Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods opposes UC Berkeley’s Appeal of Enrollment Cap; adding 3,050 students with no additional housing will create Santa Barbara-style housing crisis

Last Thursday, February 10, 2022, the California Court of Appeal rejected UC Berkeley’s request to stay the effect of the enrollment cap for 2022-23 that the Alameda County Superior Court imposed due to UC Berkeley’s failure to comply with laws requiring that it analyze and mitigate the housing impacts of its enrollment increases. In denying the stay, the Court of Appeal noted “… that the judgment in this case was entered August 23, 2021. The Regents filed an appeal from that judgment on October 18, 2021, yet they waited more than three months before seeking a stay or supersedeas.” -more-

(see “WHEN YOUR CITY BECOMES THE CAMPUS” Presentation By Professor Davarian Baldwin, February 17, 2022 http://berkeleyheritage.com/calendar.html)

Operating a university is Big Business these days. In our own back door UC Berkeley rents huge amounts of space to Google, the American Automobile Association, and other non-educational businesses, yet pays no property taxes or other fees to the City of Berkeley (CoB). As it expands West into our downtown, UC is removing ever more taxable property from the City’s rent rolls as well as rent-controlled apartments that we desperately need.

So, what is the optimal solution? Clearly it is not, as we have previously written the cents-on-the-dollar deal our one-foot-out-the-door mayor Jesse Arreguin cut with his friend Chancellor Carol Christ last year:

https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-09-03/article/49375?headline=The-Settlement-Agreement-between-City-of-Berkeley-and-UCB-br-An-Open-Letter-to-the-Berkeley-City-Council--Leila-H.-Moncharsh-attorney-for-BC4BP.

On the other end of the country, city residents facing the same problem of no-tax universities consuming a disproportionate amount of unreimbursed city services revolted and got results. After years of protests with citizens taking to the streets, Yale finally agreed to pay City of New Haven $136 Million. (https://www.ctpublic.org/education-news/2021-11-17/yale-announces-historic-135-million-payment-to-new-haven.) -more-

Way to go Woodside! Whatever the merits of announcing itself exempt from recently enacted Senate Bill 9 by claiming to be habitat for endangered cougars, the attempt by this small town of 5,500 was nixed by CA Attorney General Rob Bonta who declared it illegal with swift action for non-compliance.

SB9 is one of the many recently enacted housing bills signed into law by Governor Newsom. It is widely considered the most controversial since it eliminates single-family zoning. There are some exceptions written into the bill but cougars are not among them.

Where there is currently a single house on a single-family zoned lot, SB9 allows a subdivision of that lot for a total of four houses, with no discretionary review by the local council or planning department. None of the new houses is required to be affordable. All will be market rate. This, despite AP headlines on the Woodside case stating: CA town not exempt from affordable state housing law. If you swallow that misinformation you probably will also tut-tut at the fact that Woodside is wealthy and white. Senator Tony Atkins was the force behind SB9 along with Senator Scott Wiener. Atkins Fact Sheet repeats the claim that the new houses will be affordable. Even a million dollar house is affordable to someone but Atkins statement that such new houses will be affordable to low and moderate-income families is unfounded unless limited to areas such as Barstow. If you believe the extra 3 houses will sell for well below market rate since additional land does not need to be bought, you are forgetting about profit, speculation and equity…not social equity but investment equity.

This legislation was spurred by the success of past legislation encouraging the building of ADU’s (Accessory Dwelling Units) in single-family neighborhoods. It would help if data were gathered to show whether such housing has achieved affordability goals. Without that data we are left with anecdotal evidence such as from senior city planning staff who said at a recent council hearing on housing issues: “I can’t believe what rents people are asking for ADU’s!” Not an encouraging revelation.

At least Woodside tried to fight back against this real estate-developer-speculator- backed law. At least Gilroy and many other cities have objective standards in place, the sole discretion left in local hands. The city of Santa Cruz has done neither.

If you live in a single-family home with a single family home on either side of your property and at back you are surrounded by three houses. If you are lucky they are all single story so you have some privacy and sunlight. Now imagine being surrounded by twelve houses on the same square footage of land, which is allowed under SB9 without any input from you. If you are unlucky they are all two-story. Of course you can also jump on the bandwagon since the value of your piece of dirt in Santa Cruz with one house will quadruple with four houses, each selling for over a million dollars.

The Turner Center at UC Berkeley did a study on the potential impacts of SB9 and concluded that the impact will be minimal since most current owners of single-family homes will not want to add three extra houses on their property. However, 54% of single-family homes in Santa Cruz are non-owner occupied, which means they are largely rentals, generating profit for the owner who might live in town or LA or China. While I may balk at three extra houses on my piece of dirt, if I lived elsewhere and this was investment property, adding an additional three houses would be a lucrative proposition. There is a clause in SB9 for the applicant to sign an affidavit that they will live onsite for 3 years but enforcement is not mentioned and 3 years is not long. Chances are high that in a town with similar demographics to Santa Cruz, the density impacts of this bill will be significant. If you are into density you might ask yourself whether this will make housing more or less affordable and whose interests it serves.

Back to the cougar. I recently attended a zoom presentation from the UCSC Puma Project. Our increasing human intrusion into their territory, crisscrossed by our roads and rail corridors is significantly impacting their breeding viability due to the reduced territorial range and reduced gene pool for offspring success. Even our human voices impact their ease of movement driving them into smaller and smaller territories. Yes we are planning a tunnel on Highway 17 but is it enough?

So far, Newsom’s housing bills have done little more than appease the real estate, developer and building trades’ interests. We cannot build our way into affordability, that much is clear. Only massive state and federal subsidies will lead to affordable housing without the attached market rate add-ons that raise the AMI making real affordability ever more out of reach. Or, as was enacted by New Zealand decades ago, a moratorium on housing as a speculative commodity. The latter would prevent the overbuilding of market rate housing to fill investment portfolios, preserving what’s left of a town’s character and leaving a little breathing room and territory for the cougars.
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We are now in our second round of maps and presented with a choice between Amber 2 and Violet. https://redistricting-commission-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ You can also view the maps in the meeting packets for February 17 and 19. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/IRC/ -more-

For the past several months, the US corporate media has gone out of its way to demonized Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin—trumpeting the warning that Russia is planning to storm across its borders and into Ukraine. For months, we have been warned an "invasion" was "imminent."

Russia has steadfastly denied this charge, denying any intent to invade as it massed troops on its own Crimea-facing soil and engaged in regional military maneuvers in Belarus. Russia's denials are generally ignored or downplayed as the US media pushes the "Russian Threat" meme.

This particular example of MisinformationGate news-spin has been going on for a long while. Some examples:

On November 22, 2021, Bloomberg posted the chilling headline: "U.S. Intel Believes Russian Invasion of Ukraine ‘Imminent’." Further down in the body of the report was the following tidbit: "President Vladimir Putin last week accused the West of 'escalating' the Ukraine conflict with Black Sea drills and bomber flights near Russian borders." (At least this much was true.)

On January 25, Jason Brooks, moderator of the CBS MoneyWatch radio broadcast glibly misinformed listeners by citing Putin's "threat to invade Ukraine." -more-

Are Berkeley Public Health’s policy decisions rooted in magical thinking?

Many disabled people have issues that do not shorten life expectancy and often live as many years as those without a disability. On the other hand, many, including those of us with mental illness, have shorter life expectancies. If you have a mental illness, especially schizophrenia, lifespan is often shorter. But this is not always so. To live into our seventies, eighties or nineties, something I haven't done yet as I haven't reached sixty, we probably must take extra good care of our bodies and minds to overcome the life-shortening factors of mental illness. We probably also must have a chosen purpose in life.

The role of purpose must not be underestimated as a factor of how long we live. If we have a good reason that we want to be here, it is a motivator toward taking better care of ourselves, it provides hope of a better life, and it gives us more tenacity to hang on. All the aforesaid contribute to lifespan.

Disabled people with meaningful careers often live longer than they otherwise would. People with family ties live longer. People with enjoyment of a volunteer job may live longer. Merely having a reason to get out of bed every morning contributes to lifespan. -more-

The Power of Nonviolent Resistance

In what may be the largest and most effective action of nonviolent civil disobedience in human history, thousands of men and women have shut down streets in major cities and thoroughfares, bringing a halt to large movements of international commercial shipments and disrupting trade in everything from food supplies to construction and machinery parts.

And what triggered this act of rebellion?
Anger over inflation?
Wealth inequality?
The soaring costs of healthcare?
The lack of affordable housing?
Racial discrimination?
Outbreaks of armed killings?
Out-of-control military spending?

Sorry, it was none of the above. The correct answer is:

Face-masks! -more-

I’ve been wanting to see the film Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler. Who We Are wasn’t showing at the Shattuck, the California is closed, so I made my way over to AMC in Emeryville for the Monday matinee. There were only three of us in the theater. The film was outstanding and I will watch it again when it’s available for home viewing. No one checked my vaccine card, but then so few of us were in the building it was hardly going to be a super-spreader event.

Pre-pandemic, I used to love going to the documentary films at the Shattuck Cinemas. And, I wasn’t the only one. When we were petitioning to save the Shattuck Cinemas, much to our surprise 60% of the 275,000 – 300,000 patrons came from out of town, with regular movie goers from Vallejo, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Orinda and closer in Oakland, Emeryville, El Cerrito. The Shattuck Cinemas with its ten theaters used to be the economic engine of the downtown. The future looks to be student housing, coffee shops and eyes fixated on the device in hand. -more-

After two months high case counts, Covid-19 cases may have finally peaked in many parts of the United States. In response to the decline, many states and cities are easing restrictions. For example,

On February 16, California will ease similar restrictions on large events and mostly ditch the statewide indoor face mask mandate. However, for the state’s 6 million school children California’s requirement that they wear masks inside classrooms and other school buildings remains in place for now.

The pandemic, however, is not over. Consider that on December 11, 2020, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. And on December 18, 2020, the FDA issued an EUA for the use of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine. Yet, as of January 28, 2022, only 64% of the U.S. population have been fully vaccinated, and as of January 25, 2022, only 40.3% of those fully vaccinated population have a booster shot, And only 18.8% of children in the 5-to-11 age group are now fully vaccinated. -more-

The meetings worth attention are:

Tuesday is the Council worksession at 6 pm on Homeless and Mental Health Systems and Services in Berkeley. As noted the report prepared by the city fills 16 pages. A chart listing the services, funding sources, gaps and limitations would have been more useful.

Wednesday the Berkeley Rent Board Outreach Committee at 5:15 pm will have a presentation on “the right to return” aka people qualifying for affordable housing with history of living in Berkeley given preference. The Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) at 7 pm will be reviewing proposed standards for 2 to 4-unit buildings. Berkeley is required to add 8,934 residential units in the next 8-year housing cycle “Housing Elements.” This meeting is important. You should really look at the size of individual units proposed 1950 sq ft to 3900 sq ft. and space between buildings and lot line. The merged Parks, Recreation and Waterfront will have its first meeting at 7 pm.

Thursday the Independent Redistricting Commission at 6 pm will be taking comment on the two new maps Amber-2 and Violet to redraw council district borders. The final decision will be made on February 28. The Rent Board meets at 7 pm and will have a presentation on Race and Housing. This meeting is recorded. The Design Review Committee at 7 pm will be previewing a new R&D Project and 415 car parking lot at Bancroft and Fourth.

Saturday, February 19 at 10 am there will be a second opportunity to comment at the Independent Redistricting Commission on the Amber -2 and Violet maps.

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On Saturday evening, February 12, Cal Performances presented the West Coast premiere of the opera Iphigenia, with music by Wayne Shorter and libretto by esperanza spalding. Shorter, a major force in jazz since his work in the 1950s with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, then with the Miles Davis Quintet, before he went on to found the group Weather Report and later to form his own quartet, had always wanted to compose an opera. Now, at age 88 and no longer able to perform on saxophone due to frail health, Wayne Shorter has realised his dream by writing the music for the opera Iphigenia. He also found in bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding the perfect collaborator, who helped Shorter develop this opera loosely based on the play Iphigenia at Aulis, the last tragedy written by Euripides. In spalding’s libretto, Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon who is sacrificed to assuage the goddess Artemis and allow the Greek fleet to sail against Troy, becomes multiple Iphigenias. Indeed, she becomes the embodiment of all women, caught up in a world where men wage war and sacrifice women to their ambitions. -more-