item is an attempt to cover for the problematic quadplex zoning that resulted in the initiation of two Open Government Commission complaints. https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/

If you have a meeting you would like included in the summary of meetings, please send a notice to kellyhammargren@gmail.com by noon on the Friday of the preceding week. A weekly review of what happened in key city meetings is published late Sunday in http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com

Under Activist’s Diary.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

No City meetings or events found

Monday, March 22, 2021

Agenda and Rules Committee at 2:30 pm,  

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/Policy_Committee__Agenda___Rules.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87060954994 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 9794 1909 

AGENDA: 1. Recommendations on Policy Committees and Legislative workflow during COVID-19 - Request CM to prepare resolution regarding meetings, Policy Committees (council) and Legislative Bodies, essentially shutting down Council Committees and Boards and Commissions to any new action until COVID-19 emergency is over, only time-sensitive, FY2022 budget and COVID-19 related action to continue, existing referrals in committee may continue, but implementation will be postponed, 2. Systems realignment proposal limits when (by April 30) and how “major” items may be submitted to Council for consideration (vote), A “major” item is anything that requires more staff, cannot be folded into existing resources, requires additional or new infrastructure or technology, subject to legal challenge, unable to sustain enforcement. Outlines a 5-step process (pages 9-21 in packet) 

Ashby and North Berkeley BART CAG at 6 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/bartplanning/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91768201174?pwd=NVhIMndERzdHZjhhMU1iaUJ5dHFSQT09 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 917 6820 1174 Password: 350113 

AGENDA: 3. Feedback on Draft Joint Vision and Priorities – affordable housing, land use, public and civic open space, building form, 4. Draft Zoning Presentation and Discussion, 

Children, Youth and Recreation Commission at 7 pm 

http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Children_Youth_and_Recreation_Commission/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91866429503 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 918 6642 9503 

AGENDA: 9. FY General Fund overview, 10. PRW Capital Projects update, 11. Echo Lake Scholarship, 12. COVID related program changes, 

Zero Waste Commission at 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Zero_Waste_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/82587046286 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 825 8704 6286 

AGENDA: Discussion and Action Items 1. Current status of mixed non-bottle #1-7 plastics, 2. Textile recycling, 4. Review Zero Waste Declaration and consider recommendation to Council, 5. Covid impact on waste generation. 

Homeless Services Panel of Experts at 7 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Homeless_Services_Panel_of_Experts.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/99722440245 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 997 2244 0245 

AGENDA: 8. Discussion monies needed to sustain current programs, budget allocations, other funding sources, i.e. FEMA, 9. Allocation of Measure P funds for Emergency Medical Transport (5150), 10. Discussion of establishing a flex fund to address critical needs between budget cycles, 12. Unmet needs from Measure P Funding, 13. Other sources of funding for 1367 University, 14. Possible consolidations of Homeless Services Panel of Experts and Homeless Commission, 

Tuesday, March 23, 2021 

Solano Avenue BID at 10 am 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Solano_BID_Board.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86475480085 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 864 7548 0085 

AGENDA: 4. Goals 2021, 5. Coordination & Communication as COVID restrictions continue 

City Council Regular Meeting at 6 pm, (Email: council@cityofberkeley.info) 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82597941909 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 9794 1909 

AGENDA: CONSENT: 1. Add $100,000 total $250,000 with AG Witt for COVID-19 Emergency Operations Cost Recovery Consultant, 2. Partnership with EBCE to Pursue Solar and Battery Energy Storage Systems on Municipal Facilities, 3. Add $250,000 total $1 million add 3 years to 6/30/25 with Serological Research Institute for DNA Testing Services, 4. FY2022 Street Lightening Assessments, 5. Add $150,000 total $250,000 extend to 6/30/2022 with Restoration Management Company for emergency services in the event of flooding, sewer backups or other property damage that requires restoration, 6. Appointment of boona cheema and Javonna Blanton to Mental Health Commission, 9. Proclamation Holocaust Remembrance Day, 8. 2021 Alameda County Redistricting Process – calling for resources for redistricting, 9. Establish a Parking Benefits District in the Adeline Corridor Budget Referral $50,000, 10. Honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, 11. Support AB 286: requires food delivery platforms to provide accurate transaction breakdowns, 12. Support AB 314: right to unionize and bargain for improved wages and working conditions, 13. Support AB 328: allows those with recent histories of incarceration to remain stably housed and exit homelessness through grants and housing services interventions, 14. Support AB 1400: Health Care for All, ACTION: 15. Updated BESO fees, 16. ZAB Appeal 1200 San Pablo, 17. Objective Standards for Density, Design and Shadows from Joint Subcommittee for the Implementation of State Housing Laws, 18. Partnership for the Bay’s Future and Current Anti-Displacement Initiatives (continued from 2/23/2021) 19. Children, Youth and Recreation Commission FY2021 Work Plan, 

Wednesday, March 24, 2021 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Security Deposits Rights and Responsibilities at 10 am 

Webinar requires preregistration https://www.cityofberkeley.info/rent/ 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Outreach Committee at 5:30 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/rent/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/95333214702?pwd=alhLTy9DR1FZdkd4aGV4Y2kwWDRKUT09 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-6833 Meeting ID: 953 3321 4702 Passcode: 789996 

AGENDA: 5. Landlord/Tenant Survey, 

Energy Commission at 5 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Energy_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91282802031 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 912 8280 2031 

AGENDA: 7. Vision Zero Update, 8. Discussion Dublin Opting default to EBCE 100% renewable 

Civic Arts Commission at 6 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86147520326 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 861 4752 0326 

AGENDA: 7. Proposed changes by Michael Arcega for the San Pablo Park public art project 

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission at 7 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Disaster_and_Fire_Safety_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/96816312434 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 968 1631 2434 

AGENDA: 3. Revision Automatic Gas Shut-off valves recommendation, 4. Amend local ADU zoning ordinance and Berkeley’s Fire Code, 6. Density ordinance (quadplexes) and Berkeley’s Fire Code, 9. MOU on Grizzly Peak (Fire Dept) 

Police Review Commission at 7 – 10 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Police_Review_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87070468124 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 870 7046 8124 

AGENDA: 3. Public comment on agenda & non-agenda items, 8. Subcommittee reports and action, a. Warrant Service Policy, b. Outreach, c. Lexipol Policies, 9. Transition to Police Accountability, applications due March 29, 10. a. PRC involvement in hiring new Police Chief, b. Whether to participate in Use of Force (UOF) training, c. UOF implementation issues – Policy 300 

Thursday, March 25, 2021 

City Council Budget & Finance Committee, 10 am 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82520331601 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 2033 1601 

AGENDA: 2. Potential Measure P allocations FY2022, 3. Police Overtime Update, 4. Pre-development allocation – Ashby Recreation and Community Housing (ARCH) Consortium to work with staff to develop planning grant for Ashby BART East Parking lot. 

City Council Special Meeting, 6 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82133233284 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 821 3323 3284 

AGENDA: 1. Initiation of Public Process and Zoning Concepts for 2023-2031 Housing Element, authors Droste, Arreguin, Kesarwani, Taplin, (quadplex zoning-slipped in pages 2, 9) 2. Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) (defines comprehensive planning process – well done) authors Hahn, Harrison, co-sponsor Bartlett  

Cedar Rose Pickleball Courts Community Forum at 6:30 – 8 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CalendarEventMain.aspx?calendarEventID=17296 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93324353996 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 933 2435 3996 

Zoning Adjustment Board at 7 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/zoningadjustmentsboard/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97963794144 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 979 6379 4144 

AGENDA: 2. 3031 Telegraph – demolish existing 2-story commercial, construct 6-story, mixed-use with 110 dwelling units (includes 7 very low income) 112 bicycle spaces, 29 vehicle spaces on ground level – staff recommend approve 

3. 0 Cragmont (1158) - construct new single-family residence with attached 2-car garage on existing vacant parcel, continue off calendar 

4. Presentation JSISHL Recommendations 

Mental Health Commission at 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Mental_Health_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/96361748103 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-9128 Meeting ID: 963 6174 8103 

AGENDA: 3. Special Care Unit, 5. Data Collection Issues and Concerns, 8. Interview and vote on nomination of Monica Jones, 9. Recommendation for Jail Diversion Strategies, 10. Discussion of 1/2/2021 police shooting of Vincent Bryant video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w61QRRvC13g 

Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) at 12 – 1:30 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88153954875?pwd=WGxqRndONmE1N0FCOTdMd2FBMHhhUT09 

Friday, March 26, 2021 & Saturday, March 27, 2021 & Sunday, March 28, 2021 

No City meetings or events found 

_______________________ 

March 30 Regular City Council Meeting at 6 pm available for comment 

email: council@cityofberkeley.info 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81872119058 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 

AGENDA CONSENT: 3.Police Accountability Board Ordinance amendment for member LOAs and council-approved alternative commissioner. 4. $24,063 Contracts extended to 6/30/2021 for Center For Independent Living, Pacific Center, & YEAH, 5. Amend Contract add $30,714 total $878,142 with Covenant House – YEAH, Mental Health Services Act Fund, 6. Designate City Labor Negotiators 1/1/2021-12/31/2021, 7. Aide Letter Agreement: Public Employee Union, Local 1/AFSCME Council 57 authorizing 80 hours of additional emergency paid sick leave (EPSL), 8. Amend and extend ERMA to 12/30/2021 $80,000, 9. Contract add $120,000 total $2,154,769 with ESI for IBM hardware and software lease 6/2/2003-6/30/2022, 10. Amend contract add $147,991 total $402,961 and extend to 6/30/2024 with Tyler Technologies for Open Data Portal’s Hosting Services, 11. Contract add $235,000 total $852,200 and extend to 6/30/2023 with TruePoint Solutions for Accela Professional Services, 12. Contract add $68,440 and extend 6/30/2023 with Verint Systems for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software Maintenance, 13. Contract add $76,906 total $141,906 to 6/30/2023 with NextRequest for Public Records Act (PRA) Response Software, 14. Contract add $25,000 total $100,014 extend 6/30/2022 with CBF Electric & Data for Wi-Fi Installation, 15. Contract add $200,000 total $249,500 extend 6/30/2023 with Gray Quarter, Inc. for Accela Professional Services, 16. P.O. $512,000 for Protiviti Government Services: Using GSA for Professional Services thru 6/20/2022, 17. Add $42,000 total $146,400 contingency $42,800 with Lind Marine to remove derelict and abandoned vessels from Berkeley Marina, 18. Utility Agreement $720,000 for sewer line for future fieldhouse restroom at Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex, 19. Add $70,000 total $295,400 and extend 12/31/2023 with Street Level Advisors for Development Fee Feasibility Analysis, 20. Budget Referral Police Foot/Bike Patrol in West Berkeley, Beats 11-16, 21. Budget Referral Stop signs at Dwight and California, 22. Letter to Google requesting inclusion of commercial truck routes on google maps platform, 23. Refer to Disability Commission Discussion on East Bay Paratransit and Transportation Needs of Berkeleyans with Disabilities, 24. Providing Unhoused with Fire Extinguishers Council Safety committee qualified positive recommendation to consider fire extinguishers and other fire prevention tools such as wool blankets, 25. Budget Referral New Project Coordinator to implement Electric Mobility Roadmap and Climate Initiatives, 26. Support AB 20 Corporate-Free Elections prohibits businesses from making campaign contributions to candidates for elective office, 27. Support AB 37 requiring vote-by-mail ballots to all voters for every election, 28. Support AB 854 Ellis Act Reform, ACTION: 29. Hearing Bond Financing for 2870 Adeline (Harriet Tubman Terrace Apt) 30. Ordinance permanently banning less lethal weaponry – Council Safety Committee forwarded with negative recommendation for Council to take no action, 31. Recognize the Rights of Nature qualified positive recommendation to place obligation on City not residents, Information Reports: 32. FY 2020 4^th Quarter Investment report ending 6/30/2020, 33. FY 2021 1^st Investment Report ended 9/30/2020, 34. Referral 2^nd Dwelling Unit/ADU pilot program to house the homeless, 35. Report Worker’s Comp FY 2019-2020, 

_____________________ 

Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals 

1200-1214 San Pablo (construct mixed-use building) 3/23/2021 

2421 Fifth Street (construct two residential buildings) 6/1/2021 

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period 

800 Dwight 3/30/2021 

1030 Euclid 4/1/2021 

1336 Gilman 3/30/2021 

2102 San Pablo 4/1/2021 

1122 University 3/23/2021 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications_in_Appeal_Period.aspx 

LINK to Current Zoning Applications https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications.aspx 

___________________ 

WORKSESSIONS 

May 18 – (tentative) – 1. Bayer Development Agreement, 2. Affordable Housing Policy Reform 

July 20 – nothing scheduled 

September 21 – 1. Housing Element (RHNA) 

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations 

Cannabis Health Considerations 

Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee) 

Update Zero Waste Priorities 

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program 

Systems Realignment 

Measure FF and Fire Prevention 

This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

http://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html and in the Berkeley Daily Planet under activist’s calendar http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com 

To Check for Regional Meetings with Berkeley Council Appointees go to 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Committee_and_Regional_Body_Appointees.aspx 

If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com, If you wish to receive the weekly summary as soon as it is completed, email kellyhammargren@gmail.com to be added to the early email list.