The City of Berkeley once had a reputation as a progressive, environmental leader. But now some members of its city council seem intent on preventing new development in this transit-rich, low-carbon city — an attitude that is both exclusionary and bad for the environment. The result is fewer transit riders and homes near jobs — and more sprawl and pollution as new residents are pushed far from the city center.
This issue is once again put to the test when the city council tonight debates whether to oppose AB 2923 (Chiu), a bill to allow BART to develop its own properties near station entrances. Berkeley is barely affected by the bill, as it would only allow new land use rules at one BART station: the parking lot at North Berkeley. Still, the NIMBY forces are out in effect for this resolution tonight.
Together with my UC Berkeley colleagues Karen Chapple and Elizabeth Deakin, along with Paulson Institute senior fellow (and Berkeley alum) Kate Gordon, I submitted a letter today asking the council to support AB 2923. Let’s hope the members support this innovative bill to allow badly needed new housing adjacent to major transit, so that others may enjoy the benefits that current Berkeley residents have.
It would not only be the right policy choice but an affirmation of the welcoming and open-minded spirit for which the city of my birth was once known.
UPDATE: The City Council approved the measure opposing AB 2923. The bill heads to the Assembly floor this week for a vote.
The regional housing shortage in the San Francisco Bay Area is hitting students hard. A surprising number of them are homeless, unable to afford a place to live.
In response, Berkeley city councilmember Kriss Worthington is proposing a plan to allow 6,000 new units for UC Berkeley students, centered around the transit-rich area along Telegraph Avenue near the campus.
KTVU News covered the proposal on Sunday and interviewed me, the councilmember and a student:
Many Berkeley residents and elected officials there have become notoriously hostile to new development, so this proposal may be controversial. But it’s badly needed to increase housing opportunities for students. And perhaps as the students find these new homes, it will reduce demand for surrounding housing for long-term residents, achieving a win for all.
NIMBYs in Berkeley are getting some national attention. The New York Times covered a battle over a Berkeley home that a developer wanted to subdivide into three units. Despite compliance with the zoning code, neighborhood opponents convinced city leaders to reject the project. But a local YIMBY group sued and won to overturn the decision.
The article uses the story to describe the prevalence of single-family zoned neighborhoods around the state:
Neighborhoods in which single-family homes make up 90 percent of the housing stock account for a little over half the land mass in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, according to Issi Romem, BuildZoom’s chief economist. There are similar or higher percentages in virtually every American city, making these neighborhoods an obvious place to tackle the affordable-housing problem.
“Single-family neighborhoods are where the opportunity is, but building there is taboo,” Mr. Romem said. As long as single-family-homeowners are loath to add more housing on their blocks, he said, the economic logic will always be undone by local politics.
The article rightly points out the damage done by laws that enable this kind of exclusionary neighborhood, particularly to housing affordability and the environment.
Adding fuel to the fire, former Berkeley planning commissioner Zelda Brownstein published a controversial piece in Dissent Magazine arguing that there is no credible evidence to support the claim that local opposition prevents housing from getting built, despite numerous studies, surveys and observable evidence around California to the contrary. She writes:
Developers build housing, and what they decide to build—and when and whether they decide to build it at all—depend on factors that over which local governments have no control: the availability of credit, the cost of labor and materials, the cost of land, the current stage of the building cycle, perceived demand, and above all, the anticipated return on investment.
Some of the same YIMBYs that fought the Berkeley housing decision quickly returned fire, noting Ms. Brownstein’s conflict of interest as a landlord who benefits financially from the lack of new housing:
You guessed it correctly: what these 9 rental properties (valued $32M altogether) have in common is their ownership! They all belong to: BRONSTEIN ASSOCIATES LLC C/O ZELDA BRONSTEIN. Yes, as in the Berkeley NIMBY and now infamous author of https://t.co/qQCrlA3jhS https://t.co/XMXZvpUho6
— SF NIMBY Watch (@sfnimbywatch) December 5, 2017
Personally, I’m not a fan of these kind of personal attacks, as Brownstein’s arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not based on who is making them.
But as California residents grow increasingly frustrated with NIMBY activity stifling new homes, these kinds of debates and news coverage will only increase.
