As the Arctic Icebergs Melt, So Does Political Opposition to Housing [in some places anyway]

This article is in Rooflines – The Shelterforce Blog

  Posted in Rooflines by Randy Shaw on June 20, 2017

“On June 13, San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee signed HOME SF into law. The district supervisor-sponsored measure will add 16,000 housing units in the next two decades, 5,000 of which will be affordable.”

“On that night in Berkeley, a large turnout of pro-housing activists stopped the Berkeley City Council’s plans to halt new housing. In response to grassroots pressure, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin announced before the meeting that the agenda item promoting downzoning was “greatly misunderstood” and that the city ‘cannot put roadblocks in the way of new housing.’”

But the tide has turned. People are battling the politics of exclusion. They recognize that while artificially restricting the housing supply is great for profiting those who already own property, it’s not so good for those paying sky-high rents or who have been priced out of the city altogether. As Supervisor Katy Tang stated at the signing ceremony for HOME SF, if San Francisco ‘does not continue to provide affordable housing for our middle income households, they will continue to leave and we will no longer have a middle class.’”

Emphasis added by the Thriving Communities blog editor.

Read the Full Article in Roofline

NOTE: The photo posted with this blog was posted by the Thriving Communities blog editor and was not posted by Shelterforce.

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