SB 51: the California politics thread

Hey, the state school I went to was taken over by Mitch Daniels. That certainly is worse!

whoa damn! Seriously though, UC Berkeley bullies the town of Berkeley in classic "corporate company town" style especially in terms of real estate development. I'm kinda cheering for this like when the city of Richmond passed a special tax on Chevron.

Let them go to UC Merced!

build housing at the Richmond Field Station where they've been moving a lot of campus operations so they can sell off buildings they own in Berkeley

and while they're at it, improve public transit access to that facility ...

Let them go to UC Merced!

too bad for the kids with offers from uc merced!

I thought that was the one UC that can take more students than are accepted.

I don’t think they can take 5000 extra students this august.

Application rates are way up at all the UCs and most of the Cal States. I think UC Merced and UC Riverside are maxed for this year too.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/uc-breaks-fall-2022-college-admission-application-records
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-15/too-many-qualified-students-are-shut-out-of-uc-csu-a-new-study-suggests-how-to-help

This article breaks down the origins of CEQA. California progressivism in the 60s and 70s was pastoralist and Malthusian: the population must be limited & everyone should live on a farm. It was discredited and died away but many remnants are still herehttps://t.co/Rci5ejWs3W

— Darrell Owens (@IDoTheThinking) March 5, 2022

They sued Berkeley over CEQA? Whoa! I was kinda cheering the result because of the fact that UC Berkeley is responsible for a lot of gentrification of Berkeley and Oakland, and that is something I think they should be checked on tbh. Though the whole thing isn't just UC Berkeley's fault; it's a result of the student loan bubble that makes it such that students can "afford" to pay rents higher than long-term regional residents, and students are appealing tenants to landlords because they will move out sooner and rents can get raised to market rate more easily.

In the area near-ish campus, there isn't too much that isn't dense multi-story buildings outside of privately owned single family homes, and commercial buildings. There are a few blocks of commercial structures that appear in the process of being torn down for housing of some sort. But, are they gonna eminent domain people's houses to tear down and build dorms? ... They are trying to build dense housing on the site of People's Park, which is just tone-deaf in terms of the gentrifying role the University has played in the past 20 or so years.

Seriously, they should build housing near the Richmond Field Station, where they own property, are expanding operations, and there is way more underutilized land than in the City of Berkeley.

Anyway

BREAKING: @GavinNewsom signs bill to help UC Berkeley avoid a cap on its in-person fall enrollment, and block student enrollment from being considered as a separate project under CEQA.

— Emily Hoeven (@emily_hoeven) March 15, 2022

no surprise there!

There's apparently a separate amendment on the bill that makes me king. So, to begin with hey wait everyone get back here

if i were morbzian i would start calling him Joe Biden Jr

Our elderly president is already Joe Biden Jr for what it's worth hehe

Joe Biden Jr Jr then

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-14/editorial-racist-california-article-34-public-affordable-housing

Jesus how did I not know about this

i didn't know about it either! i know that we (Oakland) recently approved a ballot measure that was for affordable housing, but I thought it involved bond funds, which seem to require a ballot measure? I think some of the ignorance is due to the sad fact that in order to build affordable housing, cities in California end up having to issue muni bonds or raise property taxes.

Article 34 comes up a lot in the history of Chavez Ravine and its theft for Dodger Stadium. IIRC at least one OC city incorporated as a way to gerrymander voting against public housing.

oooh ... actually that's a historical thing that I've been meaning to read more about because I first learned about it from a James Ellroy novel (lol)

Seriously though, UC Berkeley bullies the town of Berkeley in classic "corporate company town" style especially in terms of real estate development.

tell me more about this! i don't live in berkeley or even california and i've read only a little about the current issue, but UC berkeley strikes me as fundamentally different from say, yale buying up half of new haven or similar private universities that encroach on the surrounding neighborhoods in that it is a *public* institution? maybe that is super naive bc power is power i guess --just bc it is the state doesn't mean it is for the public of course -- but i do wonder if it is really in the public interest -- apart from the locals in berkeley who don't want high rises -- for one of the best public research universities in the state (country, too) to slash enrollment by thousands? again i'm an outsider and you know WAY more about this than me, but is the claim i've heard that this is mostly berkeley NIMBYists incorrect?

no slashing the enrollment by thousands was not in the public interest.

berkeley is not a large city by landmass and it has always been hard to find housing here. I started UC Berkeley in 1990 and even then they did not offer enough campus housing for more than a sliver of the students. They have been slowly improving on this over the past 30 years but not nearly enough. There is a huge fight in berkeley between pro-development, pro-housing people (which is frankly the majority) and some very vocal anti development people, some of whom have some legitimate complaints (it is true that dense housing in areas with poor roads leading out of the neighborhoods is unsafe, I think) and a lot of whom are just angry about getting rid of single family housing zoning.

Dense housing with no roads would be better.

I'm talking about areas near and in the hills that are a fire danger.

If a neighborhood’s density is restricted by its need to evacuate in a fire then the neighborhood should not exist. Let Malibu burn.

xp akm - there are also people who are pro-housing but have concerns about gentrification and then there's the People's Park issue ...

I'm pro housing on people's park. PP's historic nature is duly noted but it's a very unsafe place at the moment. there are homeless encampments in town that self-govern but PP is a free for all and dangerous shit keeps happening.

people who gripe about gentrification annoy me for the most part.

oooh ... actually that's a historical thing that I've been meaning to read more about because I first learned about it from a James Ellroy novel (lol)

Stealing Home is a good one to check out.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-03-31/dodgers-stealing-home-eric-nusbaum

https://d1ldy8a769gy68.cloudfront.net/300/978/154/174/221/5/9781541742215.jpg

thank u!

Attn: sarahell

Here’s a 📸 photo thread 🧵of one of the first projects I worked on: Conversion of a 275,000 SF historic Office Building into 200 apartments

The (Re)Making of 1616 Walnut pic.twitter.com/gi03OtVFRG

— Bobby Fijan (@bobbyfijan) October 16, 2021

awesome!!!

it's a surprising (to me!) amount of work, but at least some of that here is due to it being a pretty high end conversion. it's possible!

Here's a cool book I have about the making of Los Angeles - it touches on the Dodgers, but also on the invention of prefab suburbs, Chavez Ravine, Aliso Village, etc... packed with photos:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/provisional-city

@sarah you hear any details on what is going on with Bottom of the Hill? Ramona (I assume it was Ramona) posted on their FB that they need help getting a petition together, city issue, existential threat. The only other thing she mentioned was that it was something to do with cyclists?

oops just saw this! ... i have no idea!

lol this fuckin guy

.@IChotiner speaks with the head of a group that sued U.C. Berkeley for violating the California Environmental Quality Act—a law meant to protect the environment that has increasingly been used to stop new housing from being built in California. https://t.co/8cwywchVfg

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) April 28, 2022

The reason that there’s so much pressure in Berkeley is that developers make more money by developing in Berkeley than they would in Orinda or Lafayette.

whaaaa? I'm confused.

I think I've driven around Berkeley a fair amount in the past month or so since I last thought about this whole thing and ... a lot of Berkeley looks like suburban San Mateo County / Santa Clara County ... if they don't want to be like those assholes in Stanfordland, they should stfu and build denser housing

this guy spouting off population growth shit like it's the 1970's or something. He just doesn't want any larger buildings near his house so he can theoretically protect his property values. why he doesn't just say that is beyond me.

These douches always think their property values will go down. It’s been empirically disproven time and again.

Any thoughts about yesterday's results?

I'm sort of annoyed about the Boudin recall, but I don't live in San Francisco

yeah not in SF either but i saw this on twitter in amongst the “progressives backlash” narrative

The effort to recall progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has in large part been led by William Oberndorf, a shadowy big money Republican who has spent at least $900,000 to remove Boudin from office.https://t.co/WLSKh4g4gp

— Truthout (@truthout) June 7, 2022

Yeah, I assume Fox et all will be merrily gloating: "Even ULTRA-LIBERAL San Francisco rejected this socialist, soft-on-crime 'progressive'..." etc.

the sf recall doesn’t seem surprising given the sf electorate tbh.

caruso winning is more concerning for November.

Yeah the recall is its own thing. There were a number of useful measures passed yesterday in the city so hey.

Have to say watching Schellenberger and Schubert's campaigns be the vaporware they were was amusing.

I knew there was something I forgot to do yesterday ... I don't think there was anything hotly contested where I live though? Honestly, I wasn't paying that much attention ... we have a mayor's race coming up this fall, and Libby is termed out so it will be "exciting" to say the least

Nice vote drop in LA.

Carusso no longer leading the mayoral primary, Villanueva in real trouble in the general and best of all eunisses Hernandez on track to win outright in her council primary. If that holds we’ll have at least two and maybe four genuinely progressive (not reactionary california democrat) council members next year.

It held.

wtf

🧵This November San Francisco voters will be asked to vote on a measure that will raise taxes on e-commerce sellers in order to fund a Universal Basic Income program.
I would LOVE to see a UBI program piloted in SF, but unfortunately I cannot support this measure. Here's why:

— Sharky Laguana (@Sharkyl) August 13, 2022

who is sharky laguana and why should we care what they would support?