Writing about city events reminds me of when my husband and I joined a plein air painting group led by Anthony Holdsworth. We would be out all day and the direction and shape of the shadows would continue to change as the day wore on. Anthony would tell us to pick a point to plant the shadows and paint. The news keeps moving, changing as I write. -more-

This is Part 3 of “ABAG’s 9000,” a series about requiring Berkeley to add 9000 housing units to its housing "supply" over the next 8 years. “Supply” is ironic because it will be market rate housing, for which there is a glut, and thus “low demand.”

ABAG, the Association of Bay Area Governments, made this allocation at the behest of the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), as a portion of its Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). The city of Berkeley pretends this is a real requirement, though ABAG is a non-statutory agency of state government that has no statutory powers to tell any charter city what to do. Yet according to a new ordinance, should Berkeley fail to meet its alleged obligation, HCD can take control of its housing permit operations, in a form of coup. The threat of such a coup smells like a racketeering operation. Why would the city of Berkeley act as if this was legitimate?

The specific statute in question is SB-35, enacted ostensibly to stop charter cities from refusing to allow housing development. Its title makes reference to affordable housing, but its text provides for no specific quantity of affordable units to be provided. Ironically, communities in Berkeley have been clamoring for affordable housing for years (housing for which the rent is at most 30% of a tenant’s income). Yet this ordinance will not succeed in providing such housing any more than Berkeley has on its own. Hence, the glut, producing housing that low income working class people (the majority) cannot afford. This ordinance, with its “proposed need” for housing, will do nothing to change the situation. What the state calls a "proposed need" is a self-defined need, arrived at without consultations with the cities, but given them as a responsibility. -more-

A 12-year-old girl has been arrested on suspicion of setting four fires in the Berkeley hills on Friday, Berkeley police said. -more-

Please join me next Monday, June 14 at 5pm for a virtual town hall to learn more about the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) that will require Berkeley to plan for nearly 9,000 new housing units this decade. RHNA is a complicated process where the state decides how much housing is needed and how to carve up the responsibility for that new housing among the parts of California. Then, regional agencies (such as ABAG) distribute the numbers between cities. -more-

To the Mayor and members of the Berkeley City Council –

Friends of Adeline has, from its beginning, been a strong advocate for the building of more housing. We have seen our community decimated and our long-time residents, and their families, eliminated from the city. Local development over the last 25 years has pushed the cost of housing and the cost of living higher and higher. The homes they have lived in have become too expensive for them to be able to continue to survive here.

A major factor in the development of high cost housing has been the lack of any serious controls. New construction has been primarily of market rate housing. There have been only minimal attempts to ensure that low-income, affordable housing, gets built. Senate Bill 9 is now attempting to force Berkeley to have more, high-income, affordable housing and to eliminate more of its low-income residents.

We Say No To This.

Why is there is no requirement that any of the units replacing demolished homes be affordable? Some cities like Cambridge, MA allow greater density if the developer builds affordable units on a site. But SB 9 gives away density while bringing no benefit to the community.

SB 9 will result in more displacement. The San Pablo Park neighborhood has been zoned single-family residential since 1963. The homes here are not as expensive as in most other parts of the city. The lots here and the homes on them tend to be smaller than in other parts of the city. They will be less expensive to acquire by speculators than housing elsewhere. Much money can be made by demolishing them and replacing them with up to six market rate units, none of which need to be affordable to the many low-income people currently living in South Berkeley.

Once again, we see our community being looked at as the source for large profits for those who have little interest in the well-being of our people. We are pleased that Councilmembers Harrison, Wengraf and Hahn are asking the City Council to oppose SB 9. Friends of Adeline urges the Berkeley City Council to state that it cannot support legislation that allows housing development without a requirement of the inclusion of significant numbers of on-site, low-income, affordable units. -more-

A first pandemic visit to Tulsa family happened to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Memorial Day 1921 massacre inflicted upon the Black residents of Greenwood, a prosperous community across the tracks from downtown Tulsa, originally settled by former Black slaves of Native Americans who were forced to leave their lands east of the Mississippi for Oklahoma and west. This exodus, known as the Trail of Tears, started in 1830.

With the end of the Civil War, freed Black slaves of the aboriginal peoples were declared full tribal members and were granted 160 acre allotments of land considered undesirable—that is until oil was struck, fueling the prosperity of the cohesive Greenwood community. Racial and economic tension built, until a vague incident involving a Black man and white woman was fanned into an angry and armed White mob attacking predominantly Black Greenwood. In one day this resulted in an estimated 300 deaths to residents and 1,500 left homeless. Thirty-five square blocks were burned to the ground, including the thriving commercial district known as the ‘Black Wall Street’, in a race war aided and abetted by the authorities, including an attack from planes armed with machine guns and turpentine bombs. -more-

The increasing power and influence of social media poses a serious threat to democracy in in many countries of the world including the United States.

Prior to the birth of the information age and independence from the British Raj, Indians like most people of other countries had extremely limited news sources which was tightly controlled by the government intolerant of independent thinkers. Families would sit around their radios and often doze off listening to mind numbing news glorifying their national leaders.

There was limited exchange of opinions unless the writer was a foreigner. My brother and I happened to be visiting India in the late 1950’s when a dear English friend, Vic Penry’s, letter to the Hindustan Times went viral. Pendry was harshly critical of the actions of the Central government in response to the brutal lathe charges by Delhi police on a peaceful procession of Sikhs agitating for greater independence.

Not much has changed in the intervening years. Facebook has become a threat to the current prime minister, Narendra Modi who recently ordered Facebook and other tech companies to take down posts critical of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Facebook meekly complied. But once they did, Facebook execs received a torrent of angry chats from their employees demanding to know why Facebook capitulated and helped Modi stifle dissent. His BJP government has always threatened to banish the company if social media posts are too critical of its actions. let us see if Facebook profits continue to outweigh concerns for democratic ideals. -more-

The University of California at Berkeley is billing its new development plans as housing-centric in the hopes that Berkeley residents and housing activists will look no farther. We recommend that everyone pull back the curtain on UCB’s current plans and take a good hard look at what they are really doing. Once you do so, you will agree that UCB’s proposed plan is a really bad deal for Berkeley -- both as to housing and as to proposed development generally. -more-

A world in which women can be drafted? That doesn't register.

A gender-neutral draft is being saluted as a victory for women's rights, an open door that promises a new platform for equal opportunity with men. In this case, an equal opportunity to shoot, bomb, burn and kill other human beings.

Women may soon be faced by a new legal requirement that they must register with the Pentagon when they turn 18. Just like men.

Is it sexist and unfair that young women have not been compelled to register for the Pentagon's (retired but still revivable) military draft? What is the thinking here? -more-

DT won't go away! The most recent Quinnipiac Poll ( https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3810) reports that 66 percent of respondents do not want Donald Trump to (re)run for President. Nonetheless, 66 percent of Republicans wouldlike him to run again. (Not surprisingly, the same percentage of Republicans do not believe that Biden's 2020 victory was legitimate.) DT refuses to disappear and, as a result, the Republican Party keeps acting crazy. What explains this? -more-

Human beings, through social osmosis, are taught to be happy when we experience things believed "good" and unhappy when "bad things" happen in our lives. Yet if the bad things do not physically directly affect us, it means we have wiggle room with respect to how much this will affect us. Diseases affecting the body and/or mind have a direct effect of causing suffering. Some circumstances, such as homelessness, starvation, or being incarcerated, have a direct effect of causing suffering. The above are situations that we can't make okay through mental gymnastics. Physical disease or an injury are painful, with few exceptions. -more-

Sen. Joe Manchin (D.-WV) says he will not vote for The People Act or to end the filibuster, claiming the legislation has no Republicans support. But he knows or should know that bipartisan support will not be forthcoming. Remember when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-KY) warned, “One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration.” It seems Sen. Manchin is now aligned with Sen. McConnell and former president Trump in stymying President Biden’s agenda. -more-

No Home in the Biome?

On June 7, Mayor Jesse Arreguin shared the screen with NBC Evening News anchor Lester Holt to discuss the NIMBY vs. YIMBY debate currently roiling Berkeley's neighborhoods. Not broached in the broadcast was the issue that much of the pressure to build denser housing comes from UC Berkeley's plan to augment revenues by increasing the number of customers—er… make that "students"—from 55,130 to 67,200 over the next 15 years—a 22% increase.

In order to accommodate this planned 12,000-plus surge in the civic population, UCB plans to add another 8 million square feet to the 11.9 million square feet of Berkeley acreage that it currently occupies. This unprecedented 68% expansion will be needed to add 11,739 new beds for students, another 549 beds for new faculty and staff, and 1,240 more parking spaces.

It occurs to me that, if single-family homes are sacrificed to make room for multi-story apartment buildings (fueled by growth-addicted developers and revenue-seeking UC administrators), there is a constituency that is not being represented.

With the loss of open space as backyard gardens are buried beneath high-rise apartment complexes, what will become of the birds, bees, butterflies, squirrels, raccoons, and deer that currently inhabit our vegetated neighborhood open spaces?

Will the city's only gardens be rooftop gardens? And, without open spaces to roam and forage, will bucks and fawns be replaced by new populations of the dominant denizen of compact urban squalor—the rat?

Hippie Summer Boomer Bummer -more-

Worth Noting:

Because the agendas for the Agenda and Rules Committee, City Council Special 4 pm meeting and City Council Regular 6 pm meeting are so long, those agendas are at the end of the email/post. You can also choose to just use the link with each listed meeting.

Quick Summary

Sunday – The Green home tour 10 am – 1 pm is really super! Register in Eventbrite.

Monday – The Budget and Finance Committee meets at 9 am. The Agenda and Rules Committee planning meets at 2:30 pm to plan the June 29 council meeting.

Tuesday – Council Special meeting is at 4 pm on reorganizing the commissions (this is not a “worksession” expect action to be taken). The Regular Council meeting is at 6 pm. Both meetings have the same zoom link.

Wednesday – FITES meets at 2:30 pm and is taking up the plastic bag ordinance. Animal Care and Human Welfare & Community Action Commissions both meet at 7 pm

Thursday – Land Use Committee meets at 10:30 am on Housing as a Human Right, The Transportation Commission meets at 7 pm on Dana Street and BerkDOT.

The comment period to (Bayer Projects) the Bayer Healthcare LLC Development Agreement Draft Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (Draft SEIR) ends July 6, 2021.

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Zoning_Adjustment_Board/Bayer_Development_Agreement.aspx -more-