Surrounded
Some gems from the condo conversion meeting last night:
Andre Spearman, city employee union director: "We need an income conversion program!"
Man from Tenants' Union: "This is the first proposal I've ever seen that intends to increase homelessness."
Helent Hutchinson: "The League of Women Voters believes we need to protect the rental housing we have."
Woman from Just Cause: "We need fair and equal housing for everyone."
Eddie Ytuarte, tenant and teachers' union activist: "Ignacio, Henry - why do you like evicting people?"
Anti-condo audience: "Yay Berkeley!"
Woman from Movement Strategy Center: "We will lose 1000 students a year!"
Sanjiv Handa: "Because people get only one or two minutes to speak, the council makes bad, bad policy!"
At the end of the comment period, Ignacio de la Fuente pointed out that many of those speaking against the condo conversion ordinance are homeowners.
In other news, a recent transplant to Berkeley (from Philly) tells the Daily Planet about volunteering for Aimee Allison. After pontificating about a Dellums victory she wasn't here for and a city she has barely visited, Beandrea Davis explains Pat's sweeping victory (echoing Allison spokesman Ben Wyskida) was because "more of Kernighan’s supporters voted and not enough of Allison’s supporters did." Yup, 923 more.
Speaking of recent transplants, EBASE labor activist (and Allison volunteer) Brooke Anderson, who spoke against condo conversion last night, writes on her blog about supporting Just Cause's sign and billboard campaign against "gentrification" and new people moving to Oakland. Brooke recently moved here from Illinois, but that doesn't stop her from condemning new Oaklanders. Zennie Abraham has a discussion about it on his blog.
Speaking of people who recently moved here, Mayor-Elect Ron Dellums was back in DC this week promoting a study his commission did about minorities. What fresh new ideas does he have, with which he has been too busy to meet with his task forces or Lew Wolff? Well, the media negatively stereotypes black men, he concludes, and the government needs to increase the minimum wage.
Speaking of pointing out the obvious, NovoMetro is launching their new online journalism experiment tonight! The party is at Swarm Gallery, 560 Second Street (at Clay).
posted by Oakland Native @ 1:00 PM
16 Comments:
The rent control freaks havent had a new idea since the 1970s. They only know rent control. And more rent control. They tie every housing initiative to rent control and oppose it heedless of it's value to others.
They pay cheap rent on their Lake Merritt apartments and view any homeowner, apartment owner, politician or layman, who wants to promote homeownership, as the enemy.
They have no respect for anyone who disagrees with them and they are quick to reort to insults. They have no shame in doing so in public forums
They have had a perverting effect on the housing market over the years and the only reason Oakland even has an impact zone for condo conversion is because that's where a lot of the rent control freaks live.
It's high time for housing policy in Oakland that does more than just protect a vocal clique of angry rent control dependents. And the rent control dependents should be more considerate of the housing needs of others.
Just because someone doesn't like this proposal does not mean they think everything is perfect. This proposal simply does not accomplish what we all want to happen: actual Oakland tenants becoming actual Oakland homeowners.
On the new Novometro site: too, too busy. And my eyes can't get passed my strong suspicion that it's actually a big advertisement. The old one was better.
Van, I strongly agree that rent control (new forms of which are banned by state law) is terribly unfair and inefficient. It's especially harmful to new (ie, young) residents and mobile residents (who also tend to be young and less economically secure). I also think that the "impact area" has more to with politics than sound housing policy. But that's inevitable. The council knows that the activists at the meeting represent nobody and cannot win elections.
JP, I do understand that some people have well-intentioned opposition to this proposal (such as my blogging partner V-Smoothe), just as you surely realize that this isn't being driven by greedy big-time developers and large property owners. Unfortunately, constructive comments against the conversion proposal were few and far between at the committee meeting. I did not quote any of the reasonable arguments against the measure, since that's not the point of this blog (the point, to be explicit, is that public comment is generally unproductive and quite unrepresentative, despite calls for "community input" from lefties and Sanjiv Handa). However, Jane Brunner and Larry Reid made clear that they heard some of the criticism and are looking to modify the measure to address concerns.
The measure is going to pass. There are at least four votes for it, and the sponsors are moving forward in a way that suggests they are confident of Mayor Brown's tie-breaking vote (which I doubt will be needed, since even unmodified it's likely to get more abstentions than nays). I am optimistic that a good compromise will pass with an overwhelming majority (perhaps 7-1). I think that Brunner knows what needs to be done to get her vote (and Quan's and Pat's for that matter) - lowering the cap further isn't the way to go, but some geographic specificity and a longer timeframe for conversion (180 days instead of 90, perhaps) are winners.
Hey, anybody else notice that Aimee Allison STILL hasn't conceded? As one of my District 2 friends said the other night, "this is one of the rare times when you get to see the character of a politician and their true colors if they were elected."
Indeed, a big disadvantage of some lefty opposition is the stupid attitutde that homeownership should not be a goal. That;s nonsense--it's the onyl way to get ahead.
At the same time, except for the one woman with two kids (who didn;t really seem to know waht was going on), the only support for the measure came from paid business lobbyists, real estate agents and mortgage brokers--all of whom have a personal financial stake in more home sales.
Not exactly down with the people, either.
Fair enough, JP. However, the first Planning Commission meeting on the subject featured a parade of middle-income tenants begging for the plan. I've been suprised to find, in my conversations with my tenant friends, that they either don't mind the proposal or they want to buy their apartment (especially the downtowners who prefer their historic buildings to new condos). Also, it appears that the community groups that aren't labor or tenant groups (such as the Unity Council) like it (EBALDC spoke against it, but they seemed to want changes and weren't against the idea).
This proposal is not about low-income tenants or low-income units; the 9% of our apartments that go condo over the next ten years will all be above the median rent. While newly-built condos in Oakland are far more affordable than most other Bay Area housing options, there's of course demand for homes another $100k cheaper. This measure would create a market for those, not a lottery like iZ (which basically targets the same middle-income households for assistance). So, who represents the middle class? Just Cause, or every councilmember from East Oakland?
Good letter in the BDP, JP. Not only did they bury it, but Paul Rockwell wrote another in-denial article revelling in sore loserdom. Meanwhile, the EBX blog speculates about a possible AA citywide run, which you persuasively dismissed on this blog some time ago.
AA citywide indeed. Like a recurring nightmare.
Maybe the council members and the press should talk to condo converters and neighbors of a converted apartment building to condos. The converters will tell you that the profit margins are slimmer than imagined and the headaches and economic risk are high. Most homeowners and tenants in the neighborhood will tell you how happy they are to see the converter improving the building and what a difference it is making in the neighborhood. As to the opponets, they are mostly tenant activists leaving in upscale Lake Merritt neighborhoods "the impact area" looking to perserve their cheap rent. Why buy the cow when the milk is cheap and you are not responsible for it?
In all honesty, I don;t think the Condo Conversion debate is about how to help middle income (or upper middle class, as we used to call them growing up), but whether this policy will have a negative impact on low income people. I don't think anyone can deny that, and I honestly believe the split is between those who think that's a problem and those who don't.
Just so you know, I'm not playing the Class Card here. I think there are convincing arguments around the thesis that perhaps Oakland needs fewer poor people. I tend to believe the best strategy is to delute concentrations or poverty by building new housing for folks with higher incomes, not to simply replace a poor person with a not-as-poor person.
That just cause billboard thing is a big bunch of crap. Nobody with any stake in the system wants to live in a lousy neighborhood.
I get pretty sick of jack asses running around preaching revolution for the poor, when they have round trip tickets back to the moving side walk of upper middle class fairy land.
I want to have someplace to buy socks & laundry soap, & fresh vegetables. Just cause thinks I need more OHA. They can stick it.
Just Cause is actually a bunch of middle class white kids who solicit the funding of foundation grants under the guise of representing housing interests of the poor.
Their whole schtick involves using the housing needs of people of color as political pawn in their class war aimed at building some sort of social movement.
It's very cynical to see these white kids who are gentrifying the neighborhoods they live in complaining about people gentrifying the neighborhood. The billboard merely adds to the cynisism.
The leader of Just Cause is a weasily chap by the name of Adam Gold.
Why doesn't Mr. Gold put his own face on the billboard and show to the public exactly who is really complaining about gentrification and who's really behind just cause.
Yeah, Gold should do that - Just Cause's website has very few pictures of their members who come to council meetings, and instead has group pics of random West Oaklanders. The woman they quote on their signs saying she's being forced out - who is she? How, exactly, is she being forced out by developers? I need to find out what they had to do with the opposition to Uptown and O29; anyone who opposes expanding Oakland's rental stock cannot claim to speak on behalf of renters. That's why Naomi Schiff (whose Heritage Alliance wants to sharply limit lakeside construction) and Helen Hutchinson (whose League of Women Voters should have nothing to say about condo conversions anyway) have no standing in this debate.
JP, you see why it's so easy to support this? The vocal opponents of condo conversions are hypocritical and hysterical. It's very unfair that the condo conversion supporters are the ones having to try to put in compromises, since the opponents are so unreasonable and unproductive. You should write a letter to the Council! Honestly, I don't think this is going to impact many lower-income folks, since very few of them live in buildings that would be converted. What percentage of our rental stock is under rent control? And what percentage of those people could not afford market-rate rents? I doubt it's many, and I do think that the tremendous benefits of creating a market of already-built condos outweighs the few people (under 62) who genuinely need rent control (and who get six months of rent in cash if evicted). We cannot be slaves to our unfortunate legacy of middle-class flight and underinvestment. At the same time, I do not want to see a huge wave of conversions, but I think that 800/yr (8k/decade, or 9.1% of the overall rental stock) is reasonable.
Naomi Schiff doesn't have a clue about the economics of urban housing. She comes accross as a gadfly, enthralled with the sound of her own voice and even more thrilled at the view of her empty pontifications in print.
Oakland is full of such people. You hardly hear from them except when a good idea of some sort is proposed. Then they collect together to pour cold water on any good idea that dares rise above the mediocrity of the status quo. It's become a predictable public meetings ritual.
For the most part they are oblivious to how obnoxious they often appear.
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