Editorials

What pages of last Sunday’s Chronicle did you read?

(That is if you still indulge in print journalism…)

If you started on Page 1, you’d be at the space reserved for longish-form think-like features, often headlined to shock the bourgeoisie over their Sunday morning bagels, e.g. “Chaos upends school, and district does little.”

The Berkeley front page story was below the fold in print, with a title less shocking but still a tad edgy: “Changing priorities fuel Berkeley building boom.”

Historically the Chronicle has seldom tapped Berkeley news unless it fit the classic Beserkeley narrative. This article was no exception, but in reverse, more of a man bites dog story. It could have been headed “Berkeley: not crazy anymore!”

These excerpts are the Cliff Notes version of the apparent changes to Mayor Jesse Arreguin's perspective since he was elected: 

…"[T]he evolving dynamics are on view at the City Council level — where a progressive majority that was expected to curtail new market-rate construction instead is urging it on. This includes Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who entered public life as a pro-tenant member of the rent stabilization board . . . “My position is that we don’t have enough market-rate housing, and we don’t have enough affordable housing,” said Arreguín, Berkeley’s mayor since 2017 . . .

“Sometimes this means thinking differently about things that once might have been controversial…

“Arreguín and other council members even support the university’s effort to redevelop People’s Park, a scraggly green on Cal land created during the student protests of 1969, with dorms and supportive housing for formerly homeless people . . .bbbbb “…[W]hen the approval of an 18-story residential tower at 2190 Shattuck Ave. was appealed last year to the City Council — opponents were upset that the tower would crowd views of the bay from the foot of the Campanile — the mayor was part of the 6-0 majority vote to let the tower proceed.” 

So that’s the mayor's new take on what Berkeley needs, as reported by John King, the Chron’s urban design critic. King used to live in North Berkeley in a single family neighborhood midway between two BART stations and near the North Shattuck Gourmet Ghetto, and perhaps he still does. Arreguin is now running for re-election with the endorsement of many former opponents who want more market rate construction in Berkeley. 

But there’s an alternate universe in Berkeley, the one inhabited by people who can’t wait long enough for those market rate apartments espoused by Arreguin and his current allies to trickle down to their income level. That would be those Berkeleyans commonly called homeless, including residents who call tents and RVs home. 

These unhoused people were the subject of a different article in last Sunday’s Chronicle, in the Bay Area section, which featured Councilmember Kate Harrison, who was elected on the same progressive ticket as Arreguin but has not jumped on the market-rate housing bandwagon. 

She has recently sponsored an outdoor emergency shelter plan, and is also proposing safe parking sites for people living in RVs: 

But this article reported that “ ... in Berkeley, not everyone on the nine-member council likes the outdoor plan.” 

“I think we can do better,” Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani. one of two council members who abstained on the vote to provide tent sites, was quoted as saying. District 8 Councilmember Lori Droste also abstained. 

Sarah Ravani reported that “Kesarwani said she wants to help as many homeless people as possible, but she considered the plan half-baked because it lacks a location, long-term funding and an exit plan into permanent housing.” 

In John King’s front page report, Kesarwani and Droste are portrayed roughly as adherents of the same “build a lot and housing happens” school of city planning which he attributes to the mayor. But neither of these stories really focuses on how the clash between two belief systems that is playing itself out all over this country is exemplified now in Berkeley.. 

In one camp are true believers in the efficacy of markets as taught in their high school economics class or possibly in Econ 101. They fervently hope that things will sort themselves out if we just let the market take its course. The other camp thinks that some form of socially supported housing and some regulation of the private housing market will be required to guarantee housing as a human right--that the market alone can't do it. This camp could be called Social Democrats (as Bernie Sanders should be). 

Each Sunday article represented only one of the two theoretical groups. Better reporting would have analyzed how the two views intersect and sometimes conflict. Too much discussion of such topics tosses around epithets like NIMBY and YIMBY without considering the causes of what is simplistically called "the housing crisis". 

A central problem is what’s sometimes called commodification and sometime financialization of housing. 

This phenomenon first caused the great recession of 2008 and is now contributing to homelessness. Real estate is no longer about providing homes—it’s about how scarcity turns everything into an investment opportunity. Affordable housing developers must compete with multinational oligarchs for building sites, and LLCs openly buy and re-sell building permits with the help of paid fixers (as attempted in Berkeley's failed Harold Way project.) Foreclosed homes are snapped up by speculators. 

This is true in Berkeley, in New York City, in San Francisco and in Charlotte and in Vancouver and in Austin, though each locality believes itself to be unique. 

Until Berkeley and other cities like these take into account all of the market forces at work, which are much more complex than just the two party supply-demand model, they will continue to experience the distress of their homeless citizens. 

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