Berkeley Council Scales Down Major Housing Reform of Single-Family Zoning

After a contentious and, at times, unruly five-hour meeting, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday night to scale down a proposal to add small apartment buildings in most single-family neighborhoods.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín had called the original Middle Housing proposal “one of the largest residential up-zonings in the state of California.” It would have allowed up to three-story apartment buildings with an unlimited number of units, which, in practice, might have ranged from two apartments to a dozen or more per lot, depending on the size of the property.

Instead, the proposal the council unanimously advanced Tuesday imposes density limits. For a typical 5,000-square-foot lot, it would permit five to seven units per property, with neighborhoods currently zoned as single-family on the lower end and areas that already allow greater density permitting more units.

Councilmember Ben Bartlett, representing a district with more existing apartment buildings, questioned whether the new proposal would achieve the stated goal of the Middle Housing plan: rewriting the racist legacy of single-family zoning.

In 1916, Berkeley became the first city in the country to adopt single-family zoning, a policy implemented in part to bar a Black-owned dance hall from opening in the city’s Elmwood neighborhood. Research has shown that jurisdictions with more single-family-only neighborhoods also have higher degrees of racial segregation.

“I’m just wondering what we’re doing here,” Bartlett said. “It looks like what we’re doing here today is maintaining the status quo and exempting the very-resourced neighborhoods from integrating.”

The amended proposal exempts the city’s wealthier hills neighborhoods — where white residents make up 70% of the population, compared with roughly 50% of the population citywide — until the fire department can evaluate the area’s evacuation routes, which is expected later this year.

The decision followed impassioned pleas from many hills residents on Tuesday urging the council to resist adding more housing to the area, which is largely in high fire-hazard zones. Several pointed to memories of the deadly 1991 Tunnel Fire, which killed 25 people, injured 150 others and destroyed more than 3,300 homes and buildings.

“Let’s not sugarcoat the stakes here,” hills resident Russ Mitchell said. “There could be burning bodies … and if the Planning Commission and City Council passes this [proposal], all that mayhem will be on your shoulders.”

Other opponents of the proposal said adding market-rate housing to lower-income neighborhoods without setting some of those units as affordable housing would further accelerate gentrification, as developers would be more likely to build in areas where property values are lowest.

“The African American small property owners will be further harmed by painful gentrification,” said Deborah Matthews of the community advocacy group South Berkeley Now. Matthews urged the council to delay passage of the proposal until more work could be done to support lower-income homeowners. “We must provide those who have experienced redlining the same leverage to upgrade their homes … and not just have the properties go to new speculators.”

However, newly elected Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra countered those concerns, saying that not adding housing was already pushing out residents of color. Over the past half-century, the portion of Black residents in Berkeley has steadily declined, dropping from 23% of the population in 1970 to less than 8% in 2020, according to the census.

“Our current policies are actively worsening gentrification. Our status quo is actively displacing our poorer residents,” Lunaparra said, adding that by limiting the supply of new housing, “we are artificially increasing the prices of homes across the city, benefiting landlords and homeowners.”

Jordan Klein, director of planning and development in Berkeley, noted it was unlikely the proposed policy change would result in rampant redevelopment. Over the past six years, the city received only 25 applications for middle-housing projects — developments ranging from two to 10 units. Given that the proposed new rules would make those projects easier to build, he said staff conservatively estimated the proposal would result in up to 1,700 new units over eight years.

“I don’t anticipate we’re going to see a flood of projects,” he said. New development will hinge on whether homeowners want to sell or build upon their properties, he said, and are already constrained by high land and materials costs that make the projects less financially feasible than other forms of housing. “It’s more likely to be a trickle of new projects.”

Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani, who has championed the proposal, said that while not expected to dramatically remake the city’s neighborhoods, it was nevertheless significant.

“We need to give middle- and moderate-income people more housing options that are affordable by design,” Kesarwani said. “We need to give teachers, firefighters, seniors who are on fixed incomes, and kids who grew up here a chance to live here as adults.”

Tuesday’s vote was not the final one; it provided direction to city staff to draft a proposed ordinance, which could come back to the council for adoption as early as this fall. In the meantime, the council asked staff to assist them in holding more town hall meetings on the topic, as well as provide greater detail on a range of questions about the limits of the proposal and its impacts.

“We’re going to have workshops,” Arreguín said. “There’s going to be an opportunity for more input.”