Features

Daily Planet letter writer Doug Pestrak (Sept. 21-23) doesn’t have to look far for an answer to the homeless situation which puzzles him so much. If he just turns a few pages in the issue of the Planet in which his letter appeared, he’ll see that a site which once housed more than 70 low-income people with come-as-you-are (no large security deposits, leases, etc.) units runs the risk of being replaced with a building housing only 20 people, with possibly one or two “low income” units for the $35,000 a year set. 

The wonderfully researched front-page article by Richard Brenneman (“Building Proposed for Vacant Lot at Telegraph, Haste”) doesn’t mention one important and relevant fact about the building that once stood at Telegraph and Haste, a fact known only to a few. The 1986 fire which rendered the building unlivable was deliberately set. Friends of mine who lived in the building told the story of one entire wing of the building being told to evacuate just before the fire to reporter after reporter, most of whom would not print the story for fear of being sued. No one was ever prosecuted for the arson. 

Mayor Bates and the current council love the theory that condominium and property owners “contribute to community stability” and have “a long-term interest in the community,” neglecting to acknowledge that the rest of us do, too. They neglect to mention that the median income is so distorted by those who never have to think about the minimum wage as to be a useless measure of affordability. 

It is a measure of intellectual bankruptcy to ignore this fact, and an obvious recipe for the most vulnerable, and perhaps occasionally ill-tempered, to end up on the street. Berkeley cannot point to its pathetic assortment of inadequate shelter beds and argue that they are meeting the same need as the building which once stood at Haste and Telegraph. The poor are chased from one end of town to the other and repeatedly, punitively, ticketed; the people who burned down their houses were never charged. 

Our community is understandably bothered by aggressive behavior, name-calling, and maybe begging itself. But the Mayor and the Berkeley City Council, in their aggressive enthusiasm for housing only the wealthy and the upper middle class in the name of “stability” while whining ceaselessly for more taxes, are far more guilty of such behavior than the poor.  

Carol Denney is a Berkeley resident and activist.