Extra

I just wanted to correct an implication in the public comment to BDP by "Berkeley Together" which made the following claims about SB 9:

"The bill’s rationale for this is based in trickle down economics, the theory that helping those at the top will help those at the bottom, a theory that has not panned out over time. In his address to Congress last month, President Biden said, "trickle-down economics has never worked", and "It's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out", highlighting the need for progressive housing policies that benefit the underhoused and unhoused citizens of our communities." 

The article was posted anonymously so I don't know who to direct this op-ed to, but the implication is that SB 9, which would allow two-family zoning statewide, is "trickle down economics" and at odds with what the President supports. This is incorrect. Joe Biden is the first president in United States history to call for the abolition of single-family only zoning. His $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan(seen here on the White House website) states: 

"Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies. For decades, exclusionary zoning laws – like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing – have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities. President Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate such needless barriers to producing affordable housing." 

This has been widely reported on even before Biden won in November so unsure how the authors could have missed it. Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign housing platform called single-family only zoning a "racist legacy of Jim Crow" and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a law ("The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act") to eliminate single-family only zoning. Democratic Socialist and author of the Green New Deal Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has written a bill in the Congress ("A Place to Prosper Act") to go even further and withhold money from cities that refuse to abolish single-family zoning, minimum lot sizes and parking requirements. You can read a recap here. Or visit Section 8.3.D of her proposed law. 

Berkeley's efforts to allow citywide four-family zoning has been specifically heralded by former HUD secretary and former Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro. Among many praises, Berkeley has also been praised by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), the largest low income housing advocacy org in Washington DC, for Berkeley's historic vote to eliminate single-family only zoning. They also explicitly, by name, praised North Berkeley Now!, South Berkeley Now!, and More Student Housing Now! for pushing housing at the BART parking lots and multifamily housing in Berkeley to its nationwide membership. 

Those who oppose these national efforts are the Republican Party, who uses much of the same "local control" rhetoric commonplace here. Former President Donald Trump named defending single-family zoning among his top issues during the 2020 campaign after he gutted the Obama-era Fair Housing law which nudged cities to remove zoning prohibitions on apartments as "saving the suburbs." 

To quote Trump: "hey want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low quality apartments into now thriving suburban neighborhoods." In addition, Trump and former HUD secretary Ben Carson wrote in the WSJ their support of single-family zoning and attacked upzoning as a "radical social-engineering project that would have transformed the suburbs from the top down." Trump also made reference to state senator Scott Wiener, one of the authors of SB 9, in the 5th paragraph regarding the "ultraliberal chaos" of allowing multifamily housing. 

Defending single-family zoning was repeated at the Republican National Convention by the Missouri gun couple: https://twitter.com/i/status/1299330654040027138 

By Trump at numerous rallies: https://twitter.com/i/status/1311483032784834562 

By Fox News pundits: https://twitter.com/i/status/1275875446484328450 

Many Fox News pundits: https://twitter.com/i/status/1318764159836647424 

By far-right wing host Tucker Carlson: https://twitter.com/i/status/1377796077013766146 

And multiple times by Tucker: https://twitter.com/i/status/1281641356008382464 

And it goes on. My point is not to accuse Berkeley Together or the opponents of SB 9 as being Republicans, merely I am correcting the record with respect to the claims that Biden or any Democrat or left-wing electeds in national politics would defend single-family zoning. Outside a few echo chambers in Berkeley, this is largely a Conservative opinion. Democrats are attacking exclusionary zoning in Washington and Sacramento because it has nothing to do with trickle down economics, a wholly unrelated disproven theory, it's just economics. California ranks 49/50 in homes per person. The Bay Area added 6 new jobs for every 1 new home last decade (far higher than the 1-to-1 recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency and the American Planning Association). According to the Department of Finance, from 2010 to 2020 Berkeley's population grew by 8.7% (9,784 more residents) while the housing here grew by half, 4.2% (2,069 more homes), in the last 10 years. 

There is no evidence whatsoever, empirical, peer-reviewed or otherwise suggesting that California does not have a housing shortage but unanimous evidence to the contrary. A recently published UC Berkeley paper compiled numerous academic and peer-reviewed research on gentrification and showed that more housing growth (both market and low income) was the #1 evidence-based way to curb displacement long term. In the short term, the best tools were tenant protections and rent control. And while California's population indeed shrunk for the first time in history, according to PPIC it is because middle and lower income families without degrees can no longer afford to live here. Not because people don't want to live here. So allowing two-family housing is a way to help alleviate this 50 year displacement crisis since duplexes already exist and look indistinguishable from single-family housing in Berkeley, as does four-family housing.