More than a quarter of a century ago, much of the European center-left made a course change, edging away from its working class base, accommodating itself to the globalization of capital, and handing over the post World War II social contract to private industry. Whether it was the “New Labour” of Tony Blair in Britain or Gerhard Schroder’s “Agenda 2010” in Germany, social democracy came to terms with its traditional foe, capitalism. 

Today, that compact is shattered, the once powerful center-left a shadow of its former self, and the European Union—the largest trading bloc on the planet—is in profound trouble. 

In election after election over the past year, social democratic parties went down to defeat, although center-right parties also lost voters. Last year’s election in the Netherlands saw the Labor Party decimated, though its conservative coalition partner also took a hit. In France, both the Socialist Party and the traditional conservative parties didn’t even make the runoffs. September’s elections in Germany saw the Social Democrats (GPD) take a pounding, along with their conservative alliance partners, the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union. And Italy’s center-left Democratic Party was decisively voted out of power. 

It would be easy to see this as a shift to the right. The neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfG) has 92 seats in the Bundestag. The Dutch anti-Muslim Party for Freedom picked up five seats. The extreme rightist National Front made the runoffs in France. The racist, anti-immigrant Northern League took 17.5 percent of the Italian vote and is in the running to form a government. 

But the fall of the center-left has more to do with the 1990s course change than with any rightward shift by the continent. As the center-left accommodated itself to capital, it eroded its trade union base. In the case of New Labour, Blair explicitly distanced the Party from the unions that had been its backbone since it was founded in 1906. 

In Germany, the Social Democrats began rolling back the safety net, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and undermining labor codes that had guaranteed workers steady jobs at decent wages. 

The European Union—originally touted as a way to end the years of conflict that had embroiled the continent in two world wars— became a vehicle for enforcing economic discipline on its 27 members. Rigid fiscal rules favored countries like Germany, Britain, Austria and the Netherlands, while straitjacketing countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, particularly in times of economic crisis. 

Center-left parties all over Europe bailed out banks and financial speculators, while inflicting ruinous austerity measures on their own populations to pay for it. It became difficult for most people to distinguish between the policies of the center-right and the center-left. 

Both backed austerity as a strategy for the debt crisis. Both weakened trade unions through “reforms” that gave employers greater power. Short-term contracts—so-called “mini jobs”—with lower wages and benefits replaced long-term job security, a strategy that fell especially hard on young people. 

The recent Italian elections are a case in point. While the center-left Democratic Party (DP) bailed out several regional banks, its Labor Minister recommended that young Italians emigrate to find jobs. It was the Five Star Movement that called for a guaranteed income for poor Italians and sharply criticized the economics of austerity. 

In contrast, the DP called for “fiscal responsibility” and support for the EU, hardly a program that addressed inequality, economic malaise, and youth unemployment. Euro-skeptic parties took 55 percent of the vote, while the Democrats tumbled from 41 percent four years ago to 19 percent. 

In the German elections, the SPD did raise the issue of economic justice, but since the Party had been part of the governing coalition, voters plainly did not believe it. The Party’s leader Martin Schulz, , called for a “united states of Europe,” not exactly a barnburner phrase when the EU is increasingly unpopular. 

Breaking a pre-election promise to go into opposition, the SPD has re-joined Merkel’s “Grand Coalition.” While the SPD landed some important cabinet posts, history suggests the Party will pay for that decision. It also allows the neo-Nazi AfG to be the official opposition in the Bundestag, handing it a bully pulpit. 

The unwillingness of Europe’s social democrats to break from the policies of accommodation has opened an economic flank for the right to attack, and the center-left’s unwillingness to come to grips with immigration makes them vulnerable to racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Both the Italian and German center-left avoided the issue during their elections, ceding the issue to the right. 

Europe does have an immigration problem, but it is not the right’s specter of “job-stealing, Muslim rapists” overrunning the continent. EU members—most of all Italy—have a shrinking and increasingly aged population. If the continent does not turn those demographics around—and rein in “mini jobs” that discourage young workers from having children—it is in serious long-term trouble. There simply will not be enough workers to support the current level of pensions and health care. 

In any case, many of the “immigrants” are EU members—Poles, Bulgarians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese and Romanians—looking for work in England and Germany because their own austerity-burdened economies can’t offer them a decent living. 

The center-left did not buy into the right’s racism, but neither did it make the point that immigrants are in the long-term interests of Europe. Nor did it do much to challenge the foreign policy of the EU and NATO that actively aids or abets wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria, wars that fuel millions of those immigrants. 

One of the most telling critiques that Five Star aimed at the DP was that the Party supported the overthrow of the Libyan government and the consequent collapse of Libya as a functioning nation. Most the immigrants headed for Italy come from, or through, Libya. 

When center-left parties embraced socially progressive policies, voters supported them. In Portugal two left parties formed a coalition with the Social Democrats to get the economy back on track, lower the jobless rate, and roll back many of the austerity measures enforced on the country by the EU. In recent local elections, voters gave them a ringing endorsement. 

Jeremy Corbyn took the British Labour Party to the left with a program to re-nationalize railroads, water, energy and the postal service, and Labour is now running neck and neck with the Conservatives. Polls also indicate that voters like Labour’s program of green energy, improving health care, and funding education and public works. 

The examples of Portugal and Britain argue that voters are not turning away from left policies, but from the direction that the center left has taken over the past quarter century. 

The formulas of the right—xenophobia and nationalism—will do little to alleviate the growing economic inequality in Europe, nor will they address some very real existential problems like climate change. The real threat to the Dutch doesn’t comes from Muslims, but the melting of the Greenland ice cap and the West Antarctic ice sheet, which, sometime in the next few decades, will send the North Sea over the Netherland’s dikes. 

When Europe emerged from the last world war, the left played an essential role in establishing a social contract that guaranteed decent housing, health care and employment for the continent’s people. There was still inequality, exploitation, and greed—it is, after all, capitalism—but there was also a compact that did its best to keep the playing field level. In the words of Mette Frederiksen, a leading Danish social democrat, “to save capitalism from itself.” 

The Thatcher government in Britain and the Reagan government in Washington broke that compact. Taxes were shifted from corporations and the wealthy to the working class and poor. Public services were privatized, education defunded, and the safety net shredded. 

If the center-left is to make a comeback, it will have to re-discover its roots and lure voters away from xenophobia and narrow nationalism with a program that improves peoples’ lives and begins the difficult task of facing up to what capitalism has wrought on the planet. 

Housing is a human right. That is recognized internationally, and articulated in treaties to which the US is signatory. The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people in the US makes this country a mass violator of human rights. 

We have a funny way of avoiding this fact. Different levels of government will transform the right to housing into the right to exist without housing (homeless encampments, sleeping on sidewalks, etc.), then set that right to exist in conflict with property rights, and let property rights win. It’s a game played in courts. 

The word in Berkeley is that the city is getting ready to raid the encampment on Adeline where the BART tracks emerge. Though that will be a violation of the Constitution, it will not be a violation of the right of government to violate human rights. Sometimes government policy gets pretty ugly. 

In Boise, Idaho, in 2015, some homeless people sued the city to stop it from raiding their encampments (Bell vs. Boise). The city had an ordinance that said it was illegal to sleep on public land. The US Dept. of Justice filed a brief supporting the homeless in that case. It argued that if a city could not provide shelter for all the homeless, then it could not bar them from sleeping on public land. To do so amounted to criminalizing one’s status as homeless, rather than one’s conduct. The human (and mammalian) need to sleep refers to existence rather than conduct, and cannot be outlawed. If individuals have no access to private spaces to sleep, then the act of sleeping in public is not a choice and cannot be criminalized. 

That argument is based on the 8^th Amendment. That is the amendment that bars cruel and unusual punishment. The Court argued that in prohibiting such punishment, the amendment “limits what can be made criminal and punished as such.” Though the law can punish conduct, it cannot punish status. Addiction, for instance, is a status and not a conduct, and cannot be punished. Poverty is a status. For the homeless, if no alternative shelter is provided by the city, they must be left to camp where they can. 

The government’s brief in this case actually waxes humanitarian, affirming a broad government interest in ensuring that justice is applied fairly, regardless of wealth or status. This includes an "interest" in breaking any cycle of poverty and criminalization. That, in turn, would necessitate constructive alternatives to the criminalization of homelessness. Various programs have been started, but none have had much effect. 

"To criminalize" a social status means to claim a legitimacy in sending police to stop people from existing, and arrest them if they resist. In a police state, the police don’t need a law to enforce. They can do it on their own. Its what happens to some Cinco de Mayo celebrations and to homeless encampments. 

In Boise, the court pulled a fast one. It engineered a settlement between that city and its “tired and poor.” The settlement relieved the court of the necessity to make a decision. Since there was no decision, the government’s arguments (about the right to sleep) never attained legal status, nor became part of the law. Status and conduct remained undifferentiated – which implies, with respect to homelessness, that status can be dealt with as conduct – even though that is a violation of human rights. 

If you look over at that community of tents strung along the boulevard at 63^rd St. (on Adeline St.), you will see a pristine camp, clean, with no trash lying around, and a portapotty just a few feet to the north. These are people who know how to take care of themselves. They have to. The city of Berkeley will not recognize their community, let alone their camp’s existence as a human right. It has raided them over 16 times in the last two years, though it provides shelter for less than 20% of the city’s homeless. 

Under the 8^th Amendment, when Berkeley police raid that encampment, they will be violating the Constitution they are sworn to uphold. 

If housing is a human right, to withhold housing from homeless people is actually to create status as homeless, and to then criminalize status. Wasn’t it a form of criminalizing status that was overthrown by Brown v. Board of Education when it outlawed segregation in schools? Does that mean that prior to that decision, criminalizing status was acceptible? Richard Rothstein, in his book, “The Color of Law,” argues that that was the case. He shows that racially segregated neighborhoods (found in every city) were the result of government policy. To criminalize homeless encampments in Berkeley by raiding them will be very much in the tradition of Jim Crow. 

There are vacant buildings in Berkeley that the city could use to provide this human right. Just look along 10^th St. north of University. How come it doesn’t? Property rights. 

The Berkeley ideology on sidewalks  

Cal Penal Code sect 647c states that any person who willfully and maliciously obstracts the free movement of any person in any public space or place is guilty of a crime. The 8^th amendment implies that those who are involuntarily on the sidewalk cannot be criminalized. 

Berkeley’s City Council believes that sidewalks are for pedestrian passage, and not intended for human habitation. We agree. Government policy fostering homelessness as a status is the problem. If the city cannot provide shelter, then it cannot tell the homeless where they can sleep, without criminalizing sleep. 

The city wants to decide where the homeless would not "unreasonably" obstruct access to public space. This is not possible, since homelessness itself is unreasonable. A person living on a sidewalk is already unreasonable, even before the law speaks, or anyone walks by. Blocking public access becomes secondary for a sidewalk that belongs to a society that violates human rights. 

If councilmembers think they can differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable use of the sidewalk, they are subjectively choosing which reasonableness they will respect as a condition for considering the other to be unreasonable. 

The encampment on Adeline is a celebrated community because it knows how to take care of itself in the face of government refusal. As such, it provides a role model for community autonomy and democracy in general. (For that reason, it has been raided and robbed by the police some 15 or 16 times in the last two years. The city is more concerned with power than decency. It gives the police torture devices like pepper spray to insure public obedience.)  

The excuse for the raid  

In preparing to raid the encampment, the city’s excuse will not be obstruction of public space (the tents are on the grass), but rather than it is “bad for business.” Word on the street has it that the café/bakery on the west side of the boulevard is facing hard times. People are being scared away. So the homeless are being scapegoated. 

Neighborhood wisdom points instead to a more immediate factor, the presence of individuals who are in need of a different kind of assistance. They hang out in front of the bakery and panhandle or beg, or simply approach people to get recognition for their existence. Can you imagine someone simply wishing to have their human existence recognized? 

I was sitting at one of the outdoor tables one day drinking coffee, and a fairly large man I had seen around sat down on a chair about three feet away. He was somewhat desheveled, with an unkempt look in his face that spoke of long solitudes, and with a kind of crazed light in his eyes. I was reading at the table, while also reading the day, watching people walk by. I ignored him. After about 10 minutes, he asked me if he could have my coffee. I said no, looking him in the eyes. Both our tones of voice were businesslike, in what amounted to an abbreviated conversation. He took no for an answer. I know a few people who are better "heeled," and who wouldn’t. A few minutes later, he got up and walked on. 

Mental illness? Perhaps. If it were a virus, we could look for vaccines or an antibiotic for it. But it isn’t. It is more like a person whose hand was crushed under a bus, and who then gets kicked around because he can’t work at anything he used to know how to do. PTSD sets in, and there’s no pill for that either. The city has laws against the homeless. It has no time for those who are alone and traumatized by the life they could never find for themselves. And that makes one wonder what mental health would look like? 

The main care the city gives wears a blue uniform. They will routinely beat or shoot a mentally troubled person for not obeying orders (RIP Kayla Moore). 

The homeless are subjected to scapegoating criminalization in Berkeley, and the traumatized are subjected to discrimination. The city reserves the arbitrary right to decide which is “bad for business.” But that is because it doesn’t want to talk about the “other” reason. And that’s where the city’s hypocrisy comes in. 

All last year, the encampment was on that east side of Adeline, but on BART land, out of reach of Berkeley police raids. The city refused to put in a porta-potty, so people used the bakery’s facilities, which led the bakery to close them off, as well as a good part of its café space. It was neighbors that finally paid for the porta-potty at the encampment. In the meantime, the city’s refusal to provide “human rights” had led the bakery to live a truncated existence. 

Housing is a human right  

Let me rephrase the US government’s argument in Bell v. Boise. If a city cannot take responsibility for providing the human right to housing, then as a city it has no right to prevent those who have no housing from using public land to live on. To fail to provide housing for people is to violate their human rights. 

Some people ask, who decides where homeless people should camp? That depends on whether you live in a police state or a democracy. In a police state, the police decide. In a democracy, the homeless place themselves where they can be seen while waiting for society to act responsibly toward them. The city does studies, but doesn’t consult the homeless themselves, from whom it would get more practical suggestions than it could handle. 

Beside the government brief in Bell vs. Boise, and the 8^th amendment, there is a third document to which we should refer. That is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (sect. 14141). Bill Clinton signed it into existence. It says, “individuals have the right to be free from unconstitutional and abusive policing.” Now, that’s a tall order these days. And getting taller as the police get ready to raid the encampment on Adeline again. 

But it recalls another sentiment in the government brief about government "interest" in breaking the cycle of poverty and criminalization. Remember the revolving door between government and the corporations? Those who are high corporate officials become members of committees designed to regulate their industry; and those who put in time on those regulatory agencies then get hired by a corporation or two after they retire from "public service." 

With a revolving door between impoverishment and imprisonment, the US has constructed the largest prison system in the world (most of whose "residents" are there for victimless crimes) – along with a cost of living (especially rent levels) that rises while wages lag behind. The entire system produces people who are shell-shocked by life and what it does to them, at a rate comparable to war. 

Strangely, the one’s who get attention in the form of raids and criminalization are those who have figured out how to take care of themselves and each other, in order to heal, and to mitigate the force of their circumstances. By raiding them, the city is stating clearly that it wants them truamatized, rather than secure in their intentional communities. 

If the city prefers policing a problem to resolving it democratically, its revolving door means it is more obsessed with appearing to arrive at solutions than in doing so. Democratic resolution would necessate the homeless themselves being involved in developing solutions. The city, with all its workshop, task forces, subcommittees, and resolutions, just leaves them out of the conversation. It has never organized assemblies of the homeless, and asked them to come up with real proposals. It has never consulted with the neighborhoods in community assemblies who are beset by the same forces that beset the homeless, with perhaps a little more protection. If the city ever did consult these people, it might just be totally traumatic for it.

State Senator Nancy Skinner, co-author with Senator Scott Wiener of SB 827, the bill which strips California cities of their power to plan land use in areas near transit, has bailed on her commitment to appear at the East Bay's key progressive Democratic Club to discuss the bill, according to this notice received today: 

Fifty years ago, U.S. soldiers attacked the Vietnamese village of My Lai. They met no resistance but ended up slaughtering 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men in what became known as the My Lai massacre. The U.S. military attempted to cover-up what happened and would have succeeded but for the persistence of a young reporter, Seymour Hersh. 

The soldiers raped the women, mutilated their bodies and torched their houses One U.S. soldier said he was ordered to “kill anything that breathed.” During the court martial proceedings the soldiers stated they were under intense pressure from the Pentagon to report body counts which was the metric used to measure success. More Vietnamese would have been killed had it not been for the courageous act of a combat pilot, Hugh Thompson, who witnessed what was happening and landed his helicopter facing the US soldiers. He ordered his two gunners to train their weapons on Lieutenant Calley and his combat troops to stop the slaughter or be shot. Thompson removed the Vietnamese civilians and flew them to safety. Only one soldier was convicted for the mass killings, Lieutenant William Calley. He served only three-and-a-half years under house arrest. 

The war continued for another seven years claiming the lives of a staggering 3.8 million Vietnamese 800,000 Cambodians and 1 million Laotians. John Kerry and other Vietnam Veterans Against the war discussed the atrocities unearthed in the Winter Soldier investigation, where over 150 veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia.

Weavers from the Jolom Mayaetik Weaving Cooperative, in Chiapas, Mexico, will be demonstrating their work and offering weavings for sale for one day only, Saturday, March 17, at Talavera Ceramics & Tile in Berkeley.

Jolom Mayaetik, which translates to “Women Who Weave” from Mayan Tzotzil, was founded in 1996 and is one of the most progressive weaving cooperatives in Chiapas. The organization promotes sustainable economic development for indigenous women, in a democratic structure run collectively by general assemblies and a popular vote. Unlike more traditional cooperatives in Mexico, the weavers of Jolom Mayaetik are also advancing human rights through educational programs, cultural empowerment, and political mobilization.

Working on backstrap looms, these weavers utilize methods passed down through generations to combine old-world symbolism with new colors and designs. Their most striking textiles are the huipiles woven as ceremonial garments and women’s attire. Huipiles are traditional, loose-fitting women’s blouses, handwoven by panel and sewn together flat. Mayan huipiles vary in style throughout the culturally distinct regions of Chiapas and distinguish the wearer by their locale. Blouses in the blusa Maya style are modern adaptations, with traditional symbols rendered in bright colors never envisioned by their makers’ ancestors.

On March 117th, the 167th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Festival will be held in San Francisco. Tis the time of parades, green beer, and shamrocks.

The Irish, the more than 70 million world-wide who claim Irish heritage, and the Irish-for-a-day, will lift a pint of Guinness, or something stronger, to toast Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. I bet corn beef and cabbage will be on many a menu. And many were and will be wearin’ the green. Why is it celebrated on March 17th? One theory is that is the day St. Patrick died and is now celebrated as his feast day. 

The biggest observance of all will be, of course, in Ireland. With the exception of restaurants and pubs, almost all businesses will close on March 17th. Being a religious holiday as well, many Irish attend mass, where March 17th is the traditional day for offering prayers for missionaries worldwide before the serious celebrating begins. 

Saint Patrick’s Day wouldn’t exist if not for the man himself. Only two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only universally accepted details of his life. Much of the rest is subject to some debate among scholars. Patrick is believed to have been born in the late fourth century about 387. He was born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland and died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, March 17, 460 [some say 461 or 493]. His parents were Calpurnius and Conchessa, who were Romans living in Britain in charge of the colonies. When he was about 14, he was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where Patrick worked as a herdsman, remaining a captive for six years, before escaping and returning to his family. While a captive, he learned the language and practices of the people who held him. 

He began his studies for the priesthood and was ordained four years later. Later, Patrick was ordained a bishop, and sent to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433, at Slane. Patrick began preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland, converting many. He and his disciples preached and converted thousands and began building churches all over the country. Kings, their families, and entire kingdoms converted to Christianity when hearing Patrick’s message. After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring much suffering, he died March 17, 460. He died at Saul, where he had built the first church. 

Interestingly enough, Patrick was never canonized by the Pope. For most of Christianity’s first 1,000 years, canonizations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon after very holy people died, the local Church affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints as was done with Patrick. Nevertheless, various Christian churches declare that he is a Saint in Heaven — he is in the List of Saints — and he is widely venerated in Ireland and elsewhere. 

Legend credits Patrick with banishing snakes from Ireland, though evidence suggests that post-glacial Ireland never had snakes. The stories of Saint Patrick and the snakes are likely a metaphor for his bringing Christianity to Ireland and driving out the pagan religions such as the Druids (serpents were a common symbol in many of these religions). 

Another legend concerns the shamrock, the symbol of Ireland. Supposedly, Patrick used the shamrock, a 3-leaved clover, to teach the Irish about the concept of the Trinity, the Christian belief of three divine persons in the one God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The shamrock was sacred to the Druids, so his use of it in explaining the trinity was very wise. 

On March 17th, have a toast to Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.

The last remaining vestige of local control over what happens in California cities is local control over land use. That’s why it’s not surprising that an overflow crowd on a rainy night turned out for a meeting at Berkeley Adult School to take their first look at possible plans to build something on the large flat parking lot that surrounds the North Berkeley BART station. Exactly what plans might exist, and who is making them, was murky at the start of the meeting and remained murky after PowerPoint talks by Berkeley Councilmember Linda Maio and a BART employee whose name I missed, prefaced by remarks from Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin.

The Mayor got right to the point: if two bills now in the hopper in Sacramento were to pass, almost anything might happen on that site, with little or nothing Berkeley could do to stop it.

The audience, most of whom identified themselves as neighbors, made a long string of modest, genteel comments pointing to what an obvious Kumbaya solution for development of the site should be. Almost all agreed that leaving it as just a parking lot was not aesthetically or politically appealing.

The shared vision seemed to be this: Genuine no-kidding 100% low-income housing (with no weasel words about being “affordable” if family income were close to $100k.) Occupants diverse, ethnically and otherwise. Height in scale with surrounding homes: maybe 3-4 stories, but no more. Parking preserved, though not necessarily visible, to avoid flooding nearby streets with cars and to protect BART users who need to drive to the station. Some open space, perhaps a bike/pedestrian trail through the middle. 

There was no enthusiasm for more of the expensive luxury apartments now being built all over Berkeley, usually euphemized as “market rate” in an overheated market. No one that I remember, except the BART people, spoke in favor of the currently trendy strategy of providing “affordable” housing by requiring a smaller percentage of less expensive units to accompany fancy high-priced apartments. The BARTers mentioned figures ranging from 20% to 35%. Some local speakers thought 50% affordable would be okay, though most seemed to prefer 100% low or very low income—they made the point that the much-touted “housing crisis” was in the low income market. 

But hanging over the rosy scenario which neighbors endorsed was the elephant in the room: the specter of a clutch of preemptive bills now pending in Sacramento which aim to deprive cities like Berkeley of the power to plan their own local environment. That would SB827 and several of its evil twins, including SB828. These bills, promulgated by San Francisco’s Senator Scott Wiener and our very own Nancy Skinner (who was elected to represent Berkeley but speaks these days for her developer patrons), would pre-empt local zoning power even for charter cities like Berkeley. 

Here’s some of what former Los Angeles Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says about 827: 

“SB 827 is not a housing bill; it’s a real-estate bill. It is intended to monetize real estate. This bill is not about YIMBYs vs. NIMBYs; it’s about WIMBYS: Wall Street in My Backyard. With one stroke of the pen, the State Legislature could totally transform the economics of real-estate development… Under SB 827, a developer would have the right to build, at minimum: 1) an eight-story-high apartment building within a quarter-mile of a major transit stop or transit corridor, or 2) a building of four to five stories within a half-mile of a major transit stop or a transit corridor.” 

(You can read his whole excellent analysis here.) 

Wiener and Skinner are currently attempting to sucker agencies into believing that with a few tweaks, just a couple of little amendments, 827 and its lookalikes will be just fine. The BART board last week went on record last week as swallowing that proposition hook-line-and-sinker, more fools they. 

No wonder the good burghers of North Berkeley were worried enough to come out to a meeting on a rainy night. 

827 has no room, with or without amendments, to create the kind of nuanced urban infill that last night’s comments welcomed, especially if orchestrated by the BART Board of Directors, who are having enough trouble these days carrying out their own core mission of providing working transit. 827 is a meat-axe, a one-tool-fits-all solution for a unique situation where the scalpel of local planning should be sensitively employed by cities who know what they’re doing. 

One speaker last night, somewhat older than the row of hooting young YIMBY men who sat in front of me, recalled the time when demolition-fueled Urban Renewal was touted by planners as the “progressive” way of dealing with cities, and that didn’t turn out too well. The rude boys who catcalled from time to time weren’t born then, of course. 

And while we’re on the subject of planners, it’s past time to revisit Berkeley’s downtown area plan. I’ve now attended three meetings of a City Council sub-committee which was supposed to come up with a workable definition of what kind of “significant community benefits” would justify permitting a developer to claim one of the five buildings which would be allowed to exceed the general height limit for the Downtown Area. 

Two of the five are already spoken for. The first one, the Harold Way project on Shattuck which would demolish Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas, was approved by the Bates Council as it slithered out the door, but now the applicant developer is trying to peddle the entitlements to another builder and to welch on rebuilding the theaters in the current building as promised. The second is a hotel on the Bank of America site. 

Neither one would do anything any time soon to deal with the Bay’s genuine housing crisis, the lack of homes for low-income and no-income people. Both would simply add to Berkeley’s over-supply of hot-market-rate bedroom housing for the privileged employees of over-funded San Francisco startups. Supposed “community benefits” from these two have proved to be insignificant at best, and community detriments are likely to be their final result. 

There's no good reason to think that the next three would turn out any better. One is now in the pipeline, 2190 Shattuck, and the council should simply turn down the request for extra height unless a whole lot of low-income units are added to the mix. 

Many of the city’s identified opportunity sites for building downtown and elsewhere are being swallowed up by ugly boxes made out of ticky-tacky which will add thousands of short-term service-demanding residents to the city’s unfunded infrastructure burden. Putting more of these on the North Berkeley BART site would be a travesty. 

It’s time to revisit Berkeley’s 2012 Downtown Area Plan, which, after 6 years, like many planners’ pipe dreams hasn’t worked out quite as planned. A mid-course correction which is responsive to today’s situation, and especially the threat to local control which 827 and its ilk represent, is past due. Do we really need five extra-tall buildings there or anywhere in town, at any price? 

The YIMBY tweet reprinted in the Planet which showed a 35 story building on the BART site has been repudiated by one of their apparent leaders as just a joke, an “amusement”. Sounds just like Sarah H.S. trying to walk back an excrescence from the Tweeter-in-Chief, doesn’t it? Count on it, if 827 passes some YIMBY will seriously suggest that the site would be ideal for something like San Francisco’s new Phallus Building. Watch for it. 

As a disclaimer, I’m not categorically against any type of development, be it prefabricated, modular homeless housing or 100 story luxury apartments. If a city wants to build the tallest building in the world, that’s fine if it’s their decision to do that. What I am against is top-down planning by government and big money, forcing inappropriate development on defenseless communities, by commandeering local planning and zoning control and dictating to locally elected officials and taxpayers. I’m also not an “urbanist” or any other “ist” for that matter. I love great urban places as much as I love quiet small towns. Each has its unique and compelling characteristics, and I think we should work to preserve both. If I need a label, I guess I’m a quasi-Wrightian when it comes to planning and growth. As anyone who has read my first book or my work over the years knows, I believe that growth and planning requires complex solutions, incorporating a mix of low-density and high-density, enabled by technology so both have a much lighter footprint on the planet than either do at the moment.

What I know for sure is that a one-size-fits-all approach to zoning will not get us there. 

When dealing with development issues in different places, from urban cores to rural towns, nothing is comparable: not available locations, land types, the social services and public services available or the needs of the populace or the programs that exist to address them, or the types of businesses and industries that are viable, or the municipal government’s financial wherewithal and the capacity of their agencies. 

In the face of increasingly complex planning and growth challenges and increasingly unpredictable unintended consequences, Senator Wiener has chosen to ignore all this and charge forward with a blunt instrument belief that removing local zoning control will solve everything. His proposals have no proven track record of success: success being defined as financially, socially and environmentally viable in a market based, democratic society. 

I’m not claiming that our system is not flawed: in many ways it’s a total mess. Still, like it or not, for better and for worse California is not Europe or Asia or even New York City, so we have to work with what we have. And, on balance, I would argue that what we have in place can work well, even though new ideas and modifications are needed. 

But, Senator Wiener doesn’t live in that world, which is why the visions embodied in his Senate Bill 827 are fatally flawed. 

Fatal Flaw #1: Local Planning is not just about control 

A city’s General Plan and its zoning ordinances are not about “control” for its own sake, they are fundamentally about the financial solvency of the city. Over centuries, municipalities have sought to address and express their social, environmental and financial needs and goals through planning: adding provisions to encourage different types of commerce to provide jobs, services and tax base, or to improve infrastructure or bring in new residents (aka consumers), endlessly seeking a balance, though that is always unattainable. 

The detailed decisions that go into creating a city’s General Plan attempt to address the fact that financially viable private development (housing, commercial, industrial, etc.), requires a supportive context of public investment and reliable planning execution. 

Every municipality I’ve ever worked with has indicated that housing is at best a financial break even for cities: the costs of infrastructure and public services outweigh the revenues generated (and this is in California: the highest taxed populace in the country). Commercial properties, on the other hand, are generally a more reliable revenue source. 

For example, a single 100 room boutique hotel in Marin can generate over $1 million a year in tax revenues. Conversely, allowing too much housing without sufficient commerce, retail, industry, local jobs and services results in reduced city revenues and public services, which lowers property values and so on, in a downward spiral that bankrupted more than one city in the last boom and bust housing cycle. 

In the San Francisco Bay Area, allowing the addition of uncontrolled amounts of housing throughout our nine counties, without sufficient, local jobs creation and commercial development, also leads to longer commutes and more traffic. 

Local planning can address these kinds of imbalances better than central planning agencies in Sacramento. 

Planning and zoning work best, when applied surgically and with specific intentions. Conditional use zoning is an example of that. It offers the possibility of a certain profitable use for a developer, if the community receives some tangible benefit in return. 

In addition, real estate developers and investors need a sense of certainty and depend on the fact that the goals and doctrines found in the General Plans, Specific Plans, Community Plans, Master Plans, Special Assessment Districts of public agencies will come to pass. However, that consistency and follow-through on long term, public agency planning is critical not just for private investors, but also for every family that buys a home and every entrepreneur who opens a small business and to the community at large that makes decisions based on those plans. 

Municipal planning documents take years and thousands of man/woman hours to come into fruition and they embody layers of detailed decisions about every aspect of what makes a city a city, and those decisions are eventually encoded in local zoning ordinances. To cavalierly disregard the results of this process is madness. 

Mr. Wiener fails to or perhaps doesn’t care to understand any of this and wishes he could do away with all of it. He seems confident that he’s the smartest guy in the room. 

Fatal Flaw #2: If you build it near transit, will they come? 

When one considers public transportation, it would be naïve to believe that just having a ferry terminal or a train station somewhere will result in financially viable, privately funded development. Want to buy a mall? I know where you can get one cheap, near good public transportation. As noted, planning, zoning and outcomes are more complex. 

Similarly, to enforce strict definitions of what is or is not “transit rich” as the basis of legislation for the entire state, regardless of whether it’s an urban core or a rural neighborhood and devoid of context, available public-private investment, location, topography, construction type, design, unit sizes, amenities available or infrastructure required (all of which are the purpose of local planning) is completely nonsensical. 

Mr. Wiener’s legislation treats a suburban bus stop the same as an urban ferry terminal. At the same time, his legislation doesn’t even bother to address our more urgent need, which is for better public transportation. It only assumes transportation’s value, mathematically. This, however, is not how real planning works. 

Good planning involves taking everything into consideration – job growth, tax base, schools capacity, commercial demand, housing needs and types, infrastructure and public transportation options – and using that to create viable, long term, General Plans in coordination with public investment. 

That Wiener fails to acknowledge the relationship between sustainable growth, development and local planning would be bad enough. Worse still, he proposes to predicate zoning decisions on transit frequency.  

Fatal Flaw #3: Zoning based on bus route frequency 

As I’ve argued, the existence of transit by itself is not a rational basis to drive zoning and development decisions. Transit alone will accomplish little, out of context, and development that is only driven by that transit has less chance of thriving. But, tying zoning and development directly to bus frequency is even more irrational. 

Demand for bus service is dependent upon everything else that is outside of the control of that transit system. That is why, without predictable long term planning and the investment of public and private funds that go with it, Wiener’s version of “transit oriented development” near bus stops will not only fail, but will create zoning chaos. 

First off, there is a huge difference between fixed transit (trains, highways, ferry terminals, airports, etc.) versus surface street transit (buses, shuttles, taxis, etc.). One is essentially permanent and a long term investment, while the other requires little investment and can change at any moment. 

When it comes to zoning, fixed transit is far more certain than surface street transit, which is why major real estate development analysis tends to discount surface street transit (except for automobile and truck access), when evaluating opportunities. Still, it’s important to acknowledge that even trains and ferries change scheduling, depending on demand and ridership, so tying their frequency to zoning is still problematic. 

There is no doubt that buses and shuttles are an important form of public transportation. However, bus routes are constantly changing based on ridership, so what happens when bus frequency suddenly rises above or falls below SB 827’s frequency criteria? 

Will cities then be required to immediately up-zone or down-zone large swaths of land as bus intervals rise and fall? And, how will a city or a developer deal with zoning that is in constant flux and essentially unpredictable? 

What if a street is “transit rich” one year but not the next, and in the interim a developer has broken ground on a housing project? Does that neighborhood then end up with high density housing but no public transit, because the municipal agency decided to reduce the bus frequency or worse, move the bus route somewhere else, entirely? 

For all intents and purposes, Wiener’s legislation hands zoning control over to the Director of the MTA in San Francisco, or the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway & Transportation District bus service. 

Now add this to the mix. Surface street transportation is presently in the midst of its most disruptive time since the invention of the automobile. And, on demand shuttles, flexible route, app-guided, more efficient, cheaper, just-in-time services, and even autonomous technology-enabled options are about to transform the sector even more. 

In New York City, for example, the emergence of Uber and Lyft have made the once prized taxi medallion, which ten years ago was worth $100,000, practically worthless. In the coming decades, it’s possible that there may no longer be any fixed municipal bus routes at all. Unless public transportation is transformed, it may not be able to compete. 

What will the residents of Wiener’s high density housing projects that were built based on bus frequency, do then, when public transit systems cut back service to remain financially solvent? 

Will any of this happen with certainty? No one knows, but the trends we’re seeing would suggest caution and strengthening coordination with local decision making, not weakening it. 

Fatal Flaw #4: High density development without parking 

There certainly are arguments for development at varying densities at major fixed transit locations. The question though, in our fully developed communities, is where do we find the land for that development? Unfortunately, according to Wiener, it will be at the expense of parking. 

Believing something is so, because you say it so many times that you convince others that it’s so, only works for con men and politicians, though I guess that’s redundant. The rest of us have to live with the consequences. 

Driving and having parking when we get where we’re going, is essential for shopping, doctor’s appointments, school drop-offs, errands, and so much more. If we can't park at our destination, it's likely we'll go somewhere else. So, it is equally essential to all the merchants and service providers we are visiting, because without somewhere to park our cars we couldn’t get to them to buy their goods and services. 

We no longer live in a world where getting to everything we and our families need is walkable. In fact, since the succession of disruptions caused by big box retail and online sales and resultant concentration of commercial, medical and retail development, almost nothing is walkable anymore. It’s only in an urban core with a lot of public transportation (e.g., New York City) that one can get to most things without a car. And, even in many of those place, in spite of increases in investment in public transportation (Los Angeles, Portland), ridership of public transportation is dropping as people are choosing to use other transportation services that save time and allow them to make multiple stops and carry heavier items, and according to some, because transit investment itself displaces those who use it most. 

All this considered, parking remains the life blood of local businesses and particularly parking no more than a couple blocks from a store. This is is even more the case for small, mom and pop businesses and all local service providers, who do not have big advertising budgets. 

When the Miller Avenue Streetscape in Mill Valley was redeveloped, many small, local-serving businesses barely hung on, because people just wouldn’t put up with anything that makes them walk too far or takes too much time, even though new temporary parking was arranged several blocks away. They simply went elsewhere. 

This logical tendency of people to optimize their time and convenience means that commercial development (offices, restaurants, retail shops and service businesses) cannot survive without parking. 

Wiener’s legislation rejects this reality, entirely. 

But, ask yourself this. How can SB 827 supporters suggest that agencies such as BART, eliminate their parking lots in order to build housing near transit? What happens to all the people who used to drive to the BART station to go to San Francisco or elsewhere? They’ll be left with no alternative but to drive to San Francisco and try to park there. 

And, let’s please start being realistic: people over forty, who are in their prime working and earning years, will not generally ride their bikes 15 miles back and forth to work every day, particularly if their day consists of multiple meetings out of the office. It's just nonsense. 

Similarly, if the development that replaces a parking lot is mixed-use, where will customers patronizing the retail stores park? Only small convenience outlets can survive if frequented only by BART passengers. 

Fatal Flaw #5: Is pollution from cars the impact we have to plan for in the future? 

Government and politicians move so glacially that they always tend to be fighting the last war. The current environmental issues surrounding the transit oriented development debate are like that. 

The TOD argument of last resort is that getting people out of cars is our top priority, because of the environmental impacts. Historically, that was true (this policy came out of the 1970's when air pollution choked every major U.S. city), but alternative fuel, automotive technology is being adopted rapidly, as is the legislation to mandate it. In fact, a number of countries around the world have already set dates by when the internal combustion engine will be outlawed, and California may soon follow suit. 

As I've argued over the past ten years "personal transportation vehicles" -- be they cars, trucks, motorcycles or new hybrid forms -- are here to stay. They are analogous with freedom and choice can adapt to every conceivable need (business meetings to vacations). And, with advancements in technology and new legislation, housing, automobiles and greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly decoupling. 

Looking out into the future, which is what we're supposed to be planning for, the entire "TOD lowers GHG auto emissions argument falls apart. But, there are also financial consequences to consider. 

Large-scale development requires enormous amounts of capital, both public and private. We should always ask if that investment is the best way to achieve our goals. Even if one were to agree that we should get all older, polluting vehicles off the road right now, to reduce emissions (something I advocate), is high density development the quickest and least expensive way to do that? 

In 2010, some of us did a quick financial analysis of a 30 unit, high density housing project that was proposed in Mill Valley. That analysis showed that buying zero emissions, hybrid electric cars for all the future residents of that project would cost the taxpayers only about 25% of the value of the public development concessions needed to approve the apartments. 

I'm not suggesting that this means we shouldn't build any housing, but it shows that there are more immediate and direct ways to address greenhouse gas emissions. How about just offering a 50% of cost trade in credit voucher to anyone who will replace their low mileage, high emissions vehicle with a new alternative fuel hybrid? We could transform the public fleet within years not decades. 

Fatal Flaw #6: Displacement is not just about residents and housing 

I’ve often said that all things being equal there can be no affordable housing without subsidy. In Wiener’s version of this, his legislation’s massive property rights give-away is that subsidy, which in his telling of it will magically result in for profit developers building so much housing that it will eventually become more affordable. 

Aside from the fact that there is no evidence that increasing development and giving away development rights will decrease housing costs -- in fact, quite the opposite, because added development rights increase property values -- the falsehoods in this argument are too many to tackle here. So, I’ll confine my comments to those concerning the impacts on communities that will become designated as “transit rich,” under SB 827 (for a detailed discussion about realistic ways to create affordable housing click here). 

In short, if Wiener’s vision is allowed to be realized, the majority of the San Francisco Bay Area’s long-standing communities will be decimated. 

Gentrification and displacement in communities resulting from new, high density development tied to transit frequency, is not just about the plight of the poor and other disadvantaged populations -- though they are hit the hardest by it. Displacement within impacted communities will be equally destructive to local-serving businesses. 

“Communities” are ecosystems comprised of a wide variety of participants engaged in intricately inter-dependent activities. In addition to residents, local-serving businesses include tire stores, auto repair shops, hardware stores, stationary stores, hair and nail salons, florists, tattoo parlors, yoga studios, mom and pop restaurants, light manufacturing, service providers like plumbers, cabinet makers, electricians, artisans and artists, writers, accountants, lawyers, architects, contractors, local nonprofits, and personal and medical care providers of every imaginable kind. 

Most of these are small businesses. Many of them only remain viable, because their rents in older buildings are still reasonable. 

To suddenly up-zone and transform property values to attract high density, mostly luxury housing and large-scaled commercial development, and to believe that rents will not rise and that existing communities will remain intact is just fanciful. With legislation like SB 827 we are looking at wholesale displacement of communities and their unique cultures. 

Shiny new buildings and rising rents in close proximity, will inevitably drive out and replace struggling, local enterprises with coffee bars, trendy restaurants, boutiques, wine shops and art galleries. 

And, in all this, we haven’t even talked about the impacts on the environment from this uncontrolled development, using the same bricks and sticks construction methods we’ve used for 60 years. It is amazing to me that Wiener and his fellow legislators are so willing to throw environmental protection under the bus to benefit multi-billion dollar (soon to be trillion dollar) corporations. 

There was a time California was the leader in this. Now our politicians just carry water for major donors who will benefit from uncontrolled development. 

In any case, if you identify with any of the local services, professions or businesses I’ve listed above, and you live within the ½ mile or ¼ mile of a “transit rich” area, as prescribed by SB 827, I suggest you either start fighting back or start packing. 

CVP is the parent company of the Marin Post, where this article originally appeared. 

According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) air pollution causes about 200,000 premature deaths each year in the United States. The researchers calculated that those who died lost on the average ten years of their lives. Emissions from road transportation are the most significant factor. Particularly problematic is the emission of the poisonous gas, nitrogen oxide, which causes smog, acid rain, and ground level ozone, all of which jeopardize our health. 

As a result of this revelation the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued regulations to the automobile industry to appreciably reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. But the new standard increases the cost for the manufacturers, which the executives of Volkswagen decided to avoid. It installed in the United States about 590,000 devices in the engines which yielded a false reading that complied with the new legal emission limits. Moreover, the company acknowledged that it also installed these gadgets worldwide in 11 million cars. Without these emission cheat devices, the actual reading on the road was forty times greater! Moreover, the Volkswagen executives and staff even calculated the costs of fines if the ruse was discovered. According to their financial calculations, the company would still be ahead. 

Particularly troublesome has been the role of the federal government. To check whether the automobile companies were meeting various legal requirements, the EPA performed stationary tests rather than tests on the road. Stationary tests yield a much lower reading of pollution levels than on the road tests. Also, the stationary readings can be easily manipulated. In fact, one of the agency's staff members developed an on the road testing device, which was initially used by the EPA. But in 2001 the agency stopped using it. According to former engineers for the EPA the ruse would have detected Volkswagen's cheating many years earlier than it did. 

Moreover, the EPA closed its Virginia Testing Laboratory, where the testing device was fully developed. Volkswagen had cheated on the tests for eight years. Those who were disappointed thought that the agency was too passive. On the contrary, the EPA was active in attempting to avoid an investigation of Volkswagen's cheating. The testing in Virginia would have detected the cheating immediately. 

President Obama was accused on the US Senate floor by a Democrat of ignoring the issue, and failing to press the regulatory agencies to take action. The senator claimed that he was doing too little and too late. President Bush, who succeeded Obama, was just as remiss. 

The scheme was eventually discovered, but not by the establishment. Rather it was by a little lab connected to West Virginia University. A nonprofit independent science organization, The International Council on Clean Transportation, gave the researchers $70,000 to do a standard emission tests on diesel cars in the U.S. The researchers confirmed that the actual pollution was appreciably higher than what the manipulated engines showed. Once the word got around, the establishment could not ignore the findings. Soon after, Volkswagen's CEO resigned. 

Clearly, the executives involved in the cover-up were guilty of a criminal act. Two lower ranking executives who were in the United States received prison sentences.-- one of them for a bit more than three years and the other for seven. According to the prosecutor, the seven year sentence could have been instead for 169 years. But the prosecutor and the judge claimed that since the defendant pleaded guilty, seven years was the maximum sentence he could receive. What nonsense! The evidence was irrefutable that he participated in the illegal scheme. His confession added nothing that was not already known and proven. 

Since the Volkswagen executives are based in Germany, they could only be tried in the United States if they were extradited. Despite the extradition treaty between the United States and Germany, no high level public official requested extradition. And Germany had no intentions of extraditing the executives. Nor did the German courts sentence any Volkswagen executives to prison. Clearly, both governments failed to take appropriate action for Volkswagen's crimes. 

The Volkswagen scandal is one illustration of the soft treatment that corporate executives who engage in illegal activities enjoy. It is not only that the complicity of government is highly immoral. That complicity communicates a message to big business executives that they have nothing to worry about. Instead, the corporations are required to pay fines. As corporate executives know, a fine is the euphemistic term for the cost of doing business as usual. 

Justice has certainly taken a back seat. When we consider how badly the Volkswagen corporation could have suffered, the company has performed well despite the damage to its reputation. Initially, sales dropped both in Germany and the United States, and sales were sluggish in Western Europe. But the aggregate sales last year increased by over 4 percent thanks to sales in South America, Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia. Also, last year China purchased more than 3 million Volkswagen cars, which was a 6 percent increase over the previous year. Just why did so many countries purchase Volkswagen automobiles despite the global publicity of its illegal and dangerous conduct is an in interesting question. Apparently, the fact that the problem was resolved outweighed the concerns of Volkswagen's cheating. 

The good news is that Volkswagen and other automobile manufacturers are unlikely to engage again in a similar crime. The risks are too high. Also, had Volkswagen been forced to cut back its production, lots of workers would have lost their jobs. Volkswagen employs about 625,000 workers worldwide, which feeds well over a million people. The corporation is among the largest on earth. With regard to its workforce, Volkswagen was concerned about the risk of having caused a serious morale problem. So the company has been consulting with its employees on a regular basis. The result has been an improvement in employer-employee relations.  

About the future, many Volkswagen customers and some members of the public as well will keep their eyes and ears open to assure that Volkswagen will never, never again engage in such scandalous behavior.

I had a chance to talk to a teenager in my state regarding recent mass shooting in school resulting in death of young students. The student said that most of the students feel that inequality; racism and oppression exist everywhere, even in the educational setting. The students feel discriminated and they are bullied because of their culture, race and country of origin. They don’t get a chance to vent their anger and suppressed emotions. They feel their peers, school personnel, neighbors and others who belong to affluent families, do not treat them with respect. They are depressed and are not supported in their academic achievement. Nor do they get to pursue their interests due to financial constraints. 

This young student was putting himself in the derailed mind of the shooter and was indicating where we need real reform to bridge the gap and stop inequality, oppression and racism in all our dealings. The student felt that communities all across America feel that racism and inequality is growing more now than before, and so is the crazy behavior of dissatisfied student mobs. 

I don’t feel that arming teachers or sending security guards to school will stop racism or oppression. Their mental condition or present behavior needs a space where they are allowed to express their feelings without any fear of punishment. 

The Education Department and all community members must listen to their heartfelt disrespectful racist remarks and bullying words and help with their social and emotional needs. 

We can’t postpone this urgent need of the young students any more. Let us all help the student community to feel respected and valued.

One of the foremost ways that many persons with psychiatric disabilities are restricted is through the absence of money. I could not conclude that it is a conspiracy, since I do not have direct evidence of that. However, it may as well be a conspiracy--it seems next to impossible for mentally ill people to become financially secure. 

At a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness--I am not affiliated) meeting, as I vaguely recall, a speaker said that the mental health system is designed to keep too much cash out of our hands, so that we can't buy drugs or create other nuisances. 

Money isn't good or bad. It is necessary for survival, and if you have a lot of it, you have more choices and more comfort. Lack of money forces numerous mentally ill people to live in institutional housing, and forces some to try to survive without housing. Economic deprivation is essentially a form of oppression. 

The money obtained from SSI and/or SSDI usually isn't enough for us to pay rent in a conventional living situation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Renting a room on SSI would leave about a hundred dollars left for food, transportation and other needs. This obviously falls short of a practicable existence. 

Some disabled people have been able to obtain a HUD Section 8 certificate. However, property owners willing accept Section 8 renters are scarce. The waiting list for Section 8, according to a receptionist at Independent Living Resources in Concord, California, is three to five years. According to the same person, rooms for rent start at $600. Based on my own research, this information seems accurate. 

Persons with mental illness often have our weekdays loaded down with appointments due to mental and physical complications of the illness and the medication. The only option for some of us is to get a job that is only on weekends, so that we have the weekdays available to go to all of the appointments. 

Trying to perform at a job can be very difficult and sometimes out of reach. Some of us live with severe anxiety and/or agoraphobia. Others simply can not keep pace with the expected level of performance. The cause of this is partly the impact on energy level of the psychiatric meds. 

When mentally ill people apply for a job, it is tempting for us to remain closeted about the illness. Most employers, if they have a choice of hiring a person with a disability versus someone without, are going to pick the person who does not have any type of disability, physical or mental. This is simply how it is done. Employers are not necessarily to be faulted for this--they're trying to make their company work, and the perceived baggage of a disability could seem like a big headache to them. 

Remaining closeted can be difficult. Employers and coworkers may notice that we could seem "drugged." Alternatively, they may notice that we are more nervous compared to a typical employee. It might work to be hired, and prove that you can do the job; at that point, if the employer has questions, the timing might be good to disclose the disability. 

If you do not have visible side effects, and/or if you do not need any accommodation, you might choose never to disclose the disability in your job. 

Most people with mental illness have issues with employment. And, professional level employment might be our only way of getting out of the hole of economic deprivation. 

The Social Security system is designed to encourage work attempts, but not necessarily to encourage long-term success at them. Since we could potentially earn about a thousand dollars a month without losing SSDI, it could seem that there is a big incentive to work part-time. 

However, any work attempt that has significant pay can adversely affect our cash, housing, and medical benefits. If you earn a thousand a month, it could mean that you lose $300 in your housing subsidy. It could mean invoking a copay with your Medicaid, or even that the Medicaid would be stopped. 

Employment while disabled also entails that you furnish pay stubs to Social Security on a regular basis. There may be other red tape to deal with. Such as, Social Security periodically does a CDR, or Continuing Disability Review. 

If a work attempt at some point terminates, you have to scramble to get your benefits reinstated. There could be a delay in benefits being reinstated to the previous level, because the wheels of government are selectively slow. You could end up going several months at a reduced or nonexistent level of benefits. 

If you are not prepared to obtain a full time position with medical benefits, you might consider "flying under the radar," which to me means that your position only nets about a hundred or two hundred a month, so that you will not be penalized or put under more pressure. 

The mental health treatment system seems designed to insulate the rest of society from us, as opposed to helping us to "reintegrate." If we want to reintegrate, the challenges are numerous, it requires a lot of determination, and the psychiatric illness must be consistently kept at bay. 

Then, why should we even consider this?--you might ask. Work activity entails a lot more effort and exertion, more demands on us, more anxiety, and often less comfort. I could only say that for some of us, it could be worth doing, because we want our lives to be something more. 

; On Tuesday March 27, the City Council will vote on the R-1A zoning revisions that were recommended by the Planning Commission in November after more than a year of meetings on the issue, including three public hearings. The R-1A comprises about fifty blocks between Sixth Street and San Pablo Avenue plus another ten blocks in the Westbrae around the intersection of Gilman and Peralta. 

The Commission voted 5-4 for the staff proposal on height and setbacks for a rear yard house. The majority, including Jeff Vincent, Christine Schildt, Benjamin Beach, Robb Kapla, and Ben Fong, voted for a two-story 22' height limit, while the minority of Gene Poschman, Rob Wrenn, Prakash Pinto, and Steve Martinot favored a one-story 14' height limit that could rise to 22' with an administrative use permit. Since an AUP is the lowest level of review and easy to get, the Planning Commission vote can be viewed as practically unanimous, as all the other standards were discussed and approved without much controversy. 

But at the end of the process, a developer faction led by a self-interested real estate agent entered the fray to advocate for a return to the old standards, and they have taken over the Berkeley Considers/Peak Democracy platform to lobby against the revisions. It’s time for the broader community to weigh in with a resounding YES vote, despite the reservations that many of us hold about building two-story houses in backyards. Skeptics have another option called OTHER, and a place on the ballot that allows for comment, but whichever, do not vote no or your vote will be co-opted by the developers and YIMBYs who hate zoning restrictions. They want a building free-for-all. 

Time to Compromise 

Our pro-ADU and pro-duplex neighborhood caucus, Friends of R-1A, collected 235 signatures on a Move-on petition known as “Keep West Berkeley Affordable” that advocated for a one-story rear house and a two-story front house, but we were unsuccessful in achieving that goal at the Planning Commission. However, pressure from the community helped to reduce the staff recommended height to 22 feet on the average, measured between the roof ridge and the eaves. The petition is still open for signatures, but it’s more relevant now to vote on Berkeley Considers. Just go to the City of Berkeley website and follow the links on the first page. 

Most of the other revisions recommended by the Planning Commission were agreed upon early in the process. Staff, ably led by senior planner Elizabeth Greene, proposed a 6-foot side setback for the rear house instead of the 45° “daylight plane” advocated by Loni Gray and other members of the public, including myself. The daylight plane is a building separation used in the zoning code of many California cities including Albany and El Cerrito. The staff alternative is a reasonable buffer between a rear house and neighboring properties to reduce detriments of shadow, noise, and loss of privacy. 

The rear yard setback between 12 and 20 feet provides a small backyard for the rear house where children can play or the family have an outdoor picnic table and lawn chairs. If the eager attendees at the Ecology Center seed swap on Friday night were an indication, newly arrived young urbanites would appreciate space for a garden. The setback is variable to allow for design flexibility that would successfully relate new structures to the different buildings and vegetation that surround each lot. 

In the past, that rear yard setback could be reduced to zero west of San Pablo Avenue but not in the Westbrae, the newer portion of the R-1A. As a result, overbuilding has degraded many properties in West Berkeley, once considered a less desirable section of town where “those people” lived. Both the Commission and staff felt it was time to end this discrimination and treat both sections alike. The proposed uniform setbacks are both flexible and fair, hopefully ending the treatment of West Berkeley as a dumping ground for insensitive construction. 

The separation between the two buildings on the lot was discussed on and off with variations from 8 to 12 feet. At the final vote, the Commission settled on separations consistent with the R-2: 8 feet for one story and 12 feet for the second. 

Unfortunately, the Commission failed to address the heart of the Council and ZAB referrals that brought the matter to them in the first place: the relative scale of the two houses, how the size and proportion of each relates to the other, despite suggestions from the Council on how that could be achieved. Scale could have been regulated through floor area ratio (FAR) but Chair Gene Poschman resisted even discussing this commonly used mechanism and remained wedded to the single story option. One local wag called this “a glorified ADU.” 

The ADU Option 

The R-1A standards passed by the Planning Commission do not replace or erase the opportunity to develop an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) behind a single family home, and from the comments on Berkeley Considers, many people are confused about the ADU option. One of the reasons is that our local ADU ordinance has been in limbo after the state changed the rules in 2016, and the local task force has been developing its recommendations for revision at the same time that the R-1A standards were being discussed. No wonder the public is confused. 

Let’s be clear. The main difference between a second house in the R-1A or the R-2 and R-2A, for that matter, is that a second house can be sold separately, and an ADU cannot through deed restriction. An ADU is approved “over the counter” by the planning staff, called “ministerial approval”, which does not require a public hearing. Also a second house requires off-street parking while an ADU does not. The ADU has a maximum floor area, while a second house does not. The ADU is regulated by a separate ordinance that applies to many zones, while the standards for the second house are found in the rules for the specific zone. Although Berkeley is famous for quaint backyard cottages like the one inhabited by the poet Allen Ginsberg, the ADU standards are relatively new, instigated by state law that requires local jurisdictions to adopt an accessory dwelling unit ordinance. The key word that differentiates the ADU from a second house is that it is “accessory” to the main building. 

In its January meeting, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended new standards for the ADUs that include increasing the height from 14 to 18 feet and the maximum floor area from 750 to 850 square feet, enough for two bedrooms. In other words, the second house and the ADU are beginning to approximate each other in size, reflecting the commitment of the current City Council to zoning equity. The wealthier predominantly R-1 districts have traditionally enjoyed more open space for their homes, while happily imposing density on the flatlands hoi polloi. In 1991, five years after the advent of district elections, the City Council imposed uniform height limits of 35 feet that allowed three story houses in flatland backyards without a single public hearing. For that story, please read my paper on the history of the R-1A zoning. 

Friends of R-1A have been fighting the developer invasion of working class neighborhoods by advocating for the accessory dwelling unit and the “missing middle” duplex as better choices for two units on a lot. The allowance for two main houses incentivizes demolition and accelerates gentrification and displacement of lower income residents by replacing affordable old construction with new condo houses. Thankfully, some of our concerns are addressed in the revised ADU recommendations. We salute the ADU Task Force and the Planning Commission for advancing more equitable standards. 

Cynthia’s Shenanigans 

There are folks who think it’s just fine and dandy to build a three story house in a backyard, and one of them appeared at the Planning Commission hearings last year, Cynthia Tate Eliot, a realtor with Sotheby’s with a specialty in West Berkeley. In early September she sent out an unsigned letter to R-1A property owners stating that proposed changes “will restrict our ability to add additional units on our property and possibly even eliminate in-law units that accommodate familial and retirement needs, ultimately lowering our property values” and signed it “residents of R-1A Against Downzoning.” The telephone number was traceable to her. The Berkeley Oakland Board of Realtors Code of Ethics Article 12 requires that “their status as real estate professionals [be] readily apparent in their advertising, marketing, and other representations…” 

Having thus frightened some owners with these phony doom and gloom alerts, she then put together a list of concerned ‘West Berkeley Neighbors for Family Housing” and came out of the shadows in October to attack Friends of R-1A and advocate for “zoning standards similar to current standards.” In this second manifesto she failed to mention her application for a three-story rear house on Eighth Street that is coming to the ZAB for an initial hearing this Thursday March 22, a project that is opposed by the neighbors, but not surprising, recommended for approval by the staff. 

The downzoning accusation has caught on, creating even more confusion because downzoning is not defined by height. Traditionally the term applies to actually changing the zoning to allow fewer units. The current West Berkeley R-1A was downzoned from R-4 and R-2 in 1967 and Westbrae from R-2 in 1972. Nobody called the jacking-up of heights in 1991 “upzoning” but then again, nobody knew. 

The current short supply of housing means that bedrooms are being rented for $1500 and more, and young people are clamoring for bigger houses to share. It’s no wonder that our poster child for overbuilding, 2209-2211 Ninth Street, drew the ire of its inhabitants, who protested that their shared houses are affordable. But let’s not justify building a type of mini-dorm by calling it “family housing.” 

Preservation Matters 

There are many reasons to preserve the existing housing stock and to make rear yard houses more compatible in scale and design with their neighborhoods. Old construction is generally more affordable, as advocates for new buildings are wont to remind us; the market rate units of today will become the affordable units of tomorrow. Old houses create charm, value, and comfort, set within natural open spaces that provide healthy outdoor living for families and the growth of carbon absorbing and oxygen exuding vegetation. Permeable ground absorbs rainwater and reduces run-off, helping to prevent flooding in low-lying West Berkeley and Aquatic Park. Preserving our traditional neighborhoods complements the development of the avenues that can accommodate denser modern architecture. Great cities should have opportunities for both living environments. 

Toni Mester is a resident of West Berkeley. 

The 2018 midterm elections will occur on November 6th. Democrats need to win 23 seats to take back the house and 2 seats to gain control of the Senate. This week we look at 12 midwestern states where there are a handful of opportunities for the Democrats. 

A February 4th ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests why Democrats look forward to November 6th: "Democrats lead by 14 points among likely voters... But that reflects a vast 38-point Democratic lead in districts already held by Democratic members of Congress. In districts the [GOP] holds, by contrast, it’s a tight 45-51 percent Democratic vs. Republican contest." Democrats also lead in enthusiasm: "They lead very widely among those who say it’s especially important to vote this year." 

A "blue wave" is predicted because experts believe that Democrats are more motivated to vote than are Republicans. Because most Democrats deplore Trump and his Republican Party, Dems are eager to curtail Trump by taking back the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. 

Intensity of feeling should play a critical role in the November 6th elections. In the latest Quinnipiac Poll 57 percent of respondents disapproved of the job Trump is doing (38 percent approved). 49 percent of the poll respondents disapproved strongly (29 percent approved strongly). 

Notably, Trump is losing the support of women. The most recent Washington Post poll indicates that 65 percent of women disapprove of the job Trump is doing. 

What is clear from the polls is that there is a big difference in how Trump is viewed in Red and Blue congressional districts. Red district voters support Trump: they feel he is doing a good job, ignore his lies, and believe the investigation into possible collusion with Russia is a hoax. Blue district voters have radically different feelings. This suggests that the 2018 outcome is going to be decided by swing districts. The balance of this article examines the swing districts in the Midwest. 

Illinois: The Republican Governor, Bruce Rauner, is up for reelection; the Cook Report rates this as a Toss Up. (The Democratic candidate has yet to be selected.) There are 4 House races of interest:
IL 6 Roskam (R) Toss up
IL 12 Bost (R) Leans Republican
IL 13 Davis (R) Likely Republican
IL 14 Hultgren (R) Likely Republican 

Indiana: One of the Republican primary targets is Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly; the Cook Report rates this race as a toss up. 

Iowa: There are 3 House races of interest:
IA 1 Blum (R) toss up
IA 2 Loebsack (D) likely Democrat
IA 3 Young (R) leans Republican 

Kansas: The Republican Governor, Colyer, is running for reelection; Cook rates this as likely Republican. There are 2 House races of interest:
KS 2 open (R) Leans Republican
KS 3 Yoder (R) leans Republican 

Kentucky: There is 1 House seat of interest; KY 6 Barr (R) is rated as lean Republican. 

Michigan: The Republican Governor, Snyder, is term-limited out; Cook rates this race as a toss up. Democratic Senator Stabenow is up for reelection; Cook rates this as likely Democrat. There are 2 house seats of interest:
MI 8 Bishop (R) lean Republican
MI 11 Open (R) toss up 

Minnesota: The Democratic Governor, Dayton, is term-limited out; Cook rates this race as a toss up. A recently appointed Democratic Senator, Tina Smith, is up for reelection; Cook rates this as a toss up. There are 4 House races of interest:
MN 1 open (D) toss up
MN 2 open (R) toss up
MN 3 Paulsen (R) lean Republican
MN 8 Nolan (D) toss up 

Missouri: Democratic Senator Clair McCaskill is high on the Republican's hit list; Cook rates this contest as a toss up. 

North Dakota: Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is also a big Republican target; Cook rates this as lean Democrat. 

Ohio: The Governor's seat is open as Republican John Kasich is term-limited-out; Cook rates this a lean Republican. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is up for reelection; Cook rates this as lean Democrat. 

Wisconsin: Conservative Republican Governor Scott Walker is up for reelection; Cook rates this as lean Republican. Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection; Cook rates this as likely Democrat. There is 1 House race of interest: WI 6 Grothman (R); likely Republican. 

In summary, in the midwest Democrats have a good shot at picking up at least 2 governorships and 3 house seats.