{"id":279,"date":"2019-05-24T16:15:39","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T16:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=279"},"modified":"2019-05-24T20:08:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T20:08:54","slug":"berkeley-housing-crisis-is-testing-california-citys-liberal-values-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/279\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley housing crisis is testing California city’s liberal values – The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/berkeley-loves-its-sanctuary-label-but-a-housing-crisis-is-testing-its-liberal-values\/2019\/05\/23\/805b2b48-7721-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html?utm_term=.866c17426aca<\/a>
\nBerkeley loves its sanctuary label, but a housing crisis is testing its liberal values Scott WilsonBERKELEY, Calif. \u2014 Tom Valledao in his RV on Eighth Street in Berkeley, Calif. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) This eccentric Northern California enclave was a sanctuary long before the designation became a must-have merit badge for any left-leaning city.
\nBerkeley politicians proclaimed the place a refuge for Navy sailors resisting deployment to the Vietnam War nearly a half-century ago. It was the birth of a movement to protect the outcast \u2014 and, in some cases, the outlaw \u2014 from rules that this beat-of-its-own-drum city and its followers found immoral, most recently the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
\nBut California\u2019s housing crisis is testing whether Berkeley can remain that kind of place.
\nFaced with sharp criticism from a changing population, city leaders have banned people from living in recreational vehicles here, proving that even the most accepting of cities is not immune to the demands that often accompany wealth and gentrification. Businesses and residents have complained about the RVs\u2019 blighting of city streets and the burden they place on public safety and sanitation services.
\n\u201cWe had to do something,\u201d said Mayor Jesse Arregu\u00edn, referring to the March city council vote. \u201cThe ordinance we passed, I will admit we rushed into it. But we were facing a lot of pressure from businesses and residents.\u201d
\nThe outcry over the ban was instant. The anger came from progressive neighbors such as Oakland, which feared that a scores-long caravan of RVs would soon head across the invisible city limits to its streets. The council suspended the law\u2019s enforcement until a more collective approach to the borderless problem might be found.
\nBut Berkeley\u2019s move serves as a parable for how one seemingly small government decision and a lack of basic coordination can rumble through a region short on housing and high on frustration. The ban was itself a reaction to steps larger cities and the state have taken that created homeless migration around the Bay Area, disruptive and endless, in a region with the highest housing costs in the country.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a Catch-22,\u201d said Tom Valledao, 66 and homeless, who worked for decades breaking down ships along the docks of the East Bay.
\nValledao lives in a decrepit camper along Eighth Street in Berkeley\u2019s Gilman neighborhood, a onetime warehouse district that is rapidly evolving, with wine-tasting rooms, microbreweries and stores selling custom furniture made from reclaimed teak. A Whole Foods occupies a block around the corner from Valledao\u2019s \u201cturtle shell,\u201d as he calls his curbside squat.
\n\u201cIf they kick people out of their campers,\u201d he said, \u201cthen there will just be more people on the streets.\u201d
\n Tom Valledao at his curbside living spot. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) Many homeless people in California live without any kind of shelter \u2014 nearly half of the nation\u2019s unsheltered homeless people are here \u2014 a brutal testament to years of failed housing policy and a lack of political will at nearly every level of government. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) proposed in his first budget this month to double the annual amount the state will spend on homelessness, to $1 billion.
\nThe increase reflects a bewildering fact given the resources already devoted to the issue: The problem, according to just-completed homeless counts in cities across California, is undoubtedly getting worse. Preliminary numbers released late last week from San Francisco and Alameda County, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, show significant increases in the homeless populations during the past two years. Berkeley\u2019s rise was 43\u2009percent.
\nEstimates place the homeless population in the Bay Area, a region encompassing more than 100 cities, at more than 30,000. A deep analysis of the issue, published last month by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, estimated that the cost of permanently housing the region\u2019s homeless at more than $12\u2009billion.
\nBut building affordable housing in California is a growing political challenge as property values skyrocket along with the expectations of the area\u2019s residents. Last week, in the face of enduring opposition, state lawmakers placed on hold legislation that would allow state officials to override local planning decisions in some cases to increase urban housing stock.
\n\u201cThe pressure we are feeling as local politicians is telling us that, as people spend more and more on housing, they feel more and more aggrieved by so-called blight,\u201d said Berkeley Councilmember Kate Harrison, who opposed the RV ban. \u201cOnly the 1\u2009percent here feel economically secure.\u201d
\n An RV parked near Eighth and Gilman in Berkeley. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) A wealthy resistance
\nAcross the bay in San Francisco, which a recent report found has the highest concentration of billionaires of any city in the world, nearly every proposal to address homelessness has met with public ire in the past few months..
\nMayor London Breed (D) was shouted down in a recent forum about her proposal to open a \u201cnavigation center\u201d along the scenic bayside Embarcadero. The center would be a temporary shelter for the homeless where people are guided toward health services and permanent housing.
\nGoFundMe campaigns have emerged in wealthy neighborhoods to finance lawsuits against affordable housing proposals. Two state business groups and an anti-tax organization recently filed suit to overturn Proposition C, a measure city voters passed last year that imposes a tax on large businesses to raise an estimated $300 million a year for homeless initiatives.
\nSalesforce founder Marc Benioff, a vocal supporter of the tax, donated $30 million to the University of California at San Francisco this month to study the causes of homelessness. Benioff is a San Francisco native.
\nThe rising anger is in large part a result of just how visible the problem is here. An estimated 67\u2009percent of the Bay Area\u2019s homeless population is \u201cunsheltered,\u201d meaning they live and sleep outdoors. In the United States, only Los Angeles has a higher rate.
\n\u201cThat is tragically bad, an utter failure of policy,\u201d said Adrian Covert, vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, an influential regional business association. \u201cA lot of this opposition has been an embarrassment to many of us, but I think regular people are hungry for solutions.\u201d
\nThe council\u2019s report emphasized regional cooperation in a part of the state where that has been largely unknown over the years.
\nIt recommended the creation of a shared data trove detailing city-by-city housing stock, programs directed at homelessness, and other information that could be used to avoid duplication. Covert said cities and counties also should share funds across boundaries, a bureaucratic leap.
\n\u201cWe should strive to have the big answer \u2014 that is, that we are building here, we are building there, we are building everywhere,\u201d Covert said. \u201cThis would provide the assurance of burden-sharing, which the chronic opposition is suspicious is actually happening.\u201d
\n Pam Benfante, 54, sits in the RV she keeps parked at Eighth Street and Gilman. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) Cooperation and cabins
\nThe Berkeley vote to ban RV living dismayed Oakland officials. The two cities are inseparable \u2014 the iconic Telegraph Avenue runs from historic Oakland to the University of California at Berkeley campus \u2014 and when one sneezes the other often catches a cold.
\nThe sneeze this time was Berkeley effectively telling the residents of about 200 RVs in the city that they would have to move immediately.
\nOakland braced for the symptoms: more RVs on its streets at a time when city officials are searching for sites where their own RV-dwellers can park safely and receive services.
\n\u201cI will say it was a little surprising for Berkeley to pass the ordinance without having talked to us first,\u201d Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said. \u201cEveryone wants a solution that doesn\u2019t just push the problem to someone else\u2019s doorstep. It\u2019s neither effective nor compassionate.\u201d
\nSchaaf was born and raised in Oakland, a proud daughter of the city and defender of its place as a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants and the poor. She calls the city\u2019s homelessness a \u201csoul-scathing\u201d problem, a challenge to even the most tolerant, who often feel powerless to act.
\n\u201cI recognize that most of our problems don\u2019t stop at our municipal boundaries,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are interdependent, as human beings, which is so important to remember as we tackle this crisis of homelessness, and as governmental entities.\u201d
\nDuring her tenure, Schaaf has pioneered the use of \u201ccabin communities\u201d as a cost-effective step between the streets and permanent housing. These are collections of small cabins, similar in size and design to a suburban backyard playhouse, that in three locations have replaced squalid homeless camps in the past year.
\nTo the homeless, the collection of cabins provides shelter and allows streetside communities to remain largely intact.
\nMore than half of those who have passed through the cabins have gone into permanent housing at a per-person cost half that of a typical shelter bed. The areas around the communities are then designated \u201cno-camping zones,\u201d which has won the support of neighboring businesses.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an ever-changing group of people from a lot of different situations and with a lot of different personalities,\u201d said Heather Kato, 40, who grew up in the East Bay and for the past month has shared a cabin beneath Interstate 580.
\nOn this day, some of the community\u2019s 40 residents lined up along Northgate Avenue for a chance to bathe, courtesy of Lava Mae, an organization that visits weekly with mobile showers and clean towels. It calls its mission \u201cradical hospitality.\u201d
\nResidents carry their toiletries in Ziploc bags from behind the little settlement\u2019s guarded gate onto the sidewalk, chatting as they wait their turn inside the small trailer. Afterward, Kato, who said she is escaping a violent home life, will rest inside her cabin, something she was unable to do when she lived in a regular shelter that closes during the day.
\n\u201cThe more you participate, the more you get out of this,\u201d said Kato, who is looking for work as a chef or dental hygienist, both of which she is trained to do. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t want to be here, you do not have to be.\u201d
\n Janet Enos, 55, sits in the RV she keeps parked along a Berkeley street. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) Another sneeze, another cold
\nThis city of 120,000 people has the highest per capita homeless population in the Bay Area. Arregu\u00edn, whose own family experienced housing evictions in San Francisco when he was a child, said those numbers have been rising in part because of that city\u2019s decision to clear several street encampments during the past year.
\nSome of those displaced from San Francisco have landed here \u2014 another sneeze, another cold. He estimates that a recently completed homeless census will show that as many as 1,500 people in Berkeley are now without a place to live \u2014 a two-thirds increase in the past two years.
\n\u201cThe biggest challenge we face is that we do not have a lot of available land,\u201d said Arregu\u00edn, who in his two years in office has doubled the number of shelter beds and has sharply increased spending on homeless programs. \u201cHad we had a large enough parcel, we would have already opened a safe parking site for these RVs.\u201d
\nThe RVs used to park along the Berkeley waterfront, property that belongs to the state. Arregu\u00edn wanted to temporarily look the other way, allowing the settlement there to continue given the lack of options, until residents complained.
\nHarrison, the Berkeley council member, recalled a constituent saying: \u201cI paid a million dollars for my place, and they have a better view.\u201d
\nUnder legal threat from the state, Berkeley officials pushed out the waterfront campers last year, scattering the RVs around the city and, in Arregu\u00edn\u2019s assessment, \u201cmaking them that much harder to serve.\u201d
\nThe complaints continued to arrive by phone, email and in public forums: The RVs are unsightly fire hazards, their residents potentially crime causing, and they dump waste into overwhelmed storm drains.
\n\u201cI think we are at a tipping point in our community,\u201d Arregu\u00edn said. \u201cThere have been real impacts that have negatively affected businesses and residents in our community. But we also have to realize that the most significant impacts are on those without a place to live.\u201d
\nMany of the RVs are parked now in twos and threes along the side streets of gentrifying West Berkeley. Some are deluxe, sleek tubes with tinted windows and full kitchens. Others, like Valledao\u2019s, might not actually be mobile if they were forced to move.
\nValledao has been on disability for years, having contracted asbestos-related illnesses from his work in the shipyards. He lost his apartment last year when his roommate died and he could no longer afford the rent.
\nHe shifted his stuff into the little camper, his Harley-Davidson parked behind it. A small, puttering generator powers a TV and radio. A patch of artificial grass serves as a doormat.
\nValledao has never really left the Bay Area. But he might have to soon. As he slept on a recent Friday morning, Berkeley officials impounded his mobile home, hitching it up to a tow truck while he was still inside. Now he is staying with his daughter, his clothes and belongings still inside the camper.
\n\u201cThey took my home,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m homeless.\u201d
\n Tom Valledao makes dinner outside his RV in Berkeley. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post)
\n Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/berkeley-loves-its-sanctuary-label-but-a-housing-crisis-is-testing-its-liberal-values\/2019\/05\/23\/805b2b48-7721-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html?utm_term=.866c17426aca Berkeley loves its sanctuary label, but a housing crisis is testing its liberal values Scott WilsonBERKELEY, Calif. \u2014 Tom Valledao in his RV on Eighth Street in Berkeley, Calif. (Rachel Bujalski\/For The Washington Post) This eccentric Northern California enclave was a sanctuary long before the designation became a must-have merit badge for any left-leaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}