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Indybay Feature

ABAG and its "Footprint"

by Steve Martinot
The history of ABAG is an example of the corporate take-over of political structures originally organized by the social justice movements. We are now subjected to this, as a form of political imposition, through the impending devastation to which ABAG's plans will subject our neighborhoods. While ABAG is composed of representatives from cities and counties, it shows how undemocratic representationism can be.
ABAG and its "Footprint"
By Steve Martinot

Initials
"PDA." Remember those initials. They may sound innocent enough, but they can be deadly – not necessarily to people, but to a style of life, and to the culture of a community itself.

PDA stands for “Priority Development Area.” Think of bulldozers, clouds of dust from crushed old concrete, the endless beep of trucks backing up. PDA stands for “target area”, for tearing down what is there, and replacing it with something else.

And as the dust collects everywhere, think of the initials "ABAG." ABAG stands for the Association of Bay Area Governments, and it is responsible for planning the PDAs for bay area cities, and indeed, for inventing the term.

They will tell us that "PDA" stands for progress, new buildings along major avenues, downtown renovation, new housing, and especially new affordable housing. And lord knows, we need affordable housing. But suppose the "progress" is only for financiers, the new buildings simply for construction corporate profit, and new housing being only “market rate” housing (which is un-affordable for most of us these days). Hint: don’t bet against this supposition.

I have spoken about the PDAs planned for Berkeley in a previous article. But here is some new information.

Did you know that the city cannot tell developers to build affordable housing? It can only give permits to developers to build what they want. And developers and landlords make more money from high rent, market rate apartments and condos. If the city wants affordable housing for low income people. it has to finance it itself. In 2009, the courts decided that if a city required affordable rent units in a high rent building, it would have to compensate the landlord for the difference. (Its called the “Palmer case.”) So "affordable" had to be made voluntary. The city then required developers to pay a “mitigation fee” if they didn’t want to put affordable units in their buildings. That “mitigation fee” would go into a “Housing Trust Fund” with which the city could finance affordable housing.

Catch-22. The Housing Trust Fund doesn’t have enough money to finance affordable housing because the developers that promised to pay into it have broken that promise. And the city has no means of enforcement. It has to sue in court for each case individually.

In each PDA in Berkeley (there are four: San Pablo Ave., University Ave., Adeline St., and South Shattuck Ave.), the demolition clearing space for new construction will destroy affordable housing units which won’t be replaced.

Let me say this another way. Though the "Plan" calls for 33% affordable housing, and city rules call for 10% if the buildings exceed zoning regulation limits (which they probably will), only 6% of the new housing will be affordable. And that will not replace the affordable housing units destroyed in the process.

"PDA" stands for “we lose.”

We will also lose the small shops, the cafes and restaurants that people of the neighborhood can afford, and like to hang out in. We will lose the groceries and antique shops and second hand stores where we can buy things the productive economy doesn’t make any more. Grocery Outlet will be closed after December, and replaced by another high rise apartment building. That site, and Spenger’s, and the lot at the corner of 5th and University, are all in the “University Ave. PDA.”

Initiations
ABAG is not an elected body, and not representative, but its decisions are (in an extra-legal and extra-moral sense) binding. That is, it has political power over us.

It is a level of governance that lurks between the state government in Sacramento and Bay Area cities and counties. It is composed of people appointed by city and county councils, but controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the governor. It makes plans for the cities and counties of the Bay Area. It has been working on “Plan Bay Area” for 10 years.

As pointed out previously, “Plan Bay Area” assigns (the official word is “allots”) a certain number of new housing units to each city in the area (of which a certain percentage are to be affordable). Berkeley’s "allotment" is 2959 new units by 2022. Almost 3000 new high rent units? Though ABAG’s plan states that there should be 974 units for low and very low income people, the city is only proposing to build 196 units for them. It looks like the city wants the rest (those displaced by demolition and not re-housed) to move out of town. Some representation!!

The city, however, is under the gun. When ABAG comes along with its plan, the city has to say "yes" to it, otherwise it faces the possibility the state may cut off funds and grants the city depends on for social programs and services – stuff like education, homeless services, and infrastructure maintenance. In other words, ABAG gets its way through blackmail.

But what about Berkeley’s representatives in ABAG’s councils? There have been appointed representatives – Bates, Capitelli, and Worthington have all been in that position at one time or another. And none have called any city wide meetings or townhalls for the purpose of report-back, and for us to discuss what ABAG is doing. We have been kept in the dark. There have been no reports to the people about the activities and plans of ABAG. Nor have these city "representatives" asked us how they might better represent the people in ABAG. The relation between ABAG and the city council seems to be just another "back-room" affair.

Inventions
Why does ABAG come up with these plans? We already know the reasons. They are political, though ABAG says (in its webpage) that it is to prepare for an expected population increase.

“Computer projections” have been used, based on past experience, to come up with numbers. But Berkeley's population has been fairly constant over the last two decades (not counting students). And overall Bay Area growth has been low. Aside from the fact that a "projection model" is a form of speculation, why is ABAG telling us we must prepare for growth?

The answer is that this growth is part of their plan. ABAG can project growth because ABAG will be responsible for it. It knows there will be a need for new housing because it will be creating that need. And it will do so in the name of environmentalism and transportation.

It sets two projects for itself: (1) to prevent suburban sprawl, and (2) to reduce the area’s “carbon footprint” by reducing commuter traffic and daily expressway use. Ironically, no increase in public transportation is planned.

Since the suburbs and their sprawl already exist, a plan can accomplish both tasks only by moving those in the suburbs into the cities. That will reduce the suburbs and commuter traffic at the same time.

But who lives in the suburbs? They are business and high tech people, corporate executives and technocrats who moved out of town during the 60s and 70s to escape the social justice movements (“white flight”). They grew in wealth with the growth of the financial industry, the high tech industry, the Information industry, the business schools as thinktanks, and transportation and shipping industries. Those industries grew in this area because the Bay Area is one of the "capitol" cities of the Pacific Rim economy. As that economy grows, and especially if the Trans-Pacific Partnership passes (which will destroy local democracy by giving investment priority over local law), these people will be needed closer to their desks. So ABAG has instructed the cities of the bay area to build more housing, to relieve these commuters of the necessity to spend 3 hours a day in highway traffic jams.

They are not needed closer to their desks because of global warming. They are needed there because of economic dominance, global control. Our communities will pay the price for corporate control of other societies through that "trans-pacific partnership."

But the development of high rent housing will not reduce the suburbs or highway traffic. As low rent housing is demolished to make room for high rent housing, the people displaced will have to move out of town, and become the commuters, replacing the executives and technocrats on the highways. Environmentally, nothing will change.

Origins
There is historical irony here. ABAG was originally founded by the social justice movements of the cities during the early 1970s. Back then, a new culture of democracy had formed that stood against a war of aggression, that tore down the walls of racial segregation, that strove to eliminate second-class citizenship for women, indigenous people, and workers. The telephone LifeLine system, district elections in cities, a cessation of the death penalty in California, and an attention to environmental issues, to affirmative action, to public art, day care, and job training, were some of its successes.

The movements even won seats on city and county councils. And from that vantage point, new representatives sought to coordinate, across city lines, their common purposes of curbing regional pollution, fostering social equality and justice, and giving people a real voice in political affairs. ABAG emerged as a means for such coordination. Then, it got taken away and given to financial and corporate interests.

The move ABAG’s original organizers made that sealed its fate was to dream of public transportation – of free rides around town, jitney buses running on circular routes and major avenues, financed by traffic and parking fines, or fees from the university for infrastructural services. The state stepped in and said, “you can’t talk about public transportation without us. Transportation is controlled through the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). What you are thinking of comes under our jurisdiction.”

The MTC was given control over ABAG. Thus, the functions of ABAG were shifted from the people to the state. Formerly responsible to an electorate, as a conduit of power and interest from the bottom up, ABAG became a state agency responsible to financial interest from the top down.

The state didn’t take over ABAG because of the nature of ABAG. It took over ABAG because of the nature of corporations.

Though it still presents itself as a "coordinating" body, it now fosters a structural disconnect between the people and the government, a structure based on blackmail for promoting and imposing development strategies on the people for corporate interests.

******
The "PDA" and the political problems (disconnects) that it represents will be a major issue of discussion at the West Berkeley Forum on May 19. That Forum will be held at the Finnish Hall, 1819 10th St., in Berkeley, from 6:30 to 9:15.

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