South San Francisco, CA March 31, 2021 by Tom Lord, former member of the Berkeley Housing Advisory Commission
PREFACE: While these comments are reflected towards Berkeley, South San Francisco City Council is also considering pursuing high density within our established single family home neighborhoods. Currently our City has put a hold on the proposed $100K tax dollars to fund a ‘study’ while the County takes this under consideration. If you are interested in preserving our established single family home neighborhoods, please connect with Livable California as they work in Sacramento on our behalf. {This group was co-founded by former South City resident Zelda BRONSTEIN, of Bronstein Music}
According to the Association for Bay Area Governments, under leadership of Jesse Arreguin among others, Berkeley must issue 9,000 occupancy permits over an 8 year period or else it must give up local democratic control over most project approvals.
Arreguin, Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson, and Taplin are all enthusiastic supporters of this. These are the same people whose campaign workers call those of you critical of YIMBYism racists, and even accuse you of nazism.
Let’s do some arithmetic.
9,000 units in 8 years is 1,125 units per year on average.
Assuming a 50 week work year, that’s 22.5 units receiving occupancy permits per week, every work week, for 8 years.
At a lowball estimate of $500,000 investment per unit built, that means (at today’s prices) investment of $11,250,000 in new construction every single work week for 8 years. That’s in Berkeley alone. The quotas for other Bay Area cities are equally bullshit.
Under state law authored by Senator traitor Nancy Skinner, Senator traitor Scott Weiner, and others, because the impossible number of units will not be built, the City of Berkeley and others will lose democratic control over project approvals.
We can come to one of two conclusions:
1. Perhaps our mayor is too dumb or lazy to have done the arithmetic.
2. Perhaps he is intentionally conspiring to attack democracy in Berkeley.
Either way, he is enthusiastically joined by Droste, Kesarawani, Robinson, and Taplin.
-t
###
Comments:
**berkeley is a cess pool.shit hole, if
anything, it should be vaporized, it
is an uncontrollable left wing cancer,
and you know how to cure a cancer,
the same thing applies to sacramento
-Mel Perry
**As a long time resident of South San Francisco whose family has deep roots here, I have had the unpleasant experience of having the residents of this community and, by extension my family, insulted by select members of the city government. How have they done this? By “signing on” to the notion that the very existence of the suburbs is racist and exclusionary in a desperate attempt to justify re-defining single family neighborhoods as we know them and re-configuring them in their vision. These city officials have no investment in this city and have no sense of the history of just who settled these suburbs. In my case, probably a half dozen returning, heroic WWII veterans, my Father among them, settled on one small block in this city in 1946. My Uncle, a veteran as well, lived around the corner. Most of them lived in San Francisco but chose to move to the suburbs, created for their return, not to satisfy some racist, exclusionary ideal but in search of a quieter way of life and a little piece of land to raise their family. I know these people and how I was raised and there was not a racist among them. Now in their arrogance and entitlement, these city officials use their positions to insult their memory when they should be praising these members of “The Greatest Generation” for allowing them the freedom to achieve democratic office rather than “goose stepping” with their right arms thrust “outward and upward.” They owe them an apology.
The insult is the result of an objective to provide a mass influx of needed affordable housing but, in fact, this worthy goal has no chance of being realized in the Bay Area of today. Look around you and it is obvious that any development will be solely motivated by profit. It’s “market rate baby” with a handful of affordable units in the mix to gain approval. The destruction of single family neighborhoods will accomplish little except for a quick profit for opportunistic developers.
Now for all those frustrated, attorney “wannabes” out there, myself included, let me share a question I posed to both the City Council and the City Attorney. No surprise, I’m still waiting for an answer. As, to my knowledge, most re-zoning efforts are solicited by either a property owner or a potential property owner seeking to alter land use, how can the state or a city come in and make a “blanket” unsolicited re-zoning of neighborhoods? The operative word here is “unsolicited.” I have pointed out to these officials that in so doing they are appropriating my private property for their use yet not declaring “eminent domain.” I also pointed out that I didn’t just purchase a dwelling, I also purchased the R1 zoned dirt it sits on, in an R1 zoned neighborhood. As most of us entered into a mortgage to facilitate our home purchases, have they not altered our contract, after the fact, by materially changing the nature of our purchase? Think about it.
Sorry to be so “long winded” but the negative consequences to single family homeowners will be “long” as well. If any of you sees any merit in my post, take the time to share it with your local and state officials. It’s a power grab but it is also a property grab. IT’S OUR DIRT!
–Cory Alan David
As a long time resident of South San Francisco whose family has deep roots here, I have had the unpleasant experience of having the residents of this community and, by extension my family, insulted by select members of the city government. How have they done this? By “signing on” to the notion that the very existence of the suburbs is racist and exclusionary in a desperate attempt to justify re-defining single family neighborhoods as we know them and re-configuring them in their vision. These city officials have no investment in this city and have no sense of the history of just who settled these suburbs. In my case, probably a half dozen returning, heroic WWII veterans, my Father among them, settled on one small block in this city in 1946. My Uncle, a veteran as well, lived around the corner. Most of them lived in San Francisco but chose to move to the suburbs, created for their return, not to satisfy some racist, exclusionary ideal but in search of a quieter way of life and a little piece of land to raise their family. I know these people and how I was raised and there was not a racist among them. Now in their arrogance and entitlement, these city officials use their positions to insult their memory when they should be praising these members of “The Greatest Generation” for allowing them the freedom to achieve democratic office rather than “goose stepping” with their right arms thrust “outward and upward.” They owe them an apology.
The insult is the result of an objective to provide a mass influx of needed affordable housing but, in fact, this worthy goal has no chance of being realized in the Bay Area of today. Look around you and it is obvious that any development will be solely motivated by profit. It’s “market rate baby” with a handful of affordable units in the mix to gain approval. The destruction of single family neighborhoods will accomplish little except for a quick profit for opportunistic developers.
Now for all those frustrated, attorney “wannabes” out there, myself included, let me share a question I posed to both the City Council and the City Attorney. No surprise, I’m still waiting for an answer. As, to my knowledge, most re-zoning efforts are solicited by either a property owner or a potential property owner seeking to alter land use, how can the state or a city come in and make a “blanket” unsolicited re-zoning of neighborhoods? The operative word here is “unsolicited.” I have pointed out to these officials that in so doing they are appropriating my private property for their use yet not declaring “eminent domain.” I also pointed out that I didn’t just purchase a dwelling, I also purchased the R1 zoned dirt it sits on, in an R1 zoned neighborhood. As most of us entered into a mortgage to facilitate our home purchases, have they not altered our contract, after the fact, by materially changing the nature of our purchase? Think about it.
Sorry to be so “long winded” but the negative consequences to single family homeowners will be “long” as well. If any of you sees any merit in my post, take the time to share it with your local and state officials. It’s a power grab but it is also a property grab. IT’S OUR DIRT!
berkeley is a cess pool.shit hole, if
anything, it should be vaporized, it
is an uncontrollable left wing cancer,
and you know how to cure a cancer,
the same thing applies to sacramento
,