The Berkeley City Council will vote on a "missing middle" housing ordinance later this fall.
Berkeley has a penchant for approving “first-in-the-nation” policies.
In 1916, the city swiftly embraced segregated neighborhood maps and byzantine zoning regulations to help protect the “public health, comfort and convenience” of its white, wealthy residents — single-family zoning laws pioneered by influential property owners and planning officials who directly lobbied state legislators for this governing authority less than a year prior.
But more than a century later, numerous attempts to reform these rules and alleviate the city’s current housing shortage have led to agonizingly long meetings and costly data-intensive studies, driven by fears that new zoning laws will inadvertently threaten public safety and equitable housing opportunities.
On Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council postponed any final decisions on a historic proposal that would have allowed construction of duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and other “gentle density” projects in all residential neighborhoods — a move Berkeley claims is one of the largest, most ambitious upzoning reforms underway in California, if not nationwide.
The city’s planning staff said this was largely a procedural delay, after they failed to consult local tribal leaders about the proposed changes, but scores of residents demanded additional time to get up to speed on this complex pitch.
Hundreds of public comments and lengthy council discussion during the five-hour meeting Tuesday centered around one, multifaceted question: what is the best way to rezone Berkeley that can realistically stimulate construction of affordable, “missing middle” homes, without simultaneously exacerbating hillside wildfire hazards, gentrification of poorer neighborhoods in the flatlands and displacement of non-white residents?
A final vote will resurface later this fall — nearly four years after Berkeley publicly denounced its segregationist history and vowed to end exclusionary zoning in favor of equitable housing policies that help the community adapt to climate change.
Berkeley’s embrace of the single-family zoning concept in 1916 quickly took root across the country — it now covers 96% of residential land in California — and inspired decades of other multifamily restrictions, including several public hearings on piecemeal downzoning in the 1960s, and the 1973 Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance that voters approved to protect working class communities from harmful “urban renewal,” but effectively smothered construction of duplexes, triplexes and other smaller multi-unit homes in the flatlands ever since.
But rather than act on a symbolic 2021 vote to reform those laws Tuesday night, the council unanimously agreed Tuesday that additional time is needed to continue dialogue with constituents, analyze the results of ongoing wildfire evacuation studies and reconsider a more nuanced plan.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said the goal is to thread the needle that facilitates “missing middle” housing projects on paper, without losing sight of public safety or financial pitfalls that frequently threaten the feasibility that these projects will actually get built.
Instead of supporting the ordinance backed by Berkeley’s planning commission, he introduced a modified, watered-down version of the ordinance — co-authored by Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani — that set building heights at 35 feet, required a 20 foot minimum for setbacks at both the front and rear of a property, referred $200,000 to fund a citywide historic resource survey and excluded the hillside overlay zone from this higher density plan entirely.
The council unanimously approved that proposal, which was amended to include, in part, additional analysis on how a future ordinance would coexist with the city’s general plan, as well as existing mini-dorm and demolition ordinances.
“This is one of the most ambitious rezoning efforts of any city in the United States, and I think it’s appropriate that it starts here in Berkeley,” Arreguín said Tuesday night, explaining how he hopes their actions will provide a model for cities across California to follow. “That being said, we want to do it right.”
In the coming months, several council members vowed to hold community town halls to help residents fully grasp what kinds of homes they can realistically expect to see start popping up in their neighborhoods — construction that is still years away from becoming a reality.
Planning staff said this effort could conservatively produce up to 1,700 units within the first eight years. However, Jordan Klein, director of Berkeley’s Planning and Development Department, said it’s more likely to generate a “fraction” of that estimate; he said that reality reflects the city’s annual average of adding 12 units of “missing middle” housing over the last six years.
This trickle of projects illustrates the challenges developers face to make these multifamily projects pencil in today’s market, according to a June report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
Opponents of the current proposal argue that allowing greater density in areas that already permit more multifamily units will limit growth in neighborhoods that are currently zoned as single-family — potentially countering the ordinance’s goal of grappling with the consequences of exclusionary zoning.
“Carving the hills out (of this ordinance would) carve out your racially concentrated areas of affluence,” said James Lloyd, director of planning and investigations for the California Housing Defense Fund. “This (current proposal) would enshrine segregation in your local municipal code.”
Kesarwani said she agrees with criticism that standards that differ by zoning district build on historic patterns of exclusion.
“However, this proposal won unanimous support,” Kesarwani posted to social media, reflecting on Tuesday’s unanimous vote. “Politics is the art of the possible.”
