Tonight at Berkeley City Council we're mobilizing to get council to support SB 9, two-family housing only in single-family zones. It'll be early in the meeting. NIMBYs will show--will you?
1: Research from UC Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project has compiled virtually all major peer-reviewed housing studies and revealed that building all-income housing ranks as the #1 strategy to combat displacement. Including their own research. urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/…
2: Micro survey data from the 5-year Census reveals sampled residents who live in duplexes, even recently built ones, in the Oakland-Berkeley area earn a household income significantly less than single-family renters and homeowners (h/t @UrbFuturistDem ; github.com/UrbFutDem/IBTP…)
3: SB 9 is endorsed by the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, the statewide consortium of all low income housing developers in the Bay Area who actually build affordable housing. Listen to Affordable Housing developers about doing their job.
4: SB 9 is opposed by exclusionary rich suburbs in CA. Additionally, SB 9 was approved by the Senate and every single no vote was from a Republican. Our neighbor Oakland has endorsed SB 9.
Does Berkeley stand with Low Income builders and Oakland or Beverly Hills and the GOP?
5: Under SB 9, duplexes cannot be built in places where:
- High firezones (Section 1, Line 2)
- Tenants occupying a single-family home (Section 1, Line 3-C)
- Within 3 years after a tenant vacates
This would be a massive expansion in protection statewide leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavC…
6: Berkeley and Oakland is abolishing exclusionary zoning for four-family housing but cant do it alone. SB 9 ensures at the very least that other municipalities allow two-family housing on lots.
7 (last): Single family zoning was invented in Berkeley with the purpose of keeping out renters and POC. Today, it correlates heavily with white and rich areas. Berkeley received national recognition to declaring its end and has a responsibility to lead the way on its abolition.
You'll only have 1 minute so make it good and pick one or two to focus on. Especially speak up and note on record then you live multifamily housing, that 51% of Berkeley is zoned for duplexes or higher, and if you have housing struggles now or past *please* state them to council.
This is was a two family home under construction in Berkeley looks like. Why in the world would we oppose this and mandate it only for one family instead?
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This is the inevitable end credits of NIMBY cities in California and why affluent Moraga went bankrupt years ago. You can't have stable tax revenue from an aging retirement community of homeowners in single-family homes with Prop 13 tax reductions.
Suburbs are expensive and a net loss in revenue relative to their cost of sewer and water systems. Dense urban areas pay for themselves because they have enough residents to prop up the tax base and consume less.
California cities are fucked because a large % of the population aren't paying property taxes assessed at current land values. Many cant even afford to pay tax on a million dollar lot. But we could pay it if high density housing had many people dividing up a lot's value instead.
An interesting way I'm measuring the housing crisis with census data is looking at age medians over the course of 80 years for each consecutive decade. Whats fascinating is how a 100 year old Berkeley neighborhood as late as 1980 had a median age of 38. Today its 54 yrs old.
This would likely suggest how the lack of available housing keeps incumbent residents aging in place while new generations of families buy housing elsehwere
Are there variables I should consider beyond this that would cause the population to age like that?
Because people clearly struggling with some kind illness are very normal in politics. The idea of filing a complaint in a city famous for vindictiveness and ladder climbing is nauseous. You risk being ostracized by allies or accused of partisanship (which happened w/ this story)
Just like all accusations of misconduct, is anyone gonna waste their time filing a complaint and testify against a respected politician with attack brigades on standby? Without anyone else to back you up and could end up just looking like one incident rather than behavior? No.
There are people in SF politics, in Oakland politics: activists, electeds, bureaucrats, reporters and I can tell they're clearly ill or out of control. Everybody knows. I got things to do and I'm not gonna waste my time filing complaints and be accused of trivializing or whatever
Treatment is good. No jokes to be made here, its great Peskin has done this and said so openly.
Obviously this stuff is wildly inappropriate. Part of being a bigtime politician is having lots of friends who will understandably defend Peskin but anybody looking at this reasonably would know this is unbecoming. Glad he's getting treatment.
I disagree with @mattyglesias take that everyone becoming homeowners is a problem. Theres high income countries have high homeownership yet build homes. It's American homeownership culture where the house is relied on as a class-jumping tool that creates shortages that's failed
The real problem is that we tell people homeownership is their key to the middle class rather than wages being the key to the middle class since the latter has been stagnant for decades now.
We should have 90% homeownership like Singapore and China. At least half of NYC or more should be homeowners like Tokyo. Owning your home with a low yield is good. Real estate being the "get rich quick" scheme for Americans and thus a feudal culture that Blackrock exploits is bad