Public Comment

Attack of the Stepford Planners

Elisa Cooper
Saturday August 15, 2015 - 08:15:00 AM

Berkeley is an iconic city because of its bohemian ambiance: people dwell in Berkeley instead of elsewhere because they want to identify as intellectuals, artists, spiritual seekers, social activists, quirky, creative, and diverse. Just as we sought Berkeley to embrace those identities, we are collectively responsible for protecting the city as the place that makes those identities possible. 

For months I have been bewildered as I've watched the City Council and a multitude of commissions ignore, shrug off, and often mock the surge of citizens that have been pleading for them to put an end to the hijacking of the City by the interests of market rate developers and to attend to the need for affordable housing. This experience has become something like those cheesy old 70s horror films like Attack of The Pod People, They Live, and, The Stepford Wives. Has our City government been taken over by pod people? The way they consistently and rather robotically disregard their constituents that literally beg them to make the Market Rate Reign of Terror stop seems like it. Our Pod People City leadership seem unaware their behavior is inflicting trauma. 

On June 16th, 2015, a balcony broke from a shoddy "market rate" building and fell 5 stories: 6 students died. The building had been resold to International investors who cared little for local maintenance complaints. This is trauma, too. 

The invasion of the Pod People started in the City planning department. A planner named Mark Rhoades decided "planners set the pace" for the city of Berkeley. The latest "smart growth" philosophies being pushed from the State level as well as academic departments, including UC Berkeley—which has an interest in shifting the student housing burden onto the City—was to build for "density" around transit and eventually supply would meet demand for housing. 

Clever planners could insert themselves into this process and make their own fortunes on the side. The City Planning Department gets paid out of developer fees, so their mission became to plan for as much dense smart growth as possible. Mark Rhoades and fellow city planner Matt Taecker upzoned themselves to start their own development consulting firms. Once the Planning Department opened the door to the idea that Berkeley was ready to be "redeveloped", Berkeley's political process became inundated with money from real estate industry lobbyists from all over the country. The local property owners’ association formed a half million dollar PAC. Developers fund the most read local news venue Berkeleyside and astroturf the comments section. A couple of paid "youth" get paid to testify to City Council and the Commissions about how we need to destroy Berkeley because somehow that will ultimately result in the youth getting housing. 

I don't exaggerate when I say they mean to destroy Berkeley. One of the astroturf brigade on Berkleyside has proclaimed one of the goals of "smart growth" is the creative destruction of Berkeley

At a recent meeting regarding yet another unwanted developer proposing yet another unneeded market rate development, yet another planted Pod Youth proclaimed that the City of Berkeley must abandon all zoning laws and build up like Manhattan. The person sitting next to him asked incredulously, "Do you want to live in Berkeley?" 

The coup de grace for the people who actually do care about Berkeley came when the City passed up on a 4 million dollar affordable housing grant—a State grant from the Strategic Growth Council that every other City in the Bay Area enthusiastically applied for and got. The housing crisis has supposedly been at the top of the agenda for months if not years in Berkeley, and watchful citizens noted that the City Council sat on the Nexus Report, which established that Berkeley was saturated with market rate housing, until the budget was done and no pressure could be applied to shape the budget toward what was truly needed: affordable housing policy. Then 4 million dollars came along for affordable housing and the City of Berkeley had no procedure in play to grab it. 

Why hasn't the City done everything in its power to craft an environment to attract affordable housing development? Why wasn't there a pipeline of projects waiting in the wings? For the people who are facing displacement under the pressure of unprecedented rent spikes and speculative house-flipping, the knowledge the City simply "dropped the ball" on this grant is, again, traumatic. 

Or did the City simply "drop the ball"? 

I went to the City of Berkeley's August 13th Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is a civic body singly charged with preserving the heritage and character of the City of Berkeley. This particular meeting had an unusually large turn out because over the course of months citizens of Berkeley had been gathering to oppose a proposed 18-story "monstrosity" on Harold Way. 

A great many technical, safety, and health reasons have been given to oppose the Harold Way building. But the main reason so many citizens of Berkeley oppose this huge building is because it's the beachhead for the "creative destruction" of Berkeley. It blocks the Campanile view from the UC Berkeley campus, symbolic of the City itself. Moreover, Harold Way will feature luxury units that only very rich people will be able to afford, and it will raise rents in the surrounding area. This building will "creatively destroy" Berkeley. The Stepford Planners and the Pod People who have taken over City Council know this. 

Of the hours of testimony against Harold Way, the most moving was a woman who lamented that real estate industry lobbyists had taken advantage of the progressive spirit of Berkeley by greenwashing their projects, which had tricked the voters into changing zoning laws. While developers frequently cite that they are building what the people of Berkeley voted for, they are invoking an election with historically low voter turnout and historically high outside money influence. The people of Berkeley increasingly feel their government is bought, the election was rigged, and they were tricked when they cast their vote. In South Berkeley people mutter about "the racist budget", "black exodus", and "institutionalized policies of discrimination". When Pod People take over a City's government, that's how their actions get interpreted from below. Again, the sense of trauma deepens. 

In front of around 100 Berkeley citizens, a Landmarks Preservation Commission of Pod People betrayed their sacred duty to protect the heritage and character of the city of Berkeley. Some confessed that they didn't even bother to read the Environmental Impact Report that should have informed their decision. One of the Commissioners who had read the documents before them presented a list of errors, holes, and abdications of the Commission's own procedures. Her attempts to uphold the Commissions own rules and protect the City were duly ignored. 

One of the Pod People Commissioners cited developer astroturf from Berkeleyside to counter the testimony to all the real human beings in front of him. Rather than listen to live pleas for affordable housing, he reached for a dubious source that would back his own Pod Person plan to "creatively destroy" Berkeley. 

The signs that the Stepford Planners have rammed their projects through are all around us: enormous pits, torn up sidewalks, great rumbling construction trucks, and hulking scaffolds of behemoth buildings. Many common citizens like me see the notices for new development everywhere and wonder, "When did this happen?" Under demolition law in Berkeley, units under rent control that get "creatively destroyed" by the Stepford Planners can never be replaced. Any new development is not subject to rent control. Real estate lobbying interests saw to that: the Costa-Hawkins law was a long game approach to eventually dismantle rent control even in places with strong support for rent control like Berkeley. 

The Stepford Planners have been empowered to willfully deform the City of Berkeley. There is no City task force on affordable housing policy, there is no Affordable Housing Tsar, there is no political will from our ostensible political representatives to stop them. The reign of terror of the Stepford Planners continues as their market rate projects are literally paved over top of the desperately resisting citizens of Berkeley and their sense of trauma is mounting. When will it stop?