Housing Divided, Cannot Stand
How Progressives Lost Their Way in the People’s Park Student Housing Debate
San Francisco, CA — Jan 3, 2022
In meteorology, there is a fascinating concept called a temperature inversion where the air temperature closer to the ground becomes colder than the air above it, a complete reversal of normal atmospheric behavior. (Incidentally, this is why San Francisco is so damn cold and foggy in the summer months.)
Amongst progressives, a similar phenomenon occurs when it comes to real estate development. A group of people that are typically comfortable with rapid change all of a sudden become as change-averse as the staunchest conservative, and throw their hands up and say “WHOA, slow your roll — you want to build what there?”
Now, there are some very good reasons for this. Historically, the way that real estate and infrastructure development projects have been carried out have been antithetical to progressive goals. There’s been a recurrent theme of people with money/power earning profit by stomping on the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable populations. Entire Black neighborhoods were razed to build freeways in New York City, for instance. And virtually every city has a horror story of residents of older, relatively affordable housing being evicted in order for some developer to build a soulless new luxury condo.
It probably isn’t a huge stretch of the imagination to say that many progressives probably take the mental shortcut of new development = gentrification = BAD.
And like most mental shortcuts that our brains make, this generally serves folks well. Until it doesn’t.
The San Francisco Bay Area has a complicated relationship with real estate, to say the least.
On one hand, we have a crippling housing shortage stemming from years of regional job creation — driven by the tech sector — vastly outstripping the building of new housing.
On the other, the Bay is also a tough place for new development to get off the ground. Complicated regulatory processes, combined with higher costs to build (labor, materials, etc) make projects less profitable, which in turn makes private financing more difficult to acquire.
Effectively, we’re a region with a major housing supply crunch where adding new supply can feel prohibitive. Rock, meet hard place.
As anyone with some cursory micro-economics knowledge can attest, a situation where demand is sky-high and supply is rock-bottom will lead to an astronomical increase in prices, which is precisely what we see. This affects everyone — young professionals, families, students, poor, rich(er). And it most definitely contributes to the region’s out-of-control homelessness problem.
What’s interesting is that there is a growing body of evidence that supports the idea that to stabilize real estate prices, it’s highly effective to simply build new market-rate housing, even if that housing isn’t particularly affordable. The new supply has knock-on effects that reduce real estate prices in its vicinity.
Sufficed to say, the extreme nature of the housing situation in this region might necessitate progressives to think differently about real estate— to break free of the mental shortcut that makes us generally suspicious of new development. But as we’ll see, that’s easier said than done.
If the title of this blog series wasn’t enough of a clue, what follows isn’t an example of a group of progressives thinking critically about real estate and homelessness in the Bay to come to a well-reasoned conclusion.
It’s a tale of how would-be progressives in the UC Berkeley student community made me feel deeply concerned about the future of left-wing grassroots activism with their mind-numbingly dumb analysis of a complex situation. (If that sounds harsh, remember, this is called the ‘Pissed-off Progressive’ for a reason.)
It started in early 2021, when UC Berkeley started to drill for soil samples on the land at the historic People’s Park, an initial step towards developing student housing on the land. This was one of several key initiatives being undertaken to address a massive student-housing shortage in Berkeley.
Some historic context for non-Bay Area residents —the land that People’s Park sits on is legally owned by the university. However, the green-space there has effectively operated as a public park since the late 1960s, when a student-led protest successfully torpedoed the university’s first attempt at building over the area. There’s a fascinating, violent origin story to the park that I won’t get into, but which Wikipedia covers thoroughly.
Today, People’s Park hosts a large homeless encampment, making it ground zero for debate on the issue of the unhoused, and all associated challenges .
The move polarized campus immediately. Certain student factions lauded the news, citing their belief that developing the area would reduce the level of violent crime in and around the park. There was a sentiment that crime had gotten out of control, reinforced by regular eyebrow-raising reports sent to the student body, such as the following:
Other students pushed back — hard. These voices, who likely saw themselves as more enlightened and progressive than their peers, dismissed the notion that the park was an aberration when it came to crime, and the attitudes toward the park were formed by judgmental, pre-conceived notions of homeless people. Some takes on social media included:
“There was once a drive-by shooting in front of a CHURCH a block from where I used to live (Dana St). Berkeley is an urban area, and for all of its issues with housing and crime, blaming it on a park is not going to make those problems magically go away.”
“CrImE dOeSn’T jUsT hApPeN aT pEoPlE’s PaRk. Stop demonizing low-income communities. The reason that UC Berkeley PD sensationalizes violence at the Park so often recently is because it is deliberate propaganda to try and convince folks that People’s Park inhabitants don’t deserve a place to live.”
“There’s been incidents of crime on campus, off campus in other areas, etc. By building on People’s Park, you are displacing countless residents who live there, who are primarily Black and Brown. Peoples Park is a historic site. This post is dumb. Student housing can be built elsewhere.”
There is no doubt that some of these arguments have merit. But here’s what I found interesting.
Every single thread had become anchored around whether or not there was a disproportionally serious crime problem caused by the homeless in People’s Park, and what that implied about whether or not developing the area was the right thing to do.
No one was talking about the broader context of why the homeless population of the park had exploded, and whether there was any connection between the criminal activity and the growing size of the encampments. Or even whether the current plight of the park’s residents was acceptable, and whether those residents wanted/deserved better.
In their rush to defend the sanctity of People’s Park, this ‘progressive’ crowd had completely lost sight of the goal.
The ultimate goal was not to preserve the park at all costs. The ultimate goal was to ensure that we have a society in which the basic human needs of every person can be met — food, clean water, housing, and safety.
Preserving the park should always have been thought of as a means to an end. If having the park in its current state furthered that ultimate goal, fantastic. But if not, then its ‘historic status’ should have been cast aside, and its value to the community questioned.
That’s what made this entire exchange so frustrating to watch.
It was bone-headed to point to crime in People’s Park as the sole reason that it should be built over. As if the crime in that area emanates from the presence of grass, and wouldn’t just be diverted elsewhere in the community as people are displaced.
At the same time, it was equally bone-headed to deflect away the subject of human suffering that takes place at that park by saying “cRiMe oCcUrS eVerYwHeRe”. The homeless encampments reflect a failure of our society to treat people with dignity, and simple obstructionism won’t fix that.
So, let’s step back and re-analyze this situation, by thinking first about our goals. I doubt anyone would disagree with these two:
- We want the area around the park to feel safe and vibrant
- We want take better care of the people currently living in squalor
The status quo fulfills neither of these goals.
It’s abundantly clear that we need more housing, and affordable housing, in the Bay Area. So, the question now becomes, where should it go? The proposed ~1000 units for students and community members at People’s Park is a compelling project for the additional housing capacity it would add.
But it’s fair to say that even with the additional capacity, a number of questions still need to be answered:
- What will become of displaced peoples?
- Are they going to be first in line to access the ‘community’ housing units once they’re built?
- How will we invest in their housing/other needs in the meantime? How will profits from the development be re-invested into the community?
The university has attempted to answer all of these questions about the People’s Park project in a section on Supportive Housing. I do think the outlined plan is fairly compelling — I particularly appreciate that they’ve committed to working with a specific local non-profit to deliver these services.
Even if there were flaws that made this project unpalatable in its current form, we must do better than just saying ‘no’. There’s a term for that, and it’s not a compliment — it’s called NIMBYism.
Avoiding the NIMBY zone would entail asking at least these questions:
- What are our other options for supporting unhoused people while also meeting the housing needs of the broader community?
- What are the obstacles to pursuing any of these options? e.g. Are there zoning requirements that need to change?
- Who at the university or city of Berkeley would support this alternative plan?
Admittedly, some of these questions may behard for us to personally answer — we may just not have the expertise, or the time to develop said expertise.
That’s why it’s essential that we stop talking just back-and-forth amongst ourselves. Where do homelessness advocates stand? Or even, what’s the opinion of someone actually living in the Park?
Undertaking such a thorough exercise in truth-seeking helps us better understand the problem, and critically evaluate all solutions, regardless of how they might sound at first glance. This is, after all, how progressivism is supposed to work.
I take some solace in the knowledge that the plans to build student housing on People’s Park are progressing forward, in spite of the wayward opposition. In addition to the university itself, the plan is endorsed by Berkeley’s mayor, and even by a majority of the UC Berkeley student population.
But candidly, I’m still unnerved by watching this saga unfold. I fear that today’s People Park student protestors will become tomorrow’s purveyor of other bad ideas under the guise of being ‘progressive’.
That’s why I think it’s important that we challenge both ourselves and our fellow progressive-minded folks to always start by making sure that the goal of our activism is well-defined, and well-understood by everyone involved.
Misalignment around the goal is maybe the single largest contributor to strife amongst teams, large and small. You may think everyone has the same goal in mind — because, how could they not? — but the human mind has a way of refracting shared goals through the mirror of each individual’s psyche. All of a sudden, there can be as many variations of the goal as there are people on the team.
In the case of the People’s Park debate, a subset of well-intentioned, progressive voices took poorly thought-out positions because they anchored themselves onto the wrong conversation, and forgot what goal needed to be achieved.
As a recap:
- Protecting People’s Park from development → not the goal
- Proving that People’s Park did not suffer from a disproportionate crime rate → not the goal
- Ensuring a dignified life for the unhoused, while also ensuring affordability for students → THE ACTUAL GOAL
As a closing ask for you, the reader — if this resonated with you, I’d like to hear about your experiences with how misaligned goals led to poor decision-making for a community.
On a more positive note, I’d also love to hear about examples where strong alignment was achieved, and how organizers were able to make that happen.
Till next time,
The Pissed-Off Progressive
