Local Candidate Questionnaire: Lori Droste, 2018 Candidate for Berkeley City Council
Here at TechEquity, we believe that voting down the ballot is crucial for active, local citizenship. While a lot of the national spotlight is on congressional races, there are a multitude of local candidates that have the potential to make significant impacts on your communities.
We’ve reached out to candidates for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Oakland Mayor, City Councillors of Oakland and Berkeley, and CA State Assemblymembers to answer our five-part questionnaire. Check out our index of the seats on the ballot and the candidates who have responded to our questionnaire.
Below are the questionnaire responses from Lori Droste, 2018 candidate for Berkeley City Council.
Disclaimer:
We’re a nonpartisan 501c3 non-profit, which means we cannot and do not endorse candidates. With that in mind, we gave every candidate that we could reach an opportunity to fill out our questionnaire.
Displayed are the unedited answers from each candidate as they came to us. We are publishing these questionnaires to educate voters on candidates’ positions; we do not endorse their positions nor statements.
Candidate’s Name:
Lori Droste
Office for which Candidate is Seeking Election:
Berkeley City Council
Jurisdiction in which Candidate is Seeking Election:
District 8
Candidate’s Website:
The East Bay has changed drastically as a result of the growth of the tech sector in our region. What role do you think the city should have in attracting companies to our city or in reducing negative effects created by their arrival?
The Bay Area has been home to innovation for decades and we should welcome innovation and business to our communities. The challenge for cities is to ensure that we have appropriate jobs-to-housing ratios.
The housing crisis is the most urgent issue for our members, and it is TechEquity’s top advocacy priority this year. What is your view on how we can solve the housing crisis and make the Bay Area an affordable place to live for people at all income levels?
We need to maximize the number of affordable/subsidized units created. People live in units, not percentages. I support the maximum amount of affordable/subsidized units while still retaining overall feasibility of projects. I support robust affordable housing percentages and fees as long as they don’t hinder project feasibility.
Market rate housing undeniably has a role in solving the housing crisis. All evidence available shows that this is the case. Studies from the Legislative Analysts Office and the Urban Displacement Project (its founder, Karen Chapple, endorses my campaign) have shown that market rate housing helps stop displacement and lowers rents. Of course, affordable/subsidized housing accomplishes this goal better but securing funding for that is incredibly challenging, especially when one unit of infill housing can cost ~$400,000-$500,000 to build. Of course, we need to find more funding (and ways to leverage funding) to help create the maximum amount of affordable units but that doesn’t mean that market rate housing doesn’t have a role in addressing the affordability crisis. We have to remember that thousands of people apply for affordable/subsidized units and very few win that lottery. That is why most low-income renters live in non-subsidized/affordable units. A city makes rents higher if it refuses to build housing to keep up with demand.
Berkeley can meet its RHNA requirements at all income levels by building housing, streamlining the extensive review process which sometimes results in over 30 public hearings, and addressing racial and exclusionary zoning in Berkeley.
How will you address the homelessness crisis? Do you think the City’s current budget allocation for homelessness is adequate? What solutions do you think are working, and what else would you implement?
While job training and robust services are important, the most important thing we can do to help people out of homelessness it to allow help provide or connect individuals to permanent supportive housing. My number one priority for addressing homelessness is to make sure that we build Berkeley Way as quickly as possible. Additionally, we need to provide resources to vulnerable individuals to help prevent them falling into homelessness.
No, our budget allocation, while large, is inadequate and I would venture to say that is probably the case for every city in the Bay Area.
We need to make our existing shelters safer, especially for our LGBT youth. Safety can vary from shelter to shelter. Every shelter has operator operated by a nonprofit whose staff has to be in the shelters at all time. It is important to have consistency in training or qualifications for that staff to ensure residents’ safety.
The HOTT team is the most nimble outreach service that the City of Berkeley has and sometimes offers same-day services. If we can improve the functionality and outreach capabilities of that team, the City could expedite services. The HUB generally serves individuals who require more intensive services. Since there are different standards to get individuals into shelters vs. permanent supportive housing with case management, expedition varies. Part of the issue is staffing consistency while another part is that there aren’t appropriate consequences for community agencies that are not providing quality services to homeless individuals. This is something that I fought hard against during our community agency funding process. If we are funding agencies that don’t produce outcomes, we are hurting a) our most vulnerable and b) agencies that are serving clients well.
How would you create more stability for renters in our city, especially for low- and middle-income renters?
As I have mentioned in previous forums, the traditional perspective of Bay Area politics was that a) you were either for building housing OR b) you were for protecting tenants. I have shown that you can do both.
I have introduced legislation to prioritize Berkeley residents and Ellised evicted tenants in affordable units, supported the tenant protections ordinance, and wrote regulations for short-term rentals. I also have adopted an ordinance prohibiting housing discrimination based on source of tenant’s income, advocated for delays in winter evictions, and reserved very low income in lieu units for households with Section 8 vouchers and shelter care certificates. I will continue to advocate for renters in this difficult housing market.
I also support a universal right to legal counsel.
How do we modernize the city’s transit and mobility system to accommodate the rapidly-changing needs of the city’s residents?
Vote No on 6.
Yes. Facilitating and improving public transit is essential in helping working people and addressing climate change. We need to provide viable options for people to commute in our city and encourage varying transportation options, including Bus Rapid Transit. Encouraging a duplicative private shuttle system over a public transit system is not a cost-efficient or a progressive way to address transportation needs in our community. If we truly want to address climate change, we need to make it easier for people to get out of their cars.
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