Call on Berkeley to legalize substantially more homes Solano, College, and North Shattuck!
Berkeley City Council
Berkeley is a city of contrasts. It has built thousands of new apartments in the last five years, yet it also exhibits extreme differences between its exclusive, tree-lined neighborhoods and its formerly redlined neighborhoods. The city was at the forefront of integrating its schools, but it is also where single-family zoning, for racialized reasons, began. It was a hub of social protest in the 1970s, but in the same decade the city made apartments illegal to keep out people of diverse economic and social backgrounds.
This contrast also played out in Berkeley's housing element, its state-mandated eight-year housing plan. While Berkeley did a solid job of planning for enough housing across the city to meet its goals, the initial plan was to put more than half of that housing in its lowest-income neighborhoods and only 3% of that housing in its wealthiest neighborhoods. This practice goes against a state requirement to affirmatively further fair housing, which means that all neighborhoods, especially high-resource and exclusive neighborhoods, need to contribute to housing growth. Affirmatively furthering fair housing means that you can't put housing in redlined neighborhoods and leave wealthy neighborhoods as de facto gated communities, preserved in amber against change.
Affirmatively furthering fair housing isn't just important because it sounds more fair; building more housing in high-resource neighborhoods turns out to have a huge positive impact on people's lives. Studies have shown that one of the biggest predictors of lifetime success for children isn't their family's wealth; it's actually the ZIP code they grew up in.
Coming back to Berkeley's housing element, in response to feedback that Berkeley was not affirmatively furthering fair housing, the city committed to upzoning three commercial corridors in some of its most exclusive neighborhoods: Solano, College, and North Shattuck. The specifics were left extremely vague, and now we come to the point of figuring out what areas will get upzoned and by how much. The city planning department has put forward an initial proposal that, to be blunt, is pretty disappointing. The base zoning is only for three to six stories in height, and it only upzones parcels directly on these three streets—it leaves out all of the adjoining blocks. This is particularly frustrating because many of the parcels on these streets are difficult or unlikely to be developed into housing.
For that reason, we're calling on Berkeley to do more: to allow for greater height and to upzone a wider area. We believe that the city of Berkeley should stand for integration, for doing its part to solve the housing crisis, and for protecting the environment by increasing housing in neighborhoods where residents can walk to shops, restaurants, and transit. NIMBYs are saying that more housing will ruin these neighborhoods, but we know better: more housing is actually what's going to save these neighborhoods from turning into ghost towns. More people will create vibrant, thriving business districts.
One of the reasons why affirmatively furthering fair housing is so difficult is that when you upzone a neighborhood full of wealthy homeowners, those homeowners have the resources to fight the change. We're seeing it play out before our very eyes. That's why it's so important to take action for upzoning these neighborhoods today.
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To:
Berkeley City Council
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Mayor and Council,
We applaud the effort to upzone North Shattuck, College, and Solano Avenues. However, our values move us to say that Berkeley's current upzoning proposal for these corridors falls far short of what's needed to address our city's legacy of exclusion. While we support bringing more housing to these corridors, as Berkeley committed to in its Housing Element, the minimal scope being considered results in reinforcing the very segregation Berkeley claims to oppose.
The numbers tell the story: Without these corridors, Berkeley's draft Housing Element located only 3% of new housing in its highest-income neighborhoods, compared to 55% in its lowest-income neighborhoods. That isn't housing justice—it's modern-day segregation.
For over a century, Berkeley has used zoning as a tool of racial and economic exclusion. Restrictive single-family zoning for some of our most desirable neighborhoods—those with parks, shops, and tree-lined streets—has systematically locked out working families and communities of color. Today's limited upzoning proposals continue this pattern by restricting new housing to busy arterial streets while preserving exclusive residential areas just blocks away. Furthermore, research has consistently shown that children living in high-resource neighborhoods see better outcomes later in life, regardless of their own family's income—yet our current zoning keeps these opportunity-rich areas accessible only to those who can afford million-dollar, and multi-million-dollar, homes. This inaccessibility is playing out before our very eyes—Solano runs through Thousand Oaks, the Bay Area’s fastest-aging neighborhood.
Berkeley must do better. We call on you to:
1. Zone for meaningful density—at least seven stories, or, better yet, no height limits. Current proposals generate too little housing to meaningfully impact affordability or access. Every additional story creates homes that teachers, service workers, and young families might actually afford. Berkeley's housing shortage forces these workers to live in car-dependent suburbs, deepening regional inequality and lengthening their commutes to serve our community.
2. Enable similarly dense housing within three blocks of each corridor, not just the arterial streets themselves. It’s just as transit-accessible to live two or three blocks from a transit line as to live on the line. Upzoning more areas around these lines will greatly increase the number of people these neighborhoods can welcome, and who will take on car-free or car-light lifestyles. If Berkeley truly cares about climate action and supporting transit, then it will find ways to open up these transit-accessible neighborhoods to more people.
3. Reject design restrictions that prioritize aesthetics over housing access. Do not add step-downs, excessive setbacks, or other limitations that reduce housing capacity to protect the "character" of neighborhoods that gained that character through exclusion. We cannot solve our housing crisis by prioritizing the aesthetic preferences of existing residents over the housing needs of working families. Furthermore, these restrictions do not maintain character, and are actually out of step with, the architecture of the neighborhood. Berkeley’s historic buildings were built before step-downs and setbacks were legally required. We also should not be afraid to shade solar panels—it is far more effective climate action to house more people connected by active transportation to jobs, school, and shopping than it is to maximize existing rooftop solar on single-family homes.
Berkeley cannot claim progressive values while maintaining exclusionary zoning. Our current approach asks: "How little can we change while technically complying with our Housing Element commitments?" The right question is: "How can we open Berkeley's opportunity-rich neighborhoods to everyone?"
Let’s make this upzoning meaningful. We can create vibrant, people-forward commercial districts that support local businesses, working families, and the climate. Future generations will thank us.