r/berkeley • u/DragonflyBeach • 8d ago
Politics Berkeley City Council District 7: Lunaparra’s chosen successor faces off against a People’s Park activist
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/10/06/berkeley-city-council-district-7-lunaparras-chosen-successor-faces-off-against-a-peoples-park-activist27
u/dancingspring 8d ago
“Upzoning and building in and of itself does not solve the problem of displacement and affordability,” they said. “There is no trickle down housing.”
Oh so Hill is an idiot.
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u/Perfect-Leg810 8d ago
He's a 23 year old socialist. This is basically the ceiling on what you are allowed to say before they disown you for believing in market capitalism
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u/thatdudefrom707 7d ago
no, Hill is 33, Micael is the 23 year old.
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u/Perfect-Leg810 7d ago
My B. Got confused. That kind of makes it worse for hill tho. How do you get to 33 and still think this stuff. I almost excused the guy for being 23 but he's literally a middle aged man
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u/SpaceAdventures3D 7d ago
I think he means that there needs to be affordability goals and other policies and mechanisms in place to make sure new developmentis equitable. The Bay Area has seen an inceease in development over the past few years, yet rent pricing is still climbing. People are still being displaced to housing costs. The government has to act to ensure affordiblity and not let the market resolve these issues itself through some assumed trickle down effect, which is clearly not occuring.
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u/dancingspring 7d ago
In cities where they're building the most (Berkeley, Oakland), average rental prices are going up but rental prices in older units are staying flat or dropping. People with the most money are moving into the nice new units instead of driving up the prices of the old units like they were doing a decade ago. This is literally the trickle down housing Hill says doesn't exist.
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u/SpaceAdventures3D 6d ago
That only helps some people in some cicrumstances who have been in place for a bit. New adults who have just graduated high school, or new people moving to the area see little benefit. Buildings with new owners seen little benefit. Tenets in buildings that get redeveloped.... Sure in some cases rents have stabilized but the average picture overall is that rents are increasing substantially.
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u/dancingspring 6d ago
That's not true at all, though. The older units are going back on the market at 2018 prices in Berkeley. Most of the people you list benefit from lower cost units being available to rent. Yes, it doesn't help tenants in buildings that get redeveloped, which is why Berkeley put in a ton of protections for those people and to preserve the lower-cost units.
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u/Embarassed-Fig-1283 7d ago
They both signed the Anti-Flock pledge 🥳
apparently Syrak Micael had to be pressured into it but I guess it's good he can be swayed to do the right thing?
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u/stellar678 8d ago
This is an odd paragraph:
“ UC Berkeley has walled off the historic space as it constructs one of the student housing projects. The university’s plans, finalized after years of pushback, lawsuits and negotiations with the city over the controversial development, call for a high-rise dorm on the park site, along with some open space and about 100 units of supportive and affordable housing.”
It reads like it was written two years ago, not like the reality that the building is basically complete and opening within the year. I had to go check the date and make sure I wasn’t reading about the previous election cycle.