On Tuesday, March 15, the Oakland city council approved moving forward with the latest iteration of luxury housing at the E12th Street parcel, public land that was created when the roads and bridges around the south end of Lake Merritt were recently reconfigured. The vote was 6 to 1 in favor of the new luxury tower proposal by developer UrbanCore, with a smaller number of affordable units tacked onto the side. Only Noel Gallo voted against the new proposal. Rebecca Kaplan recused herself after having received an apparently illegal campaign contribution from UrbanCore in 2014. In supporting the second UrbanCore design for luxury housing on the city property, the council rejected The People's Proposal , an alternative plan for affordable housing with no market-rate units that would benefit long-term Oakland residents and the broader community rather than wealthy newcomers. Continuing the long fight for affordable housing on the land, and following the revelation that the city council knew their original proposed sale to UrbanCore was illegal , housing activists showed up to the March 15 council meeting to vociferously oppose the new proposal and succeeded at shutting down the meeting, at least temporarily. The council and Oakland police responded by forcing activists from council's chamber, then holding their discussion and vote in Mayor Libby Schaaf's office, out of the public eye. Critics question whether the city has once again run afoul of public meeting laws and vow to keep the fight alive for "public land for public good." A final vote on the proposed sale to UrbanCore will happen later this year. Below is the E12th Coalition's description of the the offensive monstrosity that the council approved.

3 Reasonable Questions About EBALDC’s Segregated Housing Proposal

In case you missed it,

all the public pressure to ‪#‎SaveE12th‬ from a luxury condo tower appears to have pushed our opponents to a new low.

Proposing SEGREGATED HOUSING.

Thanks to our organizing for ‪#‎PublicLandforPublicGood‬ (which now includes our own community-sourced proposal for 100% affordable housing), the luxury tower team has been forced to include affordable units in their proposal for the land, as well.

And this is how they decided to do it.

Yes, you are seeing that correctly. Still a luxury tower… plus a small box of affordable units kneeling humbly down below.

It’s New York’s infamous “poor door” — now banned, and rightly so — times a thousand.

In light of this development, I have a few questions.

1. What the Fuck?

I CANNOT MAKE THIS UP. THIS IS A REAL PROPOSAL for the piece of public land at E12th. Look in the SF biz journal if you don’t believe me. There, Joshua Simon, Executive Director of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), explains:

The affordable and market-rate apartments are in separate buildings for financing reasons, but [EBALDC executive director] Simon said that the design would seek to integrate the affordable and market-rate portions through common spaces.

2. Are You Fucking Serious?

What they call “workforce housing,” I would call “servants’ quarters.”

Why?

Because it is literally a small box of affordable units tacked on to the luxury tower they are still proposing to build.

And given the trends of gentrification in the Bay Area, this “workforce housing” would likely house people in the service industries — washing dishes, tending bar, nannying kids, fixing Priuses, vacuuming offices, and dry-cleaning clothes, quite possibly for the luxury tower residents who happen to live right next door in $3,200/month 1-bedroom units.

3. What On Earth Are You Thinking?

To justify this segregated housing monstrosity (oh, my bad — “mixed-income proposal”), the luxury tower team UrbanCore + EBALDC just unveiled a laughably astroturf web site (complete with colorful paper cutouts of people instead of actual human supporters) championing the “workforce housing project” (a.k.a. servants’ quarters).

See their whole web site here.

Funnily enough, there is NO MENTION OF THE LUXURY TOWER THAT WOULD WAVE ITS TOWERLY DICK IN THE FACES OF LOW-INCOME RESIDENTS EVERY DAY. In addition to pushing rents sky-high for the whole neighborhood.

Like, really EBALDC? Really?

I would expect this kind of deceit from UrbanCore, who has bribed workers and misled non-English-speaking seniors in efforts to drum up support for their development. And I’m not shocked that BRIDGE, another affordable housing developer, is proposing a tower even though the community clearly and expressly DOES NOT WANT ONE.

But the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC)? really?

It might be time to rethink your whole entire moral compass. Cuz this is disgusting.

Pull out. Walk away. Work on other projects that you’re good at. Support the People’s Proposal that has been determined by an engaged and transparent community process.

You want good projects on your record, not segregation for fuck’s sake.