Public Comment

I hope that our city council majority will not acquiesce to lobbying from developers and the construction industry instead of serving the real needs of current Berkeley residents. We need the council to support our efforts to reduce our own and Berkeley's carbon footprint and to make sure our low-income neighbors aren’t pushed out by new highrise developments. We know that the vast majority of new residential units being built in Berkeley are rented or sold at market rate, and the market rate is steadily rising.

Thus new residential developments in Berkeley go primarily to wealthy buyers from elsewhere, many of whom are buying units as investments, not to provide housing for below-median income renters. We now suffer wind tunnels in downtown Berkeley, but this has not provided housing for low-income residents.

The council has an obligation to acknowledge and act on the contributors to the climate crisis. Berkeley residents are investing in providing clean energy from rooftop solar at a higher than average rate. We're replacing gas-guzzling cars with electric vehicles, often fueled by our rooftop solar arrays. We have endlessly urged the city council to require new construction to be as energy efficient as possible and to include 50% low income units, but these demands seem to go unheard when developers make conflicting demands to be free of local environmental or affordability requirements. 

Zoning changes must protect city residents from taller buildings that will shadow neighboring rooftop solar. The council has an obligation to support Berkeley residents’ efforts to address the climate crisis by reducing our oil/gas consumption. This obligation has been recognized in Fremont, Sunnyvale, El Cerrito, and other cities with objective solar access standards to limit shadowing of neighboring buildings. 

Other cities protect their residents’ investments in solar energy. It’s long past time for Berkeley to do so as well—to encourage energy efficiency and independence and to require new developments to be truly efficient and affordable to median and low-income residents. 

New zoning standards must represent these needs. We don’t want bigger, taller buildings in Berkeley unless they serve our goals of responsible energy policy and housing for low-income residents. The infamous trickle-down theory has been disproven many times over. 

It cannot be used to justify approval of more high rises.