Public Comment

U.C. Berkeley's Imperfect Housing Proposal

Harry Brill
Friday May 04, 2018 - 03:17:00 PM

I hope you read last week's Planet about the advocate citizen organization, Save Berkeley's Neighborhood, filing a law suit against UC Berkeley for its decision to admitting a substantial numbers of students despite budget cuts without providing the required housing. Among the major concerns is that student homelessness will increase and the already high rents will skyrocket even more. And the budget cuts will adversely affect the student body.

U.C. Berkeley's disinterest in providing student housing has a long history. According to a housing task force report, UC Berkeley offers the fewest beds to students in the nine campus UC Berkeley system. Only 22 percent of undergraduate student and 9 percent of graduate students enjoy campus housing. In contrast, the system wide average is 38.1 percent for undergraduates and 19.6 percent for graduate students.

Just announced is the University decision to pay attention to student housing concerns. Acknowledging its many years of its hand-off policy, UC plans to build housing on People's Park. The plan is to build housing for 1000 students and some additional units for the homeless. The more housing, the better. However, this development is nowhere near as glowing as the University administrators would like you to believe.

Here is the catch. According to one university spokesperson, although UC will provide the land, it will not fund, operate or manage the facility. In other words, the housing will be completely privatized, and accordingly, rents will be very high and the rules for operating the new housing will be determined by the private sector. So the private owners more than the students will owe a big thanks to UC Berkeley's Board of Regents and the University's administrators. 

The progressive approach, which would best serve the interests of the students and the community, is housing that is funded, operated, and managed with student input by the University and including consultation with the community. Although the Administration claims that it intends to consult with the community, don't believe it. The reason that the university is being sued is because of Cal's current refusal to sit down with local residents to discuss issues that concern students and the community. 

To understand why the University favors the private business sector just take a look at who sits on the UC's system's ruling body, the Board of Regents. The members of the Board, who are appointed by the Governor for a 12 year term include investors who feel closest to developers and the financial and banking industry. Among its members is Senator Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. His investment firm has an exclusive contract to sell United States Postal Service Property. Faculty members who are on the Regent board are allowed to participate in discussions of the Board, but they cannot vote. A student can vote, but serves for only one year. Significantly, those who are most directly affected by Regent decisions, faculty and students, have only a marginal status. It is axiomatic that democracy mainly for the wealthy and well connected are at the expense of the students and the community. Accordingly, attempting to make substantive gains on behalf of those who will be adversely impacted serves also the task of extending democracy to all.