Public Comment

Dear [Planet] Editor:

It’s hard to break a bad habit. We’ve subscribed to the Chronicle for years, although recently only getting the Sunday paper home-delivered. Otherwise, on-line, mostly for weather, smattering of local news, obits….

We dropped the paper before—their wrong-headed endorsements, employment of columnists like Chip Johnson, but this time the rupture seems more serious. The paper has yielded hard reporting to others, concentrating on food, sports, and lifestyle diversions. And, of course, if it bleeds, it leads.

The Chronicle will never run the following note, so hopefully it will get some exposure this side of the Bay.

Thanks,

Robert Brokl



Dear [Chronicle] Editor:

Your Berkeley zoning editorial, damning single family housing, was the last straw. More greenwashing—the insidious insinuation that zoning is inherently “racist,” discriminatory, etc. The latest developer propaganda, espoused by paid lobbyists like the YIMBYs, but even more dangerous and potent than the previous argument that zoning was driving up the costs of housing, creating homelessness.  

Conveniently, the YIMBYS argue that building housing, anywhere, even market rate-only projects, will fix the problem of the unhoused. A “trickle down” solution to the problem. Truthfully, government subsidies for truly affordable housing is the answer, but admittedly it’s easier for simplistic statements that zoning is the issue, and gutting it is the remedy. 

The other previous go-to, cliched argument for high-density urban housing, advanced by local developer shills like State Senators Wiener and Skinner, was that urban density was green, saving farmland and the Planet.  

One of the first manifestations of the “zoning is bad" argument, that “fixing” zoning would solve the housing crisis, was dropped into his columns by the generally exemplary New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  

It might be noted that Krugman can likely float above inconveniences of zoning, with residences in New York City, St. Croix, in the Bahamas, and also a property in upstate New York, whose tenant is the famous artist, Nicole Eisenman. We learn this courtesy of her recent profile in the New Yorker--she jests she thinks of writing a letter to the New York Times to get her dishwasher fixed. 

Whoever the inspired adperson is who invented Zoning = Racism has earned a St. Croix home next to Krugman! 

Hypocrisy is the Chronicle’s middle name. Now it’s build housing everywhere, the denser the better, but painfully the same editorial page argued vociferously to demolish the old Montgomery Wards warehouse building in the Fruitvale, in order to build 2 low-rise elementary schools on contaminated soil and in notorious asthma zone, from truck traffic on nearby 880 freeway, and heavy-duty industry. I remember John Diaz of your editorial page rudely and summarily hung up on me three times, when I called to advocate for the plan by San Francisco developer Emerald Fund to develop the National Register of Historic Places-listed, seismically sound, reinforced concrete buiding for loft housing, walking distance from the Fruitvale BART station. (Talk about green!) The developers even promised subsidized housing for underpaid workforce residents like teachers and fire firefighters. And sharing the site with a smaller school. 

These same Emerald Fund developers currently are the lead developers to turn the old CCA campus in Rockridge into a large housing development, with some retail and retention of some of the historic structures. Good enough for the City of Oakland now, just not then, or there. 

Another example of the Chronicle’s hypocrisy, and short memory, (but who’s paying attention?) is its treatment of Sen. Dianne Feinsten. You endorsed her for election a mere 3 years ago, in 2018, even while admitting she had a viable opponent in Kevin de Leon and was then in her mid-80s. Even the late Mel Wax, Feinstein’s press secretary as Mayor, said to me that “she wasn’t really a Democrat.” 

Now you acknowledge (3/18/21) that, at 87, she “has entered the denouement of a storied political career whether she likes it or not,” implicitly siding with calls for her to stop down. 

Enough said.  

Goodbye, 

Robert Brokl