Berkeley struggles with housing reform amid current shortage

A drone image of the UC Berkeley campus as seen from Oakland, California, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

Berkeley has a penchant for passing policies that are first in the nation.

In 1916, the city quickly embraced segregated neighborhood plans and complicated zoning laws to protect the “public health, comfort and convenience” of its white, wealthy residents — single-family zoning laws developed by influential homeowners and planning officials who had directly lobbied state legislators for this governing authority less than a year earlier.

But more than a century later, countless attempts to reform these rules and address the city’s current housing shortage have resulted in excruciatingly long meetings and costly, data-intensive studies. These efforts were prompted by fears that new zoning regulations would inadvertently jeopardize public safety and fair housing opportunities.

On Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council postponed any final decisions on a landmark proposal that would have allowed the construction of duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and other “light density” projects in all residential neighborhoods — a move Berkeley claims is one of the largest and most ambitious reforms currently underway in California, if not nationwide.

According to the city’s planning department, this was mainly a procedural delay, as they had not consulted local chiefs about the proposed changes. However, dozens of residents demanded more time to learn about this complex proposal.

Hundreds of public comments and lengthy council discussions during Tuesday’s five-hour meeting focused on one multifaceted question: What is the best way to rezone Berkeley to realistically encourage the construction of affordable, “missing middle” housing without increasing the dangers of hillside wildfires, gentrification of poorer neighborhoods on the Plains, and displacement of nonwhite residents?

A final vote will take place again later this fall, nearly four years after Berkeley publicly rejected its segregationist history and pledged to end exclusionary zoning in favor of fair housing policies that help the community adapt to climate change.

Berkeley’s embrace of the concept of single-family housing in 1916 quickly caught on nationwide—it now comprises 96% of California’s residential land—and inspired decades of other restrictions on multifamily housing, including several public hearings on phased dezoning in the 1960s and the 1973 Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, which was approved by voters to protect working-class communities from damaging “urban renewal” but has effectively stifled the construction of duplexes, triplexes and other smaller multi-unit dwellings in the Plains ever since.

But instead of holding a symbolic vote Tuesday night to reform those laws in 2021, the council unanimously agreed Tuesday that more time is needed to continue dialogue with voters, analyze the results of ongoing investigations into wildfire evacuations and reconsider a more nuanced plan.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said the goal is to thread the needle that makes “missing middle” housing projects possible on paper, without losing sight of public safety or the financial pitfalls that often jeopardize the feasibility of these projects.

Instead of supporting the ordinance from Berkeley’s planning commission, he introduced a modified, watered-down version of the ordinance — co-authored by Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani — that set building heights at 35 feet, required a minimum setback of 20 feet for both the front and back of a lot, directed $200,000 to fund a citywide historic resources study, and excluded the hillside overlay zone from this higher-density plan altogether.

The council unanimously approved the motion, which was amended to include additional analysis on how a future ordinance would work with the city’s general plan and existing ordinances on mini-dormitories and demolition.

“This is one of the most ambitious rezoning efforts of any city in the United States, and I think it’s fitting that it starts here in Berkeley,” Arreguín said Tuesday night, explaining how he hopes their actions will serve as a model for cities across California to follow. “That said, we want to do it right.”

In the coming months, several council members have promised to hold community meetings to give residents a good idea of ​​what kind of homes they can realistically expect to see in their neighborhoods. This construction is years away from becoming a reality.

Planning staff said the effort could conservatively yield up to 1,700 units within the first eight years. However, Jordan Klein, director of Berkeley’s Planning and Development Department, said it’s more likely to yield a “fraction” of that estimate; he said the reality reflects the city’s annual average of adding 12 units of “missing middle” housing over the past six years.

This spate of projects illustrates the challenges developers face in making these multifamily projects successful in today’s market, according to a June report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

Opponents of the current proposal argue that allowing higher density in areas where more apartment buildings are already allowed will limit growth in neighborhoods that are currently zoned as single-family homes. This could conflict with the ordinance’s goal of addressing the impacts of exclusionary zoning.

“The carving out of the hills (of this ordinance) would carve out your racially concentrated areas of wealth,” said James Lloyd, director of planning and research for the California Housing Defense Fund. “This (current proposal) would enshrine segregation in your local municipal code.”

Kesarwani said she agrees with the criticism that standards that vary by zoning plan build on historical patterns of exclusion.

“However, this proposal received unanimous support,” Kesarwani posted on social media, reflecting on Tuesday’s unanimous vote. “Politics is the art of the possible.”

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