Update: now that Phase 2 of the project is complete, the 280 apartments on the block northwest of Shattuck and Channing are assessed for the same taxes as the 2,935 single-family homes highlighted.
Pro tip: reporting an "abandoned car in the middle of the street" elicits a far more satisfactory response than reporting a "car double-parked in a bike lane".
All of the new student apartment buildings in Berkeley have in-room laundry. This strikes me as a waste of precious space. Is this something that the prospective residents really want? If it were me I'd rather have a few more square feet, and the laundry is downstairs.
Why don't the cops just post up outside the tint shop and seize every car that comes out until the tint shop is out of business? Is this something that sounds simple but it's not? Because it sure sounds simple.
"There’s a serious housing shortage. It’s too difficult to build, & it’s driving prices up. We will take down barriers & cut red tape including at the state & local levels. We will end America's housing shortage by building 3,000,000 new homes."
Kamala just went full YIMBY!
Urban walkers, help me understand the rationale, if there is one, for this curb. Why does the cross-slope exist? Why isn't the ramp simply the full width of the crosswalk?
Fact of even more fun: the Airbnb "superhost" who will charge you $1100/month to sleep in her yard is also a member of North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance and 100% fake first-the-revolution housing socialist who believes in ONLY pure affordable housing.
This tent in Berkeley, advertised on Airbnb as 1 block from North Berkeley BART, costs more than the median rent of a 1-bedroom apartment in Oklahoma City.
This tent in Berkeley, advertised on Airbnb as 1 block from North Berkeley BART, costs more than the median rent of a 1-bedroom apartment in Oklahoma City.
I just heard on the radio that BART will spend $90 million to "harden" fare gates, because in 2019 it missed $15 million in revenues to fare evaders. That was 3% of 2019 fares. In other words compliance is already 97%. Meanwhile, in SF, parking meter compliance is only 67%.
In Belgium the standard lease is 9 years with an option to renew. The superficial feeling of permanence for American homeowners is merely the consequence of relatively bad treatment of renters.
Unpopular opinion: There is something about home ownership that does trigger deeper investment. My path to land use policy activism started when we bought our first home in my mid-40s and I thought “I should get involved in the community.” Owning confers stability and permanence.
The San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times have dedicated transportation reporters who have written repeatedly about the costs of high-speed rail, and fiscal problems for mass transit agencies. Neither paper has ever written an inch on the cost of highway construction.
Proximate reason for asking: last night I saw a pedestrian, who was not distracted or disabled or in any way impaired, fall flat on her face after tripping here.
If you see this black Dodge Challenger R/T in Berkeley I want to know where. This is the car that had the most parking tickets dismissed by the city, 18 total, all coded "Public Relations", all within 1 block of BHS. I want to know which cop owns this thing.
Still kills me every time I have to look at the county's annual report and ponder the fact that this completely vanilla 4-story apartment building in Fremont is the 5th-largest taxpayer in Alameda County.
Does the filtering process that YIMBYs are always talking about apply only to ancient apartments? No. This building was erected in 2014, and is advertising a studio for $2170/mo. That unit originally rented in August 2014 for $2265/mo. That is a 27% real decline in 10 years.
The speed my bicycle was traveling when you honked: 15 MPH.
The speed limit in the school zone where you honked: also 15 MPH.
The day that you honked: Walk and Roll to School Day.
Congrats, worst driver in Berkeley.
I am over here screaming about the cover illustration on
@CaHSRA
's "sustainability report" depicting a gigantic parking lot on one side of a station and trees individually shaded by solar panels on the other side. My god.
The site at E. 12th/Lake Merritt got cleared recently. 10 years ago a developer wanted to build 360 units, 91 affordable. After a giant NPIC hissy fit, and 10 years of delay, EBALDC will build only the 91 subsidized units. When do "advocates" get held accountable for the outcome?
Is YIMBY working yet? New construction, literally just-built studio in Berkeley for $2295.
This price is still obscene, but five years ago you would have paid $2500 for a 1960-era firetrap.
Recapping the Berkeley vacancy tax:
If you own an empty lot, you pay nothing.
If you own an empty house, you pay half the tax.
If you own an eightplex with seven occupied and one empty unit, you pay the full penalty.
Where does this begin to make sense?
Today's NYT about e-bikes features a photo of a kid on a Sur-Ron Light Bee, which is a motorcycle. It has a 6kW motor. It is not classified as an e-bike in California, or anywhere.
Californians spending billions to add one lane to a short freeway between two suburbs: 😍🥳
Californians spending billions on a bullet train that serves 30 million people: 😡🤬🪦
Congrats (I guess) to Berkeley's new most-tax-dense building, assessed at $3440 per square foot of land. It paid $700k in taxes last year. This is how college kids are funding your city.
Local rent data is more relevant to you than national inflation press releases. In Berkeley, nobody wants old apartments, the prices are plunging, and the transaction volume is closing in on zero. This is the way YIMBYs always said "filtering" would play out.
Apparently there is still some skepticism that rents can ever go down. These are the 1-bedroom market rates in Berkeley, by month, for the last ten years. Note the pronounced downward trend.
This is actually a really good project because it shows how important state YIMBY bills are. Even though this site is owned by the City and County of San Francisco, they had to invoke SB-35 and AB-1763 in order to streamline and bypass their own planning regime. Makes you think.
Publicly funded, 100% deeded affordable housing, 15% dedicated to the formerly homeless, approved again, survives another appeal, in its fifth year of planning and permitting. Supported by YIMBYs and labor.
Did the DSA show up to support this project? They did not.
Imagine if SF had used their decade as the center of the universe to build things of durable public value, instead of just acting like it was a 60s-themed amusement park for the ultra-rich who are now just taking all their winnings and leaving.
@j2parman
Right, it's at least slightly social. I am rolling my eyes the hustle culture implied by the suggestion that having a laundry a few feet from your bed is good for the "productivity" of a 20-year-old.
If you're tired of the fire department dictating street safety policy in your city, by mandating wide lanes and vetoing bike lanes, lobby your gov't to lease these European-designed fire trucks. Smaller turning circle than a Ford F-150. Battery hybrid. 7'8" wide.
Incredible L for Oakland. They wanted a $3000 permit for the parklet??? Technically, according to city GIS, these are $2/hr spaces, 3000 hours a year, but in reality the south side is not signed and there's no meter on that side, so I seriously doubt anyone pays to park here.
@KNXBaird
@knxnews
FYI, since you are so keen on traffic safety, it is unlawful in California to mount your cell phone in the place where you have it mounted. Spread the word among your circle of street safety evangelists, which I am confident exists.
@urbanupgrades
Now you're talking! But this city has a "no vertical deflections" policy, despite a handful of extant exceptions and the obvious desirability.
Here is a 3.5-ton commercial vehicle registered to an address on a street that prohibits 3-ton vehicles and the
@CityofBerkeley
is not prepared for this new antisocial behavior.
@RashiKesarwani
, I think?
I never saw this Lafayette building until yesterday. Completed in 2017. In design review from
*** 1988 *** to *** 2012 *** jeepers
It's right on top of BART and walking distance to everything worth seeing in Lafayette. The design review insisted on chimneys.
Wow, Chinese plaintiff, apparently untainted by American car blindness, gets right to the point: State of California, City of Berkeley have negligently created a lethal trap for cyclists at the intersection of fake bike boulevard and state road.
EXCLUSIVE: Cyclist Yuan Cong died one year ago today, seven months after he sustained major head trauma in a Berkeley traffic collision. Until now, his death has gone unreported. Don't miss the latest Scanner deep dive. MORE:
Oh my god. Los Angeles actually has the thing I'm always saying should be done: a single row of houses down the middle of what had been an ultra-wide streetcar route.
On Nextdoor they are saying that it is unfair for Newsom to call the UC v. CEQA plaintiffs "wealthy homeowners". They are right; it would be more fair to call them gazillionaire idle rich. The plaintiff inherited the world and has never had a job.
Did you ever notice how Emeryville just nonchalantly out-builds every other city in the East Bay? There is a single 10-acre project there that will expand the population of this tiny town by 10%. By the end of the year, Emeryville will have grown a whopping 40% in one decade.
Category coloring really did not do any justice to this injustice. In this neighborhood substantially all of the property taxes are being paid by 7 new apartment buildings, at MacArthur, 51st at Telegraph, and 51st at Broadway, collective assessed for over $650 million.
According to the 2020 Census ACS, the 2010s were the 2nd-worst decade for housing production in the history of the city of San Francisco. There was not a "building boom".
This tent in Berkeley, advertised on Airbnb as 1 block from North Berkeley BART, costs more than the median rent of a 1-bedroom apartment in Oklahoma City.
@PhilipMertz1
@FapsOfMeaning
Actually changing the sheets is an additional $72 "cleaning fee".
Granted on the OKC thing, although many people find that city to be acceptable.
@bnhca
Among the NIMBYs writing to the LPC:
@RBReich
General summary of the 44 pages of NIMBY drivel: I'm a 40-year resident of Berryman Street and since my name is literally Karen and I am a comfortably-housed Boomer and my property taxes are $7/year, I oppose these apartments.
This automotive mayhem would be impossible if the intersection had the concrete pedestrian refuges called for in the 2015 road diet that the owner of the Grand Lake Theater personally killed.
The market-rate tower would have been taxed on about a quarter-billion-dollar valuation, based on nearby comparable high-rises. It would have thrown off so much cash that the city could easily afford to subsidize lots more apartments!
The developer of Spenger's parking lot on Fourth St. in Berkeley, against whom the City of Berkeley has lost numerous cases, appeals, and other skirmishes, wants 39 million dollars as a Housing Accountability Act penalty.
The REAL builder's remedy right here 👇
This is your irregularly-scheduled reminder that there are transit-priority traffic signals installed in Berkeley that the city refuses to turn on because although they empirically speed buses, they also delay cars, and the city has made its choice.
Yes, I am waiting for the bus
Incredible that if you build an apartment building in Berkeley you must spend millions to endow bus passes in perpetuity for your tenants, but the Costco in Richmond is allowed to cause a region-wide traffic catastrophe without so much as a TDM plan. And they sell gas!
I know YIMBYs like
@maxdubler
have said this a million times, but it really is true that real estate investors list the lack of new housing supply as their biggest upside. "Ongoing shortage of housing" is their profit.
The same guy owns all these vacants in Berkeley. The useless vacancy tax doesn't even collect anything until February 2025, and the vacant lot isn't even subject to it. A ... land value tax would solve this?
@IDoTheThinking
@CityofBerkeley
@rideact
There was a fight in 2004-2007 partly about whether to take a lane out of MLK, which the dry cleaner successfully defeated by claiming to be a sensitive legacy business or some garbage. We should absolutely remove the easternmost lane, extend the sidewalk, and put in a bench.
If I was city council member
@KateHarrisonD4
I would simply park my Tesla in my ample, landmark-designated driveway instead of blocking half the sidewalk.
@Stormy_Skies_36
If squeezing teenagers to pay for local infrastructure is a conscious policy choice, then that is what it is. I'm not even trying to argue the policy here. I just want people to be aware of the choice that they're making.
@MrRoyko
@lawnerdbarak
If you think each of the supposed bedrooms is "a bedroom" you obviously haven't shopped for housing in Berkeley. I assure you one of the "bedrooms" was once the dining room and probably one of them was also a broom closet. The kitchen has been relocated to the living room.
Could we abolish “impact fees”? Whatever impacts arise from housing should be paid in the steady state by annual taxes on existing buildings, not by massive fees on new ones.
The fact that kids at King Middle School kids have to chain their bikes up to sign posts all up and down the block seems to indicate demand for bike racks. I wonder who I need to bug to make that happen.
You are reminded that the reason AC Transit BRT doesn't have a median or dedicated guideway between 54th and 74th is because a handful of over-consulted community members vetoed the guideway design to preserve this handful of useless curb parking spaces.
The number of patients needing medical aid or transport at 54th & International Blvd is now 14. Occupants from all three of the vehicles involved (including the bus) suffered varying levels of injuries. OFD,
@oaklandpoliceca
and
@FalckAlCo
all on scene.
Here's just a tidbit for people who still doubt that rents decline in both real and nominal terms. Old apartments in Berkeley are under increasing competitive pressure from new construction. This one rented in 2023 for $2300, is now advertised for $1995.
These are the worst socialists imaginable. At every opportunity as an elected official of the City, this person has chosen to defend and protect established residents over the interests of newcomers (kids, in other words). This includes trying to stop a dorm for 700 students.
@j2parman
If you can't see a stationary object in the road at night then you should not drive at night. Other completely valid tactics for night driving include driving slowly, coming to complete stops at corners, cleaning your windshield, and having working headlights.
Reasons why Berkeley's "prohibition" on natural gas is ineffective: it does not affect conversions and reconstruction, which is virtually the only activity allowed in the city. Even a building in this condition ends up with three gas ranges, three gas water heaters, and no solar.
This building is a great example of the lie in Berkeley, that if these buildings were not just plain boxes but were decorated then we'd let them be built. This one is festooned with cornices motifs reliefs and whatnot, but it was still a decade-long hissy fit to get it permitted.
My kid has had it with Berkeley's bike boulevards. He's lost it. "That way has too many CARS, but this way is too LONG! And the bike lane is too BUMPY!"
Thinking a bit more about the stasis that gripped Berkeley for 50 years. From 1971 to 2016 the birth years of the mayors of Berkeley hardly budged. Starting with Widener, they were born in 1938, 1935, 1940, 1935, and 1946. One cohort just seized and held power for a half-century.
I've never heard any say they hate their cargo bike, they wish they hadn't bought that bakfiets, or anything like that. Owner satisfaction with cargo bikes, e-bikes, family bikes is 1000%.
@berkeleypolice
Will do.
Was it already stolen on Aug 12th, 17th, Sep 8th, Oct 6th, 15th, 19th, Nov 4th, 23rd, 29th, 30th, Dec 1st, 9th, 14th, and 22nd of 2021, all dates on which it received a parking ticket within a quarter-mile of police HQ?
Having just bicycled through Emeryville and enjoyed every inch of the place, and then having rattled the rest of the way home over and unsafe "streets" of Berkeley, I am reminded of this fun fact:
It would only take 3600 petition signatures to merge Berkeley into Emeryville.
The statement of the artist who was on TV yesterday complaining about how hard it was to park her Mercedes-Benz at the grocery store. This is Berkeley in a nutshell: old hippies with a lot of abstract woo ideas, but when it comes down to it, free parking is their main theme.
@JakeAnbinder
I guess there’s not much overlap between this point of view and the belief that only the choice of toast toppings stands between millennials and home ownership.
@cynic_city
@Scott_Wiener
@CaltransHQ
Why should your desire to drive from the Marina to a city 50 miles away be tolerated at the cost of the physical and mental health of thousands of people who live along this route?
@Jeffinatorator
Thank you for letting us know about the issue. We corrected the records and an assessment will be made shortly along with property tax bills issued to the property owner.
I'm biking down the street behind a car that is:
... going 10 MPH: grudging respect
... passing stop signs without even tapping the brakes: not cool
... crashing into a parked car: the driver was asleep.
Condo collapse is allegory for climate change. Some technician tells you that a bad thing is in the future and you need to fix it ASAP. Collective action fails because it is hostage to entrenched wealth interests, then everyone dies.
@technicallyty
The reason it feels like that is because SF built almost literally no new housing in the 1990s, and very little in the 1980s, so there's this huge hole in the age of housing stock.