Part 6 of a series.
In his January 16 column for The New Yorker, Jay Caspian Kang wondered: “Is California going through the early stages of a political realignment that has not quite yet shown up in electoral results?” The question wasn’t whether the state “will flip red—it won’t—but whether its residents are becoming increasingly disillusioned with liberal governance at the local and state level.”
In Kang’s view, signs of such “general unease” included the fact that voters in both Oakland and San Francisco effectively deposed their mayors in last November’s election. “Even in Berkeley, where I live,” he wrote, “two long-standing city-council members running for mayor were defeated by an unknown challenger who, as far as I could tell, was a complete unknown to many voters.”
No doubt, the results of the three mayoral elections reflected voter frustration with the status quo.
But in Berkeley, at least, the outcome did not signal disillusionment with “liberal governance at the local and state level.” Quite the contrary: Adena Ishii owed her victory in large part to her joint endorsement from two prominent, locally-based members of the state legislature, State Senator Nancy Skinner and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The candidate called the nod, tendered in mid-September, “a game-changer for our campaign.”
Thanks to that double homage, if she was “a complete unknown to many voters” when she declared her candidacy in November 2023, by Election Day Ishii had gained enough recognition—and more importantly, credibility—to eke out a win over her rivals, Councilmember Sophie Hahn and former Councilmember Kate Harrison.
Her mayoral bid also benefited from the support of a third well-known local politician, Berkeley Democratic Club President and former Berkeley Councilmember Lori Droste. Besides openly doctoring the mayoral candidates’ responses to its questionnaire so as to favor Ishii and slight her rivals, the BDC featured its endorsement of her campaign in its full-color, sixteen-page mailer. The write-up noted the Skinner-Wicks endorsement and was accompanied by a smiling photo of Ishii and the two state legislators.
Before forging these strategic alliances, Ishii may have been completely unknown to the public at large, but thanks to her work with the League of Women Voters, she was a familiar commodity to these power brokers. In Ishii, they recognized a sister politician who hides an authoritarian style behind a rhetoric of inclusiveness. In their case as in hers, the contempt for democratic governance comes to the fore as they advance the Yimby agenda. Far from a political realignment, her victory extended the sway of California’s illiberal liberal establishment.
Ishii’s enablers: Lori Droste
Ishii’s tweet about the explosive October 24 Middle Housing meeting didn’t just express solidarity with the Rashi Kesarwani. The future mayor appended that comment to the tirade that Droste had posted on x the day after the meeting.
As the originator of the Middle Housing concept and its leading Berkeley advocate, Droste had reason enough to weigh in on the October 24 meeting. For one thing, her national reputation as a housing expert (see “Lori’s Recent Accomplishments” on her website) is based on her promotion of the idea.
Her harangue likely had a second motive: defending the former fellow councilmember who’s now her boss. Known to few outside City Hall, since February 2024, Droste has worked 30 hours a week as a legislative assistant to Kesarwani. Her website lists many of her past and current offices, but not that one. The position gives her influence over public policy minus public scrutiny and accountability. On October 25, she played Kesarwani’s attack dog with relish.
Droste began her x thread by reiterating Kesarwani’s charge of assault. Then she derided all the dissident attendees as cranks:
ICYMI: An audience member attempted to assault @RashiKesarwani last night, furious over modest neighborhood changes. Anti-housing anger has reached an absurd level—why the irrational resistance to these common sense housing solutions?
Below this tweet was an uncredited, captioned video clip that was displayed in Savidge’s article, documenting Kesarwani’s encounter with Grove and the unruly crowd.
Next the councilmember-turned-legislative-aide deemed the prospect of further public engagement a delaying tactic driven by opposition to growth:
I introduced the idea of missing middle housing in 2019—almost five years ago. This community has had plenty of time to discuss, understand, and engage with the plan. This isn’t a matter of process; it’s about a refusal to allow our community to welcome more people.
Middle Housing, Droste contended, should be no big deal in Berkeley, at least not to anyone who’s familiar with the city’s townscape and eager to allay its housing woes:
Triplexes, duplexes, and small multiplexes already exist in many neighborhoods and have for decades. They don’t appear overnight, any changes will happen gradually. This is not an extreme shift but a modest, balanced approach to easing our housing crisis.
Specifically:
Missing middle housing helps prevent displacement, stabilize rents, and create diverse neighborhoods. Without it, we’ll see a continued rise in rents, pushing families out and making it even harder to live here.
The call for further community engagement is just a ploy of unnamed politicians egging on marginal rowdies:
And yet, some politicians are stoking fear and anger, demanding more meetings to appease a small but vocal anti-housing group, even after dozens of public discussions. This appeasement only delays progress and fuels unnecessary hostility.
After lauding Kesarwani and other “leaders…who are bravely advocating for balanced, sustainable growth,” Droste concluded with two screenshots of Savidge’s article; praised Berkeleyside for having “call[ed] out” Grove’s “abhorrent behavior;” and held up his triplex home as evidence of his hypocrisy.
Besides the vitriol, what’s most striking is Droste’s misrepresentation of the fight over the meeting’s format as a dispute about the Middle Housing plan itself. The call for further public consultation, she argued, is a cover for opposition to the plan, a last-ditch offensive by people who’ve had ample opportunity voice their criticism.
True, it was late in the game. But the council’s July 2024 approval of the plan was provisional. The game wasn’t over.
In part, Droste’s misleading depiction of the fight reflects her contempt for democratic decisionmaking. This wasn’t the first time she’d voiced such disdain. In 2022, when she was still on the council, Droste proposed consolidating public comment into a single period at the beginning of council meetings and to limit the number of speakers. At the time, the council took group comment on consent items and public comment on each action item on the agenda. The council’s Agenda Committee rejected the idea. Droste chose not to run again for re-election in 2022. In 2023, her item was revived in modified form by Councilmembers Robinson and Wengraf in a proposal that consolidated public comment on all action items into one period at the start of a meeting and allowed for more comment at the meeting’s end.
In an email asking her constituents to oppose the revised proposal, Councilmember Harrison observed:
This proposal means you would have to condense all of your public comments on scores of complex and different items into one single 1-2 minute period. Councilmembers could effectively forget about or ignore your public comment when the item you care about comes up hours later. The public would not have the benefit of an author’s description of the item or the initial council discussion before commenting. The spirit of the Brown Act, which governs public comment in California, is to safeguard the public’s First Amendment rights and to ensure transparency and accountability. Separating public comment from each policy item effectively strips the public of meaningful input. Critical issues around labor or tenant rights, police reform, or the environment do not lend themselves to sound bites.
….
I ran for office to represent and listen to the people of Berkeley. Engaging in hours of robust public testimony and debate comes with the job description. Democracy can be messy and time-intensive; don’t let Council shirk its duty.
In April 2023, the council unanimously rejected the proposal and retained permission for an unlimited number of commenters on each action item as it comes up for deliberation.
To justify her proposed rollback of public comment, Droste cited the lengthiness and lateness of council meetings, which often end after 11 pm. She had a point. But there’s a democratic way to solve that problem: increase the number of meetings. Before Tom Bates became mayor in 2002, the council met more often. An expanded schedule makes even more sense, given that in 2020, Berkeley voters approved a 75 percent increase in the salaries of the mayor and councilmembers—now at $120K-plus and $80K-plus respectively, not counting benefits.
Droste’s aversion to public engagement is also a sign of analytical weakness. If she were confident about the premises of the Middle Housing plan, she would welcome a debate over its provisions.
By debate, I mean a sustained public conversation between proponents of the plan and its well-informed critics. To my knowledge, in the six years since the council approved Droste’s proposal for a study of the Missing Middle concept in April 2019 (Item 32), no such exchange has occurred. None appear among the “Past Events” listed on the city’s online page about “Middle Housing Zoning Changes.” Their absence violates Policy CP-1 in the Citizen Participation Element of Berkeley’s General Plan: “General plans and amendments must originate and proceed with citizens’ groups continuously central to the process.”
If Droste is to be believed, debating the Middle Housing plan, which, she insisted, entails “not an extreme shift but a modest, balanced approach to easing our housing crisis,” would be citizen participation overkill.
The evidence says otherwise. In an article posted by KQED on July 19, 2024, Mayor Jesse Arreguín boasted that the plan would authorize “‘one of the largest upzonings in California.’” KQED also cited Droste herself as saying that the ordinance offered the city “‘a real opportunity to be history makers.’”
Writing in the Berkeley Daily Planet on July 20, 2024, Berkeley resident Nico Calavita, professor emeritus in the Graduate Program in City Planning at San Diego State University, cited an April 21, 2024, article in the California Planning & Development Report. Titled “Berkeley Considers Massive Upzoning,” the article stated that the proposed “upzoning would allow the development of more than 100,000 homes according to one estimate, in a city where there are currently 47,000 homes.”
In a CBS Bay Area News story posted on July 25, the day after the council provisionally approved Middle Housing, Arreguín called the plan “one of the most ambitious rezoning efforts of any city in the United States.”
Droste’s claim for the modesty of her plan is pure spin.
Missing Middle housing: a land use Ponzi scheme
Meanwhile, critics have exposed the shaky foundations of the Middle Housing program and Yimby blanket upzoning at large.
In her opening sally, her February 2019 memo to the council, Droste argued that extensive residential densification would “remedy the city’s legacy of racial discrimination;” encourage “greater socioeconomic diversity;” and “potentially reduce greenhouse gas consumption” by “allowing the production of more homes near jobs centers and transit.”
In a Yimby Action podcast posted a month earlier, Droste gave away the game. There she said that it’s “challenging for people to wrap their heads around” her proposal, “because it’s really wonky.” Her gambit: “If we frame this around social justice, which it 100 percent is, then we can get people aboard.”
Translation: Mobilize support for Missing Middle by presenting densification as a strike against racism and elitism—an argument that people can easily grasp—while obscuring “wonky” specifics such as the elimination of single-family residential zoning that would spark protest.
Writing in the Daily Planet In March 2019, I debunked the social justice pitch for Missing Middle. As described in Droste’s memo, “middle” housing is market-rate housing. Her appeal ignored UCLA economic geographer Michael Storper’s warning that “blanket upzoning” doesn’t lower housing prices. In her zeal to portray single-family zoning as inherently racist, she blotted out African American homeownership in Berkeley.
Here I need to correct an error of my own. Until now, I thought that the neighborhood around San Pablo Park, the site of a famous hub of Black politics and culture had been zoned for single-family homes (R-1) in the mid-twentieth century. I used that to argue that if single-family zoning were racist, that neighborhood could not have existed.
I just learned that the area was actually zoned R-3, but that due to market demand, developers focused on single-family homes.
That’s not the end of the story. When the neighborhood was downzoned to R-1 in 1963, it was done at the behest of the Black residents in the area.
The social justice hype wasn’t the only problem with Droste’s proposal. Her memo also conjured up the sustainability mirage, citing a paper that, according to its authors, three UC climate researchers, “is in no way a prediction of future emissions but rather a scenario for deep GHG abatement.” Droste disregarded UC Planning Professor Karen Chapple’s deep skepticism about the effectiveness of smart growth as a means of reducing private auto use. Finally, she arbitrarily limited her consideration of the evacuation nightmares presented by densification to “the very fire high severity zones as defined by CalFire and/or the City of Berkeley”—which is to say, the hills—when cramming more people into many other areas in town would invite similarly harrowing scenarios during an emergency.
In its catalog of Berkeley’s downzoning sins, the Droste memo alluded to “zoning changes initiated in 1973” that “severely limited” Missing Middle housing types—”duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, bungalow courts, and multiplexes.” She was referring to the voter-approved Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance.
In an April 2019 op-ed published by Berkeleyside, Councilmember Sophie Hahn explained that, rather than “an elitist effort to create affluent and exclusionary enclaves,” the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance was a response to urban renewal that sought “to protect lower-income neighborhoods” from the threat of real estate speculators. She realized that Missing Middle upzoning portended the same threat, which is why she and Harrison tried to have affordability requirements incorporated into the plan.
She also noted that the city’s General Plan states that “[g]eneral plans and amendments must originate and proceed with citizens’ groups continuously central to the process.”
To be clear, Hahn did not categorically reject the Missing Middle concept. Hedging her bets, she said she “appreciat[ed] the vision of Dan Parolek, who coined the term ‘Missing Middle.’” Given the “high” demand “for market-rate housing, especially in family-oriented neighborhoods,” she “look[ed] forward to an honest, thoughtful, and consultative exploration of the possibility of bringing well-designed, contextual units into our residential neighborhoods—without displacement—and inviting more people and families to share the benefits and pleasures of living Berkeley.” Hahn didn’t consider the major source of the high demand for market-rate housing in Berkeley: UC’s incessant growth.
The university’s expansionist agenda was targeted in Carrie Olson’s open letter to the council regarding the proposed elimination of single-family zoning. Writing in the Daily Planet as the President of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, Olson referenced the “dramatic increase in students” called for in UCB’s then-latest Long Range Development Plan. She argued that
[e]ven if the [proposed] Resolution caused the construction of new rental units, recent history demonstrates that new rental housing is being consumed by the University; the solution is not to build more rentals that the University will take over but work to limit student population so non-students have [a] chance at securing rental units.
Olson also referenced older history,
namely the development surge of the 1950s and 60s, during which many of Berkeley’s single-family homes were demolished in favor of ugly apartment buildings that have neither stood the test of time (being, among other things, largely seismically unsafe) and that (when built) neither created more neighborhood diversity nor provided more affordable housing.
It was in response to that surge that Berkeley voters passed the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance. Olson cautioned that the elimination of R-1[single family residential] zoning would invite another speculative land rush that inflated housing costs. It would also “in all likelihood result in demolition of historic and cultural resources in favor of lot-line-to-lot-line condo boxes”—an outcome that would destroy “part of what makes Berkeley unique.”
BAHA, Olson emphasized, “does not oppose efforts to create more affordable dense housing” in town. But it wants to “ensure that whatever housing is built…honors Berkeley’s unique architectural heritage.” She called for
a current and full examination of Berkeley’s current population and residential areas (including racial and economic diversity), who actually is living in or has access to renting in newly constructed apartment complexes, a census of existing under-utilized properties (empty apartment buildings etc.), and the impact of UCB’s current Long Range Development Plan…on available affordable housing.
Housing affordability and architectural heritage aside, BAHA raised another critical issue that never appears in the rhetoric or legislation around Middle Housing: Berkeley, Olson observed, lacks the infrastructure “capable of sustaining a huge surge in population and high-rise buildings in all R-1 areas of the city.”
Then there’s the shady “quadplex” standard. Recall that in the celebratory tweet she posted on July 24, 2024, the day after the council’s provisional approval of the Middle Housing ordinance, Kaserwani wrote: “The goal “is to allow up to a 4-bed house, which can be quite affordable when rented to a group of students, young professionals, etc., but discourage McMansions.”
The quadplex goal appeared in Droste’s 2019 memo calling for a “Missing Middle Report, which asked the report study “[a]llowing the possibility of existing houses/footprints/zoning envelopes to be divided up to 4 units.” The memo attached a 2017 Berkeleyside op-ed by architect and Missing Middle promoter Daniel Parolek extolling fourplexes.
It reappeared in February 2021 in a proposal submitted by Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin, and Arreguín for consideration at the March 1 meeting of the council’s Land Use Policy Committee.
What was devious about the item was its failure to mention the expansionary effects of the state Density Bonus Law. Those effects were noted in Councilmember Susan Wengraf’s February 27, 2021, newsletter to her District 7 constituents:
The City Council is considering what is now titled “Inclusive Neighborhood Scale Zoning”, a sweeping and radical change to eliminate single family zoning in Berkeley and allow four unit (quad plex) development in all residential zones throughout the city, by right (without review or citizen input). This legislation is being brought forward by Councilmembers Droste, Kesarwani, and Taplin, and Mayor Arreguín. It will be discussed at the Land Use Policy Committee meeting on Monday, March 1st at 1:30pm.
If approved, all single family (R-1) parcels in Berkeley would have the potential to be developed as quadplexes with the addition of an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) and a Junior ADU, for a total of 6 units. Depending on how these units are counted, this may qualify the project for a density bonus that could actually yield as many as 8 units per parcel. There is no requirement for yards or for off-street parking. These projects would be approved ministerially (over-the-counter), with no review by neighbors or the zoning board or right of appeal.
Thanks to a broad outcry mobilized by Wengraf and others, Droste withdrew the item.
Droste and her crew lost that skirmish, but they were already on their way to winning the quadplex war. They squirreled away the quadplex goal in Droste’s “Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning” that, as amended by Arreguín, the council unanimously approved on February 23, 2021. One of the resolution’s many Whereases stated that “the League of California Cities called for cities to allow up to fourplexes in single family zones in their Blueprint for More Housing 2020” (so what?). There was no mention of the State Density Bonus Law.
The quadplex goal was also embedded in an item co-authored by Droste, Kesarwani, Arreguín, and Taplin entitled “Initiation of Public Process and Zoning Concepts for 2023-2031 Housing Element Update” that appeared on the council’s March 25, 2021, agenda.
In an article published by the Daily Planet on March 14, 2021, architect and former member of the Planning Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board Patrick Sheahan dissected the quadplex concept, focusing on its proponents’ fallacious claims about affordability:
What the ‘quadplex’ proposal does not provide is affordable (low-cost) housing, which is the real housing need, not more market-rate housing, currently in over-supply.
The State Density Bonus provides affordable units, in exchange for a 50% bonus in unit count in addition to a number of waivers and concessions, including increased height and bulk and reduced setbacks, for 15%* extremely low-income units. A benefit of the State Density Bonus is that units must be located on site, unlike Berkeley’s affordable housing requirement, which allows 100% in lieu fees to avoid providing required 20% affordable units in the project. *Because State Density Bonus affordable units are calculated on the base project, the percentage of low-cost units may net only about 7% of the total project.
What the ‘quadplex’ proposal does not admit is that, under State Bonus Density and ADU laws additional units are allowed: 4 unit base units + 2 Density Bonus units + 2 ADU/JADU units = 8 units. In return, 1 affordable unit is required, along with waivers and concessions for height and bulk. There is no limit on the number of bedrooms per unit, and 6 bedroom units, with minimal living space, are becoming common for market rate projects. This formula presents an attractive opportunity to for-profit developers, and for the neighborhood a project taller and bigger than allowable under current development standards, with the detrimental conflicts that out of scale projects bring.
Sheahan pointed to alternatives that provide genuinely affordable housing and neighborhood-friendly design, including “non-profit equity and non-equity co-ops,…taking profit out of the equation” and “lowering housing costs for renters and owners.”
In an apparent nod to Sheahan, Item 1 on the March 25, 2021, agenda, unanimously approved by the council, stated:
The Housing element should encourage alternative housing models including cooperatives, land trusts, and social housing concepts as well as homeownership models. Equity in access and affordability of housing should be a key priority in the development of policies and zoning.
No such palliative appears in the Middle Housing resolution that the council provisionally approved on July 23, 2024. Neither does the quadplex goal. Buried deep in Planning Director Jordan Klein’s “Revised Agenda Material for Supplemental Packet 2” was a passing acknowledgment of the State Density Bonus’s expansionary effects:
State Density Bonus Law grants certain allowances for projects that include a stipulated amount of affordable housing. Such projects are permitted to include more units and to waive certain development standards, including maximum height, lot coverage, and open space requirements. Projects that utilize State Density Bonus are typically larger than the projects that are encouraged by the proposed zoning changes, but a project could not be prevented from using State Density Bonus under the proposed zoning changes.
A footnote stated: “The smallest project that has utilized State Density Bonus in the past two years in Berkeley included eleven units.” Klein did not analyze the potential specific effects of the SDB law on the proposed zoning changes, nor did he specify that law’s 50 percent bonus-in-unit count.
Nico Calavita’s July 20, 2024, critique of the Middle Housing proposal as it was presented to the council with the Planning Commission’s amendments didn’t explicitly criticize the quadplex goal. Rather, after highlighting the enormity of the proposed changes, Calavita said he favored “the densification of single-family neighborhoods with ‘gentle density,” i.e., with duplexes, triplexes and townhomes,” adding that “[t]hese typologies, with front and backyards and housing facing the street, provide much greater densities while being compatible with single-family housing.”
One problem, then, with the Middle Housing proposal was that the density it sought was not gentle. For starters, it “practically [eliminat[es] backyards. Trees will be cut down, new additional impervious surfaces will be put in place, causing temperatures to increase.” These changes, Calavita wrote, would foster social injustice. “As a National Geographic article ‘Bating the Heat’ (7/21) pointed out, wealthy neighborhoods are shady and cool while temperatures rise in lower income neighborhoods, where usually lots are much smaller.” Calavita’s point about the virtual elimination of backyards is nicely illustrated by the overhead views of two sites, 1911 9th Street and 2411 Fifth Street, both in West Berkeley, touted by planning staff at the October 24 meetings as examples of new middle housing projects.
Calavita flagged other equity issues.
It is very likely that middle housing will be concentrated in lower income neighborhoods. As reported in the November 1, 2023 memo to the Planning Commission, Berkeley city planners met with Missing Middle Architects who indicated that, since densification as proposed is based on the demolition of existing structures, “middle housing projects are most feasible on lots that are vacant or with a relatively low-value existing home.”
If successful, then, it is likely that middle housing—which is market-rate housing—will lead to the gentrification of neighborhoods with “relatively low-value existing homes.” The recently approved Demolition Ordinance will protect existing affordable housing units that will be torn down as part of middle housing developments. That is admirable. However, the potential remains for a massive influx of market-rate housing in lower income neighborhoods.
A larger problem was that “broad upzonings” such as the one contemplated by Middle Housing “treat neighborhoods that are socio-economically and geographically diverse the same,” but “the diverse effects on various neighborhoods of the city” hadn’t been analyzed.
An even larger problem was that “allowing greater densities will lead to higher land values, making existing property values go up…(existing single-family homes will become more expensive,”—just the opposite effect of a policy that supposedly sought greater housing affordability.
Given these issues, Calavita advised that “Council must not approve the proposed ordinance at this time.” Instead,
council should create mechanisms to widely publicize the proposal in ways that the general public can easily understand (especially density bonus law implications), including possible socioeconomic, equity, and environmental impacts.
Or, if the council did approve Middle Housing,
they should, as part of the adoption, mandate that in three to four years, the city prepare a study on how and where middle housing—and demolitions related to it—is being built, at what affordability levels, if state density bonus law was utilized, and with recommendations for possible changes.
Local objections aside, Since Droste launched her middle housing campaign in 2019, the larger Yimby upzoning agenda has met growing scholarly skepticism. Besides Storper and his co-author, London School of Economics professor Andrés Rodríguez-Pose (here and here), critics include economist Cameron Murray and geographer Peter Phibbs (here); University of British Columbia Planning Professor Patrick Condon; and UC Irvine economist Schuyler Louie, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco economist John A. Mondragon, and UC San Diego economist Johannes Wieland, the authors of a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in March 2025. Even supporters of densification such as Mercatus Center Senior Affiliated Scholar Kevin Erdmann and Urban Institute Research Associate Yonah Freemark, have questioned upzoning’s effectiveness.
Droste and her cadres don’t acknowledge, much less engage, any of the criticism. Instead, they attack their local opponents as elitist, racist, irrational, fringy, and enraged to the point of violence. They simply ignore the scholarly skeptics.
According to her website, Droste has a Master’s degree in public policy and has “taught courses on political under-representation and policy analysis at Mills College.” She ought to know, then, that unlike in power politics, the measure of policy analysis isn’t how many people support an idea but the quality of the evidence offered in its support. Blowing off their critics, she and her cadres show the Middle Housing plan for what it is: a stack of unproven and arguably unprovable claims—in essence, a land use Ponzi scheme.
Ishii’s enablers: Wicks and Skinner
Shortly after their mid-September endorsement of Ishii’s campaign, Skinner and Wicks spoke at a fundraiser in the candidate’s backyard. An October 11 post on her X page displays captioned clips (here and here) of their speeches.
After praising Ishii’s leadership at the League of Women Voters, her skill at running a fellowship [for The Organizing and Leadership Academy], “and in so many other of her roles,” Skinner said: “The mayor really is the person whose role is supposed to be pull the community together, pull the council together, pull the staff together and give the staff the respect so they can do their jobs and deliver the policies that you approve.”
What about policies “we” don’t approve? What’s the role of the mayor there?
Wicks said that it was during her first ran for the Assembly in 2018 that she got to know Ishii:
[She] was the constant professional at the League of Women Voters….There’s that sense of maturity that is so critical, and when Nancy speaks about bringing people together, being a collaborator, it’s that level of confidence and maturity and adultness [sic] in the room that we need in our mayor of Berkeley.
To say that one person is “the adult in the room” implies that everyone else is childish and needs to be disciplined.
It may seem unfair to cite these brief, off-the-cuff remarks as evidence, but such comments, uttered in a friendly setting, are often more revealing than scripted statements. In any case, a full accounting of Skinner’s and Wicks’ autocratic records would fill a book. Below I note only a few of their most egregious maneuvers, particularly those aimed at Berkeley and housing development.
In 2022, Skinner and Wicks joined other members of the Legislature in introducing SB 118/AB 168, a budget trailer bill that eliminated increases in enrollment at campuses of higher education as constituting “a project” under the California Environmental Quality Act. The bill effectively quashed a 2018 lawsuit filed by Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods that called for enrollment at UC Berkeley to be capped until the university had analyzed the impacts of massive enrollment increases. (For a discussion of how UCB growth pressures housing availability in Berkeley, see Part 4 of this series.)
Besides squelching local concerns about UC’s relentless expansion, in advancing SB 118/AB 168, the legislators exploited two devious mechanisms.
First, the budget trailer bill workaround. Unlike policy bills, budget bills do not have to pass through committee hearings and then floor hearings at each house. And, as in the case of SB 118/AB 168, trailer budget bills often have nothing to do with budget. As the Inland Regional Center staffer Jennifer Cummings explained,
In practice, trailer bills have become vehicles to semi-secretly do things that might otherwise be difficult to do. They are drafted and quickly enacted with minimal exposure to the public, the press, and those affected by their provisions.
The other devious procedure was the gut-and-amend process, whereby legislators completely replace the language in an existing bill with new text. Gut-and-amend, wrote AP staffer Don Thompson,
allows lawmakers to bypass the usual deadlines for bill introductions and amendments, while circumventing a public review process that allows those interested in a particular piece of legislation to testify during committee hearings or write a lawmaker with their concerns.
SB 118/AB 168 was a gut-and-amend. From the start, these bills referred to the budget, but originally they addressed changes to child care and development programs.
Wicks’ 2023 bill AB 1307, which quashed another lawsuit objecting to UCB’s expansion, was also a gut-and-amend product. Once again, to accommodate the campus’s projected growth, the Legislature narrowed CEQA, this time eliminating noise generated by housing project occupants and their guests as a significant environmental impact.
AB 1307 was also an “urgency bill,” which exempted it from the legislature’s usual calendar deadlines. Regular policy bills take effect the January 1 after the governor has signed them; urgency bills take effect immediately.
Skinner and Wicks authored other impactful, anti-democratic bills that went through the Legislature’s regular vetting processes.
In 2017, Skinner introduced SB 167. Drafted by California Yimby Executive Director Brian Hanlon, SB 167 weakened local land use authority by changing the evidentiary standard for determining whether a proposed housing development is consistent with a city’s zoning. The new, “reasonable person” standard, observed the California chapter of the American Planning Association, effectively allows developers to “make fundamental land use decisions.”
SB 167 also strengthened the developer hand at the expense of local government by altering the Housing Accountability Act’s provisions about attorney’s fees.
Two years later, Skinner introduced “The Housing Crisis Act of 2019,” SB 330. This labyrinthine measure limited to five the number of public hearings with respect to a proposed housing development that complies with a city’s general plan and zoning standards at the time the developer’s application is deemed complete. Anyone who’s been involved with a controversial housing project, even a small one, knows that five meetings are not enough for adequate public input.
SB 330 defined “hearing” to include
any public hearing, workshop, or similar meeting conducted by the city or county with respect to the housing development project, whether by the legislative body of the city or county, the planning agency established pursuant to Section 65100, or any other agency, department, board, commission, or any other designated hearing officer or body of the city or county, or any committee or subcommittee thereof,
including both “hearings” and appeals that are continued to a later date.
To count meetings that are continued as additional “hearings” is out-and-out manipulative. And that’s just one of SB 330’s anti-democratic provisions.
In 2022, Skinner’s SB 8 extended SB 330’s sunset from 2025 to 2030 and in some cases, to 2034, as well as tightening other aspects of the original bill. SB 8 was endorsed by the League of Women Voters of California, as well as Facebook, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, California Yimby, and other pro-development organizations.
In a late December interview published by The Berkeley Times, Ishii told R.Todd Kerr that she “‘wants to be known as the “Civic Engagement” Mayor’.” Kerr asked: “Who are your cherished teachers/educators? Who are your heroes?” In reply, she named among others Nancy Skinner, who, she said,
has also been very helpful. And now that she’s retired from [the California State Senate], I plan on seeking her counseling even more often.
Skinner, who didn’t hold a single town hall with her constituents during her last seven years in the State Senate, seems like an unlikely source of advice about community engagement, at least if the goal is to encourage it.
As for Wicks: her 2024 bill, AB 1893, is another voluminous law that drastically curbed local discretion over housing development. Originated by Attorney General Rob Bonta and endorsed by the League of Women Voters of California, AB 1893 fortified the Builder’s Remedy, whereby a local jurisdiction that hasn’t met its trumped-up, Regional Housing Needs Allocation loses its authority to deny a proposed housing development, even if the project conflicts with its general plan and zoning ordinances. Besides expanding the applicability of the “reasonable person” evidentiary standard, Wicks’ bill reduced the affordability requirements in a Builder’s Remedy project.
Housing aside, Wicks’ autocratic sensibilities are reflected in her complicity in killing AB 1999, the 2024 bill that would have lowered PG&E profiteering. The San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board explained how in June, acting as chair of the powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee, Wicks used another devious legislative maneuver: the suspense file, which allows the Appropriations Committee to kill a bill with no explanation or even a reference to the measure.
Of the 668 bills on the Assembly Appropriations Committee’s suspense file, it was the only one to receive a roll-call vote Thursday. According to longtime Sacramento lobbyist Chris Micheli, it was also the only bill for which committee chairperson Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, didn’t have a recommendation as to whether it should pass or not.
Ultimately, only two lawmakers — Democratic Assembly Members Tim Grayson of Concord and Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz — voted in favor of AB1999. The remaining 13 committee members didn’t vote — including Wicks and Assembly Member Matt Haney, D-San Francisco.
The Chronicle called Wicks’ and Haney’s failure to take a stand a “cowardly cop-out.”
In another sneaky move, last August Wicks killed her own proposal to force Google and other tech companies to pay news companies for their content. Snuffed out in closed-door negotiations, AB 886 and its companion, Steve Glazer’s SB 3127, had bipartisan support in both houses of the Legislature.
As Riverside Record publisher and founder Alicia Ramirez wrote in a Chronicle op-ed, the two bills “incorporated the input of journalists’ unions and independent publishers like me—voices and interests that were conspicuously left out of the handshake agreement that has preempted our public efforts in the 11th hour.”
The deal established a “News Transformation Fund” financed by California public money and Google, focused on preserving and expanding California-based journalism, and administered by the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. It also created a National A.I. Innovation Accelerator to be funded by Google and administered by a private nonprofit.
Because the agreement was not a bill, the legislators never voted on it.
Wicks’ office hailed the deal as “a [sic] first-in-the-nation partnership with the State, news publishers, major tech companies, and philanthropy.”
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project had a different take. “‘This is the wrong way to make artificial intelligence policy,’” Hepner told the Chronicle: “You do not make AI: policy in shady backroom deals that are shielded from public oversight that are announced in a manner that doesn’t give any transparency to the details of what this is.’”
Also speaking to the Chronicle, Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, said he was “worried” that the agreement “actually causes harm to journalists, instead of helping us in any way.” Pearce noted that the public-private partnership created with Google allowed the company’s contributions to be tax-deductible.
Finally, like Ishii, Wicks appreciatively retweeted Lori Droste’s rant about the raucous October 24 meeting on Middle Housing. On October 25, Wicks wrote:
Violence, or acting in a threatening manner has no place in political discourse or our democratic process.
@RashiKesarwani is one of the most thoughtful & effective housing leaders in the Bay Area, a woman of true honesty and integrity. Those who chose to act in this way should be ashamed of themselves.
The plural pronouns indicate that, like Droste, Wicks imputed violent behavior to all of the meeting’s dissident attendees.
Her tweet got pushback on X from two Berkeleyans.
Budd Shenkin wrote:
Buffy, the process for this zoning change is completely flawed, very little community input, and the plan is not at all nuanced. Let’s not get diverted by a guy grabbing the mike. This needs far more work, and votes, not a top-down shove down the throat for high density.
Laurie Nardinelli wrote:
We were there because we favor increased density and increase[d] housing but want to ensure new regulations don’t result in areas of treeless concrete jungles in West Berkeley. Kesarwani should not have called us to a “meeting” if she intended it only to be a one way presentation.
Wicks did not reply.
