Columns

I’ve pulled out the bucket to catch water in the shower while my neighbor is watering his roses. It is April 2^nd. The snowpack is 38% of normal for this time of year and the drought map is already showing the entire state of California in drought with large swaths in severe drought (orange) and extreme drought (red). https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ In fact, looking at the drought map, half the country looks to be in trouble and the dry season for the west has just started.

Denial seems to be the skill that most of us do best.

As much as I prefer the convenience of walking over to my computer instead of hauling off to a meeting in person, connecting with others is lost, as is knowing who is in the zoom room audience at city meetings. If the special Design Review Committee (DRC) this week had been in person, there are a lot of questions I would have asked the neighbors who will be backed up to 1201 – 1205 San Pablo at Harrison. The neighbors did not object to construction on the empty corner lot, they welcomed it, but it is the height and size of the project in preliminary design review that left them asking for relief. The little 800 square foot house next door will be dwarfed by the new 6-story building sitting just a few feet from its small yard.

I would have liked to ask whether they knew about the City’s plans to fill the San Pablo corridor with mid-size mixed-use (the description of apartments atop a ground floor of commercial space like restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores) apartment buildings? Did they know when they asked if any of the mature trees on San Pablo would be removed by the project that the city foresters favor: planting smaller non-native imported trees. The same non-native trees that don’t support the insects birds need to feed their hatching young? 

Charles Kahn explained to the neighbors that the DRC can’t stop the project. Then one of the neighbors challenged the DRC to do more. With that came recommendations from another member to step back the upper floors on the west by decreasing the number of bedrooms in those units. It would be a more pleasant compromise if the developer is willing. As for the trees on San Pablo, they will not be affected, at least by this project. 

There are going to be many more of these projects and the five very low-income units out of 66 in this building will hardly make a dent in the desperate need for affordable housing. This leads to the presentation by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project at the March 22 City Council meeting.  

The first in the list of their key findings is: “Upzoning [dividing lots or putting more housing on a single lot] can lead to speculation, increased land values, and displacement. By the same token, upzoning has not led to greater racial integration and opportunities for vulnerable communities. Upzoning alone is unlikely to make housing affordable to those most in need in Berkeley and make Berkeley’s housing market more equitable.” 

Some of the conclusions are familiar. Patrick Condon, urban designer, planner, professor and author of Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, previously as a planner was a steadfast supporter of densification as the answer to affordable housing. That lasted until he took a hard look at what happened in Vancouver. Upzoning for densification increases the value of the land, which in turn increases the cost of the house or condo or apartment that sits on top of it.  

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project members outlined their recommendations in the presentation and their report. These start with protecting the vulnerable areas of West and South Berkeley by directing future upzoning to North and Southeast Berkeley; adopting anti-speculation measures with community ownership, land trusts, housing cooperatives, TOPA, transfer and vacancy taxes; increasing production of affordable housing by adjusting the city’s affordable housing mitigation fee and much more. You can read the presentation, summary and full report at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2022/03_Mar/City_Council__03-22-2022_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx under Preliminary Matters.  

Mayor Arreguin looked like a climate denier, feverishly seeking a counter-opinion, since upzoning is touted as the answer to creating more affordable housing by putting more housing on a single lot and more duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes into neighborhoods. These smaller multi-unit buildings are also touted as the “missing middle”, supposed to fall in the missing middle of affordability. But if one follows sales records, tearing down a single-family home and building three in the same space provides three houses each at a million dollar plus, not three $400,000 houses.  

Arreguin responded to the presentation with: “…I may reach out to Professor [Karen] Chapple and see if they want to present. Which actually has a different conclusion, and that’s building housing for people of all income levels does reduce the pressure for those higher income renters … and that’s why [my] opinion is that all of the approaches to building housing [are] what we need in the city, and we’re dealing with a significant deficit of housing for people of all income levels of Berkeley including rental and ownership…”  

There are many who would argue that there is no shortage of market rate (luxury priced) rental property. It is housing that people can afford and it’s the designated low income, very low income and extremely low income housing that is in very short supply.  

Chapple is one of the Urban Displacement Project Leads. And scanning through documents the conclusions are not dissimilar from many of those from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. It is unclear that Arreguin will receive the counter opinion he seems to seek, but we shall see. 

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project identified West Berkeley as the area of greatest gentrification with the highest rent increases and highest displacement of People of Color by Whites. This is the same area where the reported shootings are occurring, primarily in District 2, now Councilmember Taplin’s district. Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model was the big draw for comment at the Agenda and Rules Committee. 

Residents of District 2 and the hills called in to support the Flex Team and Berkeley Police. Betsy Morris, who is known for her activism with the Gray Panthers, said hearing about policing in Berkeley was like hearing about two different police departments and two different cities.  

Mansour Id-Deen, President of the Berkeley NAACP, responded with: 

“I’m calling in opposition to item 27 [Flex Team Policing] I think it’s a bad idea. I think the Berkeley Police Department in 2022, does not have the responsibility of the Berkeley police Department in the 1980s, when we had the Drug Task Force. The Drug Task Force was horrible for our community, and former Police Chief Meehan worked with the community and eliminated the Drug Task force. If this new entity is anything like the Drug Task Force it will not be a positive thing for the community in Berkeley. A few days ago, here in South Berkeley on Harmon and Adeline, [District 3] there was a so-called shooting. No one ever found out any information about it, but the City of Berkeley Police Department had seventeen units here on a small block in South Berkeley, seventeen units, so I … think that the Police Department itself [does] have an adequate number of officers. I think we should look within the Police Department and see how we can reallocate the police and not have so many come to one incident. It’s ridiculous to block the whole street for hours. I just see this suppression force ( I know you renamed it) [is] going to work in conjunction with the so-called hotspots that have been discussed in the City of Berkeley. I think we need to have more conversation.”  

Councilmember Kate Harrison who was serving as an alternate (Wengraf and Hahn were unavailable) to the committee on Monday recommended moving the proposed Police Flex Team off the consent calendar to action for discussion. Arreguin refused. That makes five councilmembers in support of the Flex Team. Wengraf, Kesarwani and Droste have already signed on as co-sponsors. The council now has a solid majority in favor of increased policing and increasing the police share of the city budget will likely follow in June. We all should know who is likely to suffer with increased policing (which some fear will be saturation policing) and it isn’t the vocal gentrifiers.  

The seventeen units described by Id-Deen is a ridiculous number. It is the same kind of response my walk partner and I saw some months ago with 10 units standing around an empty crashed parking enforcement vehicle at Ohlone Park.  

In hospitals when we hear the code blue call (the announcement of a patient in the throes of a life-threatening emergency), we all run to assist, and then quickly sort out who is needed, and then the rest of us get out of the way and go back to our assignments. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform reports never pierced the protective circle around where and how police officers are assigned. The closest we have is the City Auditor’s review of overtime assignments which will be presented on April 12^th.  

The Zero Waste Commission was cancelled for lack of a quorum and I missed too much of the Police Accountability Board meeting to give an adequate report. At the last minute I decided to attend the Vision 2050 Community meeting. It was the same presentation I had heard at a number of the city commission meetings. After subtracting the city representatives and presenters there were about 30 public attendees. The surprise was how few questions were asked.  

The public attendees requested that instead of one big ballot initiative that it be broken up into several ballot initiatives with designation for what would be funded. The little I’ve gleaned is the position that the only way to get anything passed is to do a giant ballot measure with everything lumped together, so we, the voters, will approve the whole package to get the small piece we want.  

I did not speak, but after attending lots of budget meetings and seeing how things are maneuvered around I stand with the people who want a ballot initiative with specific designations not squishy wishful language. If you missed this last Wednesday, there are three more scheduled community meetings April 6, 13 and 20 https://www.berkeleyvision2050.org/ to ask questions and share your opinion. 

This week the House passed a bill to limit the out of pocket cost of insulin to $35 per month for people with health insurance. Now it goes to the Senate where it is likely to die. The real problem is the monopoly lock on the pricing of insulin by the drug companies. A vial of insulin costs $2.00 to around $6 to produce, but the cost to the person who needs it can run up to several hundred dollars. The stranglehold on drug pricing is just one of the many topics Senator Amy Klobuchar covered in Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. The book, with 625 pages, is pretty heavy reading for one library cycle. If you opt for the audiobook, you will miss all the cartoons, drawings and charts in the ebook. Beside big pharma, Klobuchar has plenty to say about META, Google, Amazon, and how these tech giants need to be reined in.