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Plans to Construct in Berkeley Spark Acquainted Fights

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As California’s housing disaster spiraled uncontrolled within the 2010s, with charges of homelessness hovering and even prosperous households struggling to purchase Bay Space houses, a pro-housing motion was born.

The State Legislature has since passed a raft of new laws aimed toward eradicating obstacles to building and making housing extra reasonably priced, together with statewide hire management and a dismantling of single-family zoning. Final 12 months, the state’s housing supply grew by 0.85 percent, the quickest charge in additional than a decade.

This housing pattern, in fact, has its opponents. You’ve in all probability heard of NIMBYs, those that say “not in my yard” to new tasks, and their adversaries, YIMBYs, who reply with a agency “sure” as an alternative.

In his current article for the California problem of The New York Occasions Journal, Daniel Duane explored this housing debate in a nuanced means that mirrored the humanity on either side.

Daniel wrote about his mother and father, who raised him in Berkeley within the Sixties and ’70s and now fear that new house buildings and different improvement may change the character of the neighborhoods that they cherish. His mom and father have lengthy harbored an outdated left-wing suspicion of actual property builders that has deep roots within the Bay Space, tracing again to when actual property improvement was seen as destroying nature and enabling racist housing practices.

However he additionally explored his personal considerations in regards to the state’s out-of-control housing market: that his college-age daughters could by no means be capable of afford to reside within the area the place they grew up, and is perhaps compelled to maneuver removed from almost everybody they know.

“I had been actually raised and was deeply sympathetic to a view that actual property improvement is all the time improper, all the time speculative, all the time venal,” Daniel advised me. “So once I began to observe the YIMBY arguments, I turned taken with what a political and ideological inversion it was, on this actually key level, from the values by which I had been raised.”

He mentioned writing the article was an vital means “for me to concurrently hold my coronary heart open to what all of it actually meant to my mother and father and their neighbors, whereas retaining my thoughts alive to what the stakes are for me and my youngsters, and all people else’s youngsters — and the character of the society we’re constructing, or not constructing.”

For extra:

As we speak’s tip comes from Jo Baldwin:

“Certainly one of our favourite locations to cease as we journey from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara is Ventura. An attractive vibrant place with peace and walks and serenity, but additionally bustle and arcades and nice eateries. The canals there are a pleasure to drink in and stroll round, selecting the home we might reside in. Tremendous pleasant and straightforward to park. There was a loopy truthful final time we had been there with folks dressed up in any type of gear you possibly can think about, a lot of enjoyable for large and little youngsters.”

Inform us about your favourite locations to go to in California. E-mail your options to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing extra in upcoming editions of the publication.


We’re virtually midway by way of 2023! What are one of the best issues which have occurred to you up to now this 12 months? What have been your wins? Or your surprising joys, huge or small?

Inform me at CAToday@nytimes.com. Please embody your full identify and town the place you reside.


As a younger baby some 75 years in the past, Brenda Kennedy noticed elephants at a circus in Los Angeles and fell in love with the creatures. Within the many years that adopted, she all the time made a beeline for the elephants every time she visited a zoo.

“God made us all completely different, and he made them completely different, too,” Kennedy told The Mercury News. “You stand by one and say, ‘My gosh, it’s completely different from this man.’”

However it wasn’t till not too long ago that Kennedy, now 83, was capable of see elephants up shut, and in a extra pure atmosphere. The Aged Want Basis, primarily based within the Bay Space, organized a visit for her to see the animals at a sanctuary in Gold Nation final month.

“It was a fully fabulous day,” Kennedy advised The Mercury Information.


Thanks for studying. I’ll be again tomorrow. — Soumya

P.S. Right here’s today’s Mini Crossword.

Briana Scalia and Johnna Margalotti contributed to California As we speak. You possibly can attain the workforce at CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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