Public Comment

While Make UC A Good Neighbor (MUCGN) and the Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group (PPHDAG) await the California Court of Appeal’s decision on the adequacy under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) of the University of California’s Long Range Development Plan/Environmental Impact Report on its Housing Project #2 at People’s Park, they urge the UC Regents at their meeting this week to rescind their approval of housing to be built on People’s Park. 

On August 3, 2022, UC opportunistically took advantage of a 28-hour gap in the temporary stay by the California Court of Appeal enjoining UC Berkeley from all construction, further demolition, tree cutting and landscape alteration at People’s Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Tree crews hired by UC cut nearly every tree in People’s Park.  

The severity of UC’s actions became even clearer when on September 16, 2022, HUD Environmental Protection Specialist Stanley W. Toal stated that the “physical actions taken at the project site prior to conducting the Historic Preservation review may jeopardize the ability to issue environmental clearance, placing the reservation of the project-based vouchers and feasibility of the project as proposed at risk.” 

UC has fostered the deterioration of People’s Park into a homeless encampment to deliberately increase public support for building student housing on it. UC could maintain the park and prevent camping in it as does in all of its other open spaces. 

UC’s staff decided to build student housing in the park before it prepared its environmental impact report and regardless of the severity of the housing project’s environmental impacts. As a result, the environmental impact report that staff prepared does not analyze or compare any alternative locations to People’s Park for this housing to assess if any location accomplishes the goal with less environmental impact. 

Additionally, the City of Berkeley has a housing element that will propose up to 18,000 units of new housing, much of it in the Southside neighborhood (north of Dwight Way). Given the standards in the city's 1986 Measure L ordinance for two acres of park land for every thousand new residents, and the location of new residents near the campus, People's Park can fulfill a real need for expanded recreational park space for all these new residents. UC itself says it's short of recreational facilities. 

Both organizations urge the UC Regents to order UC Berkeley move forward with its construction projects on appropriate alternative sites to avoid delay in providing much-needed student housing and expeditiously move toward its goal of 8,000 new student beds. They also point out that the number of beds proposed in the Draft Environmental Impact Report is 13,864 at 16 potential sites, clearly making the 1,100 beds on People’s Park unnecessary. Without the proposed beds for Project #2, UC is still over 4,000 beds above their goal. 

The recent tree cutting also violates the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) which was written expressly to preserve historic properties whose integrity is threatened by a project that is receiving federal funds. The Supportive Housing component of Housing Project #2, through the Berkeley Housing Authority, has 27 project-based vouchers committed to it from the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Development (HUD), but they cannot be released until an environmental review of the project is completed. With UC’s demolition of the trees covering the site of that supportive housing component, before the environmental review process has even begun, release of those funds are now in jeopardy. 

Following UC’s August 3 mass tree demolition Mr. Toal wrote on August 4, 2022: “Please note that if environmental clearance cannot be provided, then the reservation of the project-based voucher by the Berkeley Housing Authority would need to be withdrawn. There would be no HUD-assistance. The Berkeley Housing Authority, Resources for Community Development and now UC Berkeley have been made aware of the risk UC Berkeley's actions may have on HUD's approval of the project-based vouchers.” 

Considering these warnings by HUD, UC’s premature and reckless site clearance have jeopardized the supportive housing needed by the homeless people UC has said it wants to serve. PPHDAG and MUCGN have always supported the goal of providing supportive housing and student housing on one of the many feasible alternative sites owned by UC, not on People’s Park.