Cognitive Dissonance of Bringing Communities Together Over Affordable Housing

In recent months the housing crisis in Berkeley has come into sharper focus across the community as people began to realize the massive building developments that the city approved would mainly benefit the wealthy tech workers sloshing over from San Francisco. Slowly it's dawning on people that the developers get "density bonuses" from the State, are enjoying limitless demand at the top of the market, and haven't been accountable for providing "significant community benefits" in return for those windfall profits. Meanwhile, the people that are being rendered homeless by all the property-flipping and the almost non-existing social services system are starting to stack up like logs out on the streets, and the wildly enriched big developers are using every tactic from private police to great walls o' astroturf to political lobbyists to sweep the "human trash" that was created by their activities under their rugs.

The great wave of human tragedy has at last mounted so high that many segments of Berkeley's community agree we must do "something" and are actively organizing to "fight back". Since I've been particularly interested in how the housing crisis has affected the disabled community for several years, I was glad to see the great moment of consciousness raising finally come.

But is it possible for Berkeley to find community over affordable housing?

Traditionally, there has been a fundamental schism between landlords and tenants in Berkeley. The rent board periodically swings between landlord and tenant interests. There are points to be made on both sides. Property in Berkeley is very expensive and property taxes are ridiculously high. The middle class particularly regards property as it's great life investment: they may need to pull money out of their property in times of sickness or retirement. They dream of buying low and selling high. They also have valid complaints about being unable to get rid of nightmare tenants or they see others getting away with raising their rents to market rate. There are also objections to ugly developments ruining community character and amenities, lowering property values, getting in the way of solar energy use, etc.

Tenants, meanwhile, live in a city where housing isn't even affordable to people making a regular "middle class" salary. Most can't even hope to buy property here: foreign consortiums are coming in and paying all cash to speculate on "desirable" properties in Berkeley. Where are people on fixed incomes supposed to go? People on SSI get under $900/month and aren't eligible for food stamps. Berkeley's artist community means that the retired elderly may have gotten irregular formal income all their lives and may be getting very low social security checks. General Assistance welfare is only $336/month. I'm not sure how much TANF is. People who are currently on benefits may be in the process of skills re-training: with proper support they will be future taxpayers. With the constant Torture of the State, they will add to the numbers of homeless on the street and possibly to the criminal element.

There is also an established practice (which I detail further below) of professors at the university paying for their houses by renting to students. This may be the general practice of paying for a house in Berkeley - which amounts to exploiting people who are worse off than you economically to not only get a house, but a hot investment. My landlord paid $250k for his house: he parceled it into 3 rental units to pay the mortgage and provide income - and now he can sell for over a million dollars. Can you blame tenants for being bitter when they see the people who were lucky enough to get their property for free game rent control and otherwise make war on the poorer segments of Berkeley?

Right now these people in the middle-to-low income bracket (which includes people who work for nonprofits, caring professions, and most basic services) are being subjected to remarkable instability as landlords cash in and sell out to speculators and developers. There is nothing new about there complaints: its been hard for poor people to find housing in Berkeley for years. People have started to suggest that it's not unrelated that the black population has dropped from 30% to 7%.

Now that high rise developments are threatening to block the "iconic view" to the bay both property owners and tenants have found common cause in land use issues, and all profess to understand that the lack of affordable housing is a major component of this issue.

But do property owners appreciate the need for affordable housing as a problem they want to solve? Or only in the abstract? Is this cause only common long enough to get the signatures of tenants on petitions led by property owners?

I've been given several causes for cognitive dissonance during several meetings I've attended over the last few weeks. First, it seems like remarks/problems from tenants are cut off with impatience (though blatantly "greedy landlord" pov also gets cut short). When I went to a meeting that was broken down into subgroups, our subgroup was made primarily of tenants: but since the leader was a property-owner, the only ideas he presented on our behalf to the whole meeting were those that pertained to property owners.

At a teach-in today we were exhorted to get active in grassroots door-knocking volunteering for our political representatives. However, my overwhelming experience of political representatives in Berkeley - including the two that attended that meeting - is that they don't even bother to respond to respond to me. I'm a poor tenant: I don't matter to them. My problems have NEVER ONCE been addressed by a Berkeley political "representative". Here I am showing up to back their policies and help with their fights: I just wonder exactly what I have to do to be worth their time, too.

Also, I saw the community "swarm" on a couple of people. The first person got booed down for knocking capitalism and relating affordable housing to communist/socialist societies. She showed up at another meeting with a written version of her opinion: I took one of her flyers. So: community tolerance doesn't extend to outright support of communism. There was another woman who opened with how she wanted the the mayor investigated for corruption: she tried to give some examples about walkways and sewage overflow, but these examples got interspersed with how people had threatened to call the police on her. Half the people in the room physically closed in to pile on her. I don't know this woman's history or if her charges merited any further examination. But one thing really bothered me about this. A few minutes earlier a City Council Member present had talked about how the Mayor had enabled a particular developer to pocket $5 million dollars. I had personally been secretly wondering whether the Mayor was getting anything out of that deal: I'm hoping some journalist investigates the Mayor's investments or whether the developer in question has nomination power for the UC Regents (a group the Mayor wants to join). In other words: the Council Member himself made the situation sound *corrupt*. But when this poor woman brought up corruption, she was surrounded and treated like she was crazy. I bet her question could have been headed off at the pass if one of the Council Members would have treated her with dignity and immediately answered her question instead of letting her ramble on.

Anyway, the vibe I'm getting is that there is still a very firm power hierarchy in Berkeley. Some voices still carry further than others. At community meetings some people get to speak multiple times while others don't get to speak at all. The local media has a specific "rolodex" they turn to. City commission members (who can be "fired" by City Council members) provide a layer of expertise, and I know from personal experience that they only have to adhere to rules of order and listen to community members if there are witnesses present. And then there are the "community organization" efforts mentioned above. At every one I've attended "property owners" had the upper hand, though they were talking *about* affordable housing. Property owners were controlling the discourse, and I'm sure they will be able to shut off the discourse once they've got what they've wanted.

I often advocate that homeless people and people on welfare need "unfiltered" ways to voice their concerns because too many people with interests seek to insert themselves into the conversation and speak "on behalf of those in need". Those in need are capable of speaking for themselves, thank you.

The same thing has to be said about community coalitions that form around affordable housing: there needs to be ways to allow the unfiltered voices of those who need the affordable housing to bubble up. The voices of big property developers, landlords, property owners, City Council Members, etc. are overwhelming loud - and, unfortunately, their interests often vary considerably from the people who need the affordable housing. Space needs to be actively made for the authentic voices: that is the only moral thing to do if you want to create a genuine community alliance and gather all those tenant votes/signatures.