Columns

From the week that is just ending, the big event was Thursday and not much else mattered. 

The March 25^th special Council meeting called by Mayor Arreguin created a giant uproar with numerous phone calls in all directions, over 300 letters and 250 meeting attendees. As I wrote in the Activist’s Diary last week (March 20^th) the special meeting was to cover the bungled attempt to push through Quadplex Zoning. Once the complaint was filed by former mayor Shirley Dean with the Berkeley Open Government Commission alleging that a violation of the State of California Brown Act had occurred, the Quadplex Zoning measure had to be rewritten to be considered by council. (The Brown Act is a state law which protects public access to meetings of California government entities. It prohibits behind-the-scenes discussions by a majority of members of legislative matters which they will vote on.) 

I predicted last week that the mayor would come in at the last minute with some supposed compromise that the public would not have had a chance to review before the meeting starts. He did one better. At 29 minutes into the meeting the mayor submitted his “supplemental” ((his own modifications of the original submission which had been authored by the mayor and councilmembers Droste, Kesarwani and Taplin) and then said to the full council they could read the supplemental while they were supposed to be listening to public comment. That should tell you everything thing you need to know about what the mayor thinks of the public—and that is the key difference between the proposal pushed forward by Arreguin and Droste and the proposal authored by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison. 

The late revision from Arreguin substituted words like “consider”, “explore” and “study” for some mandatory language, but these words did nothing to change the original directive, which places the work to update the Housing Element to cover the years 2023 to 2031 in the hands of the Planning Department staff, consultants and the Planning Commission. Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf put the responsibility in the hands of the public with Planning, the Housing Advisory Commission, the Homeless Commission and other appropriate commissions, City Council and City staff with consultants to lead the Housing Element update. 

Both approaches are required to work within the same time frame. The new updated Housing Element, which is to plan how to adapt and accommodate the onerous volume of new housing, is due to be completed before January 2023. The actual allocation of housing to be built in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 is 2446 units (27%) for extremely low and very low income households, 1408 units (16%) for low income households, 1416 units (16%) for moderate income households and 3664 units (41%) for above moderate income households (also known as market rate or whatever the owner choses to charge for rent). Those numbers total 8934 units. 

If you feel lost or any of these terms Housing Element, Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) are new to you or confusing read item 2. in the agenda, The Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison. The explanation starts on page 3. file:///Users/kellyhammargren/Downloads/Item%202%20Supp%20Hahn%20(5).pdf 

As the McGee-Spaulding Neighbors in Action learned from Councilmember Harrison during the Wednesday evening town hall, the projected population for Berkeley by 2050 is 163,000. And, if the drop in population in California in 2020 is not just a blip, but a trend, there will be no readjustment to the housing allocation that is supposed to be built. 

For those who hung on for the entire Council meeting (5 hours and 6 minutes) the mayor near the very end made a motion to accept his changes (the Supplemental) to item 1, the original Droste, Arreguin, Kesarwani and Taplin submission, and also to accept item 2, the Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf submission. Councilmember Wengraf signed on with Hahn, Harrison and Bartlettl. That looks to have been a very significant move in this meeting’s outcome. 

Letters and calls do matter, but in the end, it is going to mean showing up, signing on to Zoom and tracking this process until it is completed. The chair of the Planning Commission, Shane Krpata, already declared where he stands on Thursday evening in public comment, steadfastly endorsing item 1, the one which limits public participation. This doesn’t get us off to a very good start if the process is limited to the Planning Commission, consultants and city Planning staff. Right now, that looks too much like group think. 

The importance of broad community engagement through the entire process cannot be underestimated. Diverse groups come up with better solutions and that is the key benefit of following the method of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) as proposed by Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf. 

In the past there was no punishment from the state for not building the assigned volume of housing, but all that is changed for the future. If Berkeley is unable to cough up 8934 new housing units, the threat looms of the State overriding any local zoning codes that restrict housing production. Already there are laws on the books to speed up the processing of mixed-used multi-unit buildings and limit local restrictions. From the laws I have read so far, I haven’t found exactly when overriding local zoning codes kicks in and what we will be forced to swallow with that 8934 unit gulp. The focus is existing transit corridors, which targets San Pablo, downtown, south and west Berkeley. I still have a list to finish. There will be more in the weeks ahead.  

We should not forget that the mayor, for all his declarations of concern about climate, has stated he is opposed to the Rights of Nature declaration, item 31 on the March 30 Council agenda. When I took a walk late this afternoon, the air was filled with the sounds of song birds. I wondered how many dead zones we will have if we cover what is left of open space in Berkeley with concrete. Living with and making space for nature is more than creating a pleasurable city to live in for our physical and mental health; urban habitat is gaining critical importance in the midst of ecosystem collapse. Well planned cities can and do support diverse species. 

Don’t forget https://calscape.org/ Restore Nature One Garden at a Time for spring gardening. 

As to the rest of the meetings I attended during the week, Monday afternoon was a special meeting of the Council Agenda and Rules Committee to discuss two items. The first was to temporarily limit significant new legislation to be considered by the council policy committees or the council as a whole during the pandemic unless it is time urgent, related to COVID-19 or already in process. This item was passed out of committee to be considered by Council in April. 

The second item, System Realignment, was discussed and then continued. Systems Realignment defines when and how a major item (i.e. anything that requires new or additional resources) may be submitted to Council for a vote. 

On Monday, it seemed like, “why now” when we are getting vaccinated and coming out of the pandemic darkness, but by Friday there was a big jump in the total of new cases in the US and California. The warnings of the B.1.1.7 variant hitting us this spring have been circulating for weeks. We are not out of the woods yet. 

I only caught the beginning of The Ashby and North Berkeley BART CAG meeting--enough to hear that 35% affordable housing at each station will be a push. That is a far cry from RHNA, which says that 59% is the need for affordable housing. 

I like to end with what I’m reading. I just finished Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria, 2020. It is well written and packed with information and much to consider. Lesson one: Buckle-up. We have created a world in overdrive. Lesson five: Life is digital. COVID is breaking down the last barriers to going digital and the changes are here to stay. Lesson Six: We are social animals, cities will endure. This is a book I’d like to read again and there are some things to pull out as we embark on RHNA like lessons one, five and six .