The big takeaway in Berkeley’s 2024 election(s), from Substacks to the S.F. Chronicle, has been that the “YIMBYs have won.” Berkeley, once the holy grail of NIMBYism, has elected an unapologetic pro-upzoning newcomer mayor over two longtime critics of housing development, a 100% pro-density housing council, and the success of an anti-car urbanist ballot referendum. In general, this is true, but I want to delve into the complexity of the local situation so we can better appreciate this moment.
Ten years ago, the city council was mostly composed of members skeptical or outright hostile to new housing and the idea that supply was a remedy to the housing crisis. In 2014, when I first went to a public meeting on housing and recommended that we build more, I was jeered, booed, and largely alone. Today, every member of Berkeley City Council won their elections explicitly in support of the ideas very few people promoted a decade ago — that the city must embrace market and publicly-subsidized housing construction, build up and not outwards and to densify transit corridors.
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Nobody detected Adena Ishii as any kind of threat. Ishii would even be confused for other Asian women or staffers at debates and events she attended. While Hahn was backed by Mayor Arreguín and his (increasingly Building Trades) union coalition and the firefighters, Adena Ishii’s strongest support came from several sitting councilmembers who dual-endorsed, the liberal Democratic Club, YIMBY groups, bicycle groups, and the very popular State Senator Nancy Skinner and State Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. Coupled with an aggressive door-knocking campaign by a ragtag team of young, progressive activists (several of whom I knew were pro-Gaza Ceasefire) and League of Women Voters allies, won over a majority of the city to her side and Ishii was elected Mayor. So housing was a big deal as the headlines said but it wasn’t just housing for most voters.
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Despite 10 years of anger about the downtown plan, the dorms causing homeowners to sue the university, the opposition to the BART station developments, the bike lane saga on Hopkins Street, and the so-called “controversial” plan to eliminate single-family zoning (Missing Middle) — there’s been no electoral backlash to the pro-housing side. Zero. Zip. Whether turnout’s high or low, this uprising of voters mad about over-development has not materialized. Politicians who support these initiatives and stand firm on them have mostly been rewarded with election, re-election, and a city’s changing culture around density. I kept being told for years a backlash is brewing over the densification, but where is it?
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Every few months a new, dense high-rise full of homes gets proposed in Downtown Berkeley and approved without issue. Ten years ago, hordes of people lined up to oppose an apartment mid-rise downtown, queuing up for hours. Now anti-development groups can barely get 100 people to oppose eliminating single-family zoning, and when they do come out, they make themselves look bad to even the most indifferent residents. (Watch these funny dueling YouTube videos of both sides [pro-density vs. anti-density] mocking each other on Berkeley’s Downtown housing plan battle from 2010!)
From the blog post:
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