Even in Berkeley, “progressives” push conservative policies. Sadly, Berkeley City Council member and mayoral candidate Jesse Arreguín embodies this short-sighted approach. By resisting new housing and transit, he and other self-professed “progressives” perpetuate the status quo of rising rents, carbon-belching traffic jams and faltering public transit. Their policies undermine environmental goals, enrich wealthy property owners and reduce opportunities for students and low-income households to find housing.

Councilmember Arreguín touts below market rate (BMR) housing construction as an accomplishment, but this is only part of the solution. BMR housing units are available only to a handful of “lottery” winners who must regularly fill out paperwork to recertify their low-income status. Even worse, federal and local laws categorically exclude dependent students from BMR housing. Most UC Berkeley students could probably name someone they know who lives in a recently built market-rate unit. For students who don’t qualify for subsidized units, those new market-rate units can be the difference between finding housing in Berkeley or getting pushed out of the city.

Unfortunately, Councilmember Arreguín has frequently opposed the sort of new housing that most benefits students. During his time on the City Council, as well as his previous tenure on the Zoning Adjustments Board, Arreguín voted against (or declined to support) nearly 1500 units of housing in total, including over 150 low-income units. Had Arreguín and other “progressives” consistently supported new housing rather than frequently opposing and delaying it, Berkeley might be further along in addressing our severe housing shortage.

Councilmember Arreguín has even stood in the way of greater residential density next to BART. Late last year, he declined to support the approval of 2211 Harold Way, a 302-unit LEED Gold building one block from the Downtown Berkeley BART station that will contribute $10.5 million to the city for affordable housing. Now one of Arreguín’s donors is holding the project up in court, citing a laundry list of poorly supported technicalities to argue that three years of review and 37 public hearings weren’t sufficient to determine the project’s environmental impacts.

Many of Arreguín’s most ardent supporters are wealthy homeowners who adamantly resist new housing, lest it change Berkeley’s aesthetic character. One supporter even wrote that she would rather preserve decaying commercial buildings than provide housing for young people — housing she characterizes as “cramming in as many students who want to party it up without dorm rules as possible.” Arreguín serves this constituency by always finding excuses to oppose or abstain on the new housing they don’t like. As a result, sorely needed new housing and transit improvements get tied up in years of red tape, driving up housing competition and rents.

Councilmember Arreguín has made a habit of pushing burdensome new requirements that hinder new housing construction. Arreguín claims that he’s just trying to make buildings more sustainable even though his proposals have never applied to older, less energy-efficient buildings. His environmental claims are also contradicted by a constellation of environmental-minded organizations, like the Greenbelt Alliance and TransForm, that have opposed his past policy proposals for being anti-housing and sprawl-inducing.

During his time on the City Council, Arreguín supported watering down energy audit requirements for old building, and opposed both Bus Rapid Transit on Telegraph and bringing a new ferry terminal to Berkeley, making it more likely that people will continue to drive instead of taking transit. Arreguín’s inconsistent record on environmental issues illustrates where his priorities truly lie. Berkeley has a strong history of environmental activism. It’s a shame to see it being used as a smokescreen to conceal an entrenched resistance to new housing. Berkeley voters should once again reject transparently greenwashed ideologies that threaten to block the housing we need.

We can’t afford these anti-growth policies. We know Berkeley can instead help make housing available and affordable to all. Here’s our chance to embrace that hopeful future.

Diego Aguilar-Canabal is the Editor-in-Chief of the SF Bay Area Metropolitan Observer. He lives in Berkeley and serves on the Housing Advisory Commission.

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