Berkeley Email to Stop SB 50Read or Edit the Petition Honorable State Leaders, I urge you to oppose SB 50 (Wiener). While California's crisis of housing affordability is real, this approach is the wrong response. SB 50 will potentially reshape every block of Berkeley with no local input or recourse – zoning all areas for taller and denser buildings, including areas that likely should never have been built in the first place: hills with narrow winding streets, slide zones, and neighborhoods sitting directly on the Hayward Fault. The two-year window to rezone locally is unrealistic, and the volume of housing that each City would be required to zone for is unjustified by any studies or analysis. SB 50 is extreme in its overreach. The progressive local governments of San Francisco and Los Angeles have passed resolutions to oppose SB 50, based on its threats to accelerate gentrification and displacement. I share this concern. Over the past few years, the State of California has enacted numerous bills to aggressively promote housing supply and improve affordability. The Governor's office and legislators are proposing new approaches that focus on housing affordability and reducing homelessness. We should give these approaches a chance to succeed, rather than rushing to enact legislation as drastic and intrusive as SB 50. Berkeley has approved and built thousands of new units over the past few years, and has up-zoned the Downtown and Transit Corridors. In 2018, voters passed the largest Bond measure in the City’s history – to support affordable housing. Several projects are already being funded, and more have been proposed. We are doing our part to generate new housing, and urge you to reject this arbitrary, top-down approach. Thank you for opposing SB 50, and for supporting alternative approaches to help cities produce a fair share of housing to meet regional and statewide needs at all levels of affordability. %your signature%You can add formatting using markdown syntax - read more BCC yourself Sign Now Share this with your friends:
Honorable State Leaders,
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