Berkeley
Overview
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Housing Element is In Compliance
Housing Element is Out of Compliance
Good Progress
Making Slow Progress
Housing Targets
2022
-
2030
State Statutes
Builder’s Remedy
SB 423
Conditions in
Alameda County
How does
Berkeley
compare to its neighboring cities?
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's Volunteers
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Watchdog Reports
Berkeley
's Reports
Lots of neighborhood pushback against building tall housing in a district with a lot of single family houses. However, we got enough YIMBY turnout that the planning commission voted to increase the height by five stories!
Commissioners were in general leaning towards allowing 2-4 units by right. Some of them were hesitant about letting the buildings get too large. Many were skeptical of FAR limits as unnecessary additional regulation (height limits and setbacks, etc, would be sufficient).
NIMBYs were making arguments about fire safety (need for 4-foot escape passages), shading their solar panels (nevermind people having to live farther from their jobs and increasing VMT), and not wanting overly large structures in general.
Only about a dozen people showed up to give public comment, kind of evenly split between YIMBYs and NIMBYs. Perhaps a few more NIMBYs, but they didn't seem to be swaying commissioners.
First public outreach about housing element.
Survey for people who didn't attend to contribute: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/berkeleyhousing
Website with details about Berkeley Housing Element: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/housingelement/
I live tweeted this meeting: https://twitter.com/howtoadu/status/1453533943211302913
Probably 50+ attendees, Nico Nagle was there from East Bay YIMBY and there were a lot of student advocates. See the age demographic slide for a glimpse into how the meeting went.
I'd say the majority of speakers I heard were pro-housing. Even the more concerned voices stuck to "affordable housing" and "right kind" of housing arguments.
The city's consultants seem serious about engaging the public.
They did a cool thing where they pulled up maps in the breakout sessions and let us literally list properties or neighborhoods where we thought the city should develop housing. There was a lot of support for residential above first floor commerce along the main roads like College Ave, small duplex-quadplex development spread throughout the city's less dense residential neighborhoods, and some taller buildings near BART stations (in parking lots, auto body shops, etc).