If you've ever been to the East Bay you may be familiar with College Ave. It starts in an upscale neighborhood in Oakland and runs through Berkeley and next to the Cal campus.
There's a proposal for two senior living towers on the street that would provide much needed housing (this would be in Oakland).
Needless to say the NIMBYs are out in full force fighting against this one. This column is from our local progressive political writer and I was pretty surprised he said this:
The burgeoning battle over a
proposal to build 415 units on the site of a popular Trader Joe’s in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood is a cautionary tale about what Gov. Gavin Newsom has called California’s “original sin” — its failure for decades to build enough housing, which has created a crippling affordability crisis.
Rockridge, the North Oakland neighborhood where the average home price is
$1.8 million, was long a poster child for NIMBYism. Even though
89% of Wicks’ district voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, and signs in front of many homes virtue-signal that “In this house, we believe in science” and “Black Lives Matter,” there is almost no
affordable housing, and neighbors have long swatted away anything that violates the height limits along its College Avenue commercial corridor.
But now, the NIMBY chickens have come home to roost. And in the case of Rockridge, it will likely have to choke down
two massive towers that are out of scale with the three- and four-story buildings that line College Avenue. Perhaps more important to many residents: They could lose their beloved Trader Joe’s.
The plan to build 415 units in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood is a lesson in what residents might have to sacrifice as a result of years of blocking housing.
www.sfchronicle.com
On the surface these aren't the kind of people you would think of as being racist. But racism can come in many, often subtle, forms. How much would you attribute this battle to racism?