1 From: Brian Donahue <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 4, 2022 12:24 AM
To: John J. Bauters <[email protected]>; Ally Medina <[email protected]>; Scott Donahue <[email protected]>; Courtney Welch <[email protected]>; Dianne Martinez <[email protected]>; Vote Priforce <[email protected]>; Kalimah Priforce <[email protected]>; David Mourra <[email protected]>; Valerie Bernardo <[email protected]>; Chadrick Smalley <[email protected]>; Charles S. Bryant <[email protected]>; Adam Politzer <[email protected]>; Navarre Oaks <[email protected]>; Miroo Desai <[email protected]> Cc: April Richardson <[email protected]>
Subject: [External] To the Council: Housing Element in the Breech To the City Council and the City Staff -
On Monday, Dec 12th, the Council will vote on our next Housing Element and I have the following questions, cautions and admonitions I would like addressed. I request this letter be entered into the record as a submission to the City’s request for comments to the Housing Element draft revision. 1) Why are you allowing the two outgoing Council members the chance to vote on this eight year document at the expense of our two new Council members? The people of Emeryville have selected the two new members and they should have a chance to weigh in on policy that they will be around to answer for. 2) Goal H 5 which states “Address constraints: Reduce or remove governmental and nongovernmental constraints to the development, improvement and maintenance of housing…” should be changed to: “Address constraints: Increase governmental constraints to the development, improvement and maintenance of housing”. The problem with Emeryville is not that capitalism is too constrained, rather that it is not constrained enough to make the town the people have said they want (as delineated by our General Plan). The people need to leverage our real estate desirability against developer’s desires for extracting profits out of our town by further constraining them, like for instance in the delivery of more parks. The ‘hands off developers’ approach brought to the fore by former Council member Nora Davis and continued on with this Council has failed to bring to us the things we said we want. To now further reduce government regulation will even less likely get us the things we want. I understand that neoliberalism is very popular in the Democratic Party (and the YIMBY organization that some Council members take money from) and that the five Council members are Democrats but we still have a reasonable expectation to be able to have the city we want.
Late Correspondence
December 20 City Council Special Meeting
2 3) The ‘Pro Housing Designation’ uses language directly lifted from the developer backed YIMBY lobbying organization and puts to words in our policy, their preferred legislative language, thereby removing our ability to make our town as we see fit. Pro Housing does an end run around ABAG’s RHNA and its scientifically generated jobs/housing balance goals. We know that Emeryville always exceeds the RHNA market rate housing goals every implementation period for decades running. We should use science based rationality to answer the question ‘how much market rate housing do we need?’, not Ronald Reagan tropes. Pro Housing replaces science with YIMBY driven ideological profit desires pushing public policy and has no business in our City Hall.
4) Two goals from the current and soon-to-be replaced Housing Element failed, those being build more family friendly housing and build more ownership housing vs rental housing. The family friendly housing failure is shown by the US Census Bureau’s ‘persons per housing unit’ measurement as well as the Census ownership vs rental housing numbers. This information needs to be ensconced in the new Housing Element as well as an analysis as to what went wrong so we can do better in the future with our housing goals. 5) Why did it take weeks for the City to finally answer my questions I asked about this process? I could not get any staff member to answer my calls or emails about this until late Friday afternoon. Weeks ago, the City asked me (and everyone else) for comments and questions about the new Housing Element and when I called your bluff and actually did that, my (tough and embarrassing) questions were ignored until I threatened to go public.