On the 24th of this July, Brayden McLean, outfitted in a hospital visitor sticker on his shirt, stepped away from his newborn triplets to ask the Berkeley City Council, “where will [my childrens’] generation be able to live and thrive in Berkeley?” While largely considered to be a progressive city, Berkeley has become an epicenter […]
Tag: Housing
Environmental Justice and its Indisputable Ties to Health Inequality in America
On the 29th of September, heavy rainfall caused unprecedented levels of flash flooding in New York City, cutting off major transportation routes from subways to roadways according to NBC New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has since declared a state of emergency. However, this battle with rain and flooding is fairly new for […]
Lessons From The Tenderloin
Ascending the Civic Center / UN Plaza BART escalator, I thought I knew what to expect. As I arose, it was as if an eyedropper picked me up out of my bubble and plopped me into what I perceived to be an epicenter of human misery. People walking like zombies, their eyes seemingly lifeless and […]
What’s Next? People’s Park and CEQA Reform
Housing on the site of People’s Park won’t be coming anytime soon. That’s what campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof seemed to suggest after the First District Court of Appeals handed down its verdict in Make U.C. A Good Neighbor v. Regents of the University of California. The Court held that the University’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) […]
The California Exodus Myth
The California Exodus Myth If you have lived in California for very long, you have heard the myth. By all accounts, high income and corporate tax rates are causing an economic downturn that is prompting folks to flee California for conservative paradises like Texas and Florida. It’s obvious, right? Liberals are destroying businesses with regulations […]
Who’s at People’s Park? Mutual Aid Networks on the Rise!
In April of 1969, the University of California purchased the site that is now People’s Park. Located just blocks away from the University of California, Berkeley campus, People’s Park has been a community center for refuge, recreation, and political activity since its very origin. Today, the University wants the Park gone more than anything […]
When Will California Legislation Catch Up to the Severity of Its Housing Crisis?
The median cost of a home in California is more than 2 times the national average at $600,000. In 2019, the state ranked 49 in the nation for a homeownership rate of 54%. San Francisco, Orange County, San Diego, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles top the list of the country’s most expensive housing markets. There […]
Tenants over Tents: Why Skid Row is Stuck in the Undertow
The largest concentration of unsheltered people in the country is located on “Skid Row,” a 54-block stretch of eastern downtown Los Angeles. 2,000 people spend each night there. However, Skid Row is simply a more visible component of an underlying dilemma: from 2010 to 2017, there has been a 42 percent rise in the number of homeless people […]
How Portland’s “Right to Return” is Indeed Right to Return Housing to the Underrepresented
In his 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, author Mark Twain discussed a world run by the upper echelons of society, detailing the growing and domineering aristocracy apparent at the turn of the 19th-century where financiers and business magnates dominated the urban landscape and frail economy. Twain was one of the few […]
To Segregate or Not to Segregate, that is (the Bay Area’s) Question
Children born in East Oakland, California have a life expectancy 12 years lower than those born in Piedmont, California. Oakland Unified School District reports about 1,600 homeless students, whereas Piedmont High reports zero. Residents of Oakland have a median household income of $51,000. In Piedmont, it is over $130,000. Yet less than two miles […]
The Rent Is Too Damn High: A Guide On What Not To Do When The Rent Is Just Too Damn High
If you don’t know who Jimmy McMillan is, you’re missing out. McMillan is the founder and currently one of three members of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, where he ran as a gubernatorial candidate in New York in 2010. At the gubernatorial debate that year, McMillan was then quoted on live television shouting, […]
America’s “Welfare State” Isn’t Faring Well: Misconceptions Surrounding America’s Homeless
As the clock struck 7:00 pm, the homeless shelter on Dwight Way was thrown into the full swing of Tuesday night Womxn’s Clinic. Student volunteers from UC Berkeley’s Suitcase Clinic funneled in, followed, of course, by the ladies of the occasion, homeless females from every corner of the city. I stood waiting in front of […]
Zucchini-gate or Bust: Berkeley’s Battle for Affordable Housing
Standing at the podium in front of the mayor and eight City Councilmembers, cameras zooming in, lights blurring, voices fading to a dull murmur in the background, one citizen was brave enough to brandish an anti-housing weapon no one had ever thought to wield: a zucchini. At the Berkeley City Council meeting on the night […]
Housingcare: How to Solve California’s Affordable Housing Crisis
As a mother of two children and wife to a steadily employed husband, Brianne Reynolds considered herself to be a typical, hard-working American. In addition to taking care of her kids during the day, she worked the night shifts at a local grocery store as a custodian in order to pay the bills. In what […]
Bay Area Private Transportation
You might have seen them– sleek, white buses with tinted windows, cruising up and down Highway 101. Or perhaps you noticed one along Market Street, pulling over to accept a herd of young professionals juggling cups of fair-trade coffee and MacBook Pros. Or maybe, if you live further south, you’ve been able to see one […]