Protesters Declare 'Housing Is a Human Right' While Marching Against New Housing Construction

[Kamaji]

Protesters Declare 'Housing Is a Human Right' While Marching Against New Housing Construction

New housing construction for 1,100 UC Berkeley students and 125 homeless people was paused Wednesday in response to protests.

EMMA CAMP
8.5.2022

On Wednesday, protesters flooded People's Park in Berkeley, California, chanting, "Housing is a human right, fight, fight, fight!" The reason the crowd was protesting? The University of California, Berkeley, was set to begin construction on a student housing project, which would not only house 1,100 Berkeley students at below-market rates, but also provide subsidized apartments for 125 homeless people. And the protesters want to stop this project.

According to the Associated Press, protesters threw rocks, bottles, and glass at construction workers. They also removed several sections of the chain-link fence surrounding the park. On Wednesday, the university announced that it would pause construction of the park, citing protester violence.

"All construction personnel were withdrawn out of concern for their safety," Dan Mogulof, UC's assistant vice chancellor, said in a statement to NBC News. "The campus will, in the days ahead, assess the situation in order to determine how best to proceed with construction of this urgently needed student housing project."

The University has tried since 2017 to construct more student housing in a city where rents are often so high and student housing supply so low that some students have resorted to sleeping in their cars. The construction project would provide much-needed affordable housing to many students. However, the project has faced considerable pushback, including lawsuits to prevent the construction. In typical NIMBY fashion, the lawsuits claim that the University did not consider enough other building sites. According to The Real Deal, a San Francisco real estate news website, the University considered over a dozen.

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Source:  https://reason.com/2022/08/05/protesters-declare-housing-is-a-human-right-while-marching-against-new-housing-construction/

[Kamaji]

More inanity from the Lulu-bell state.

[Free Vulcan]

When woke crashes into itself...

[PeteS in CA]

This is a Berserkeley-specific fiasco, decades in the making. The quick version is that UC Berserkeley wants to increase student enrollment, but a court stopped that until UCB adds student housing (to minimize the impact of added students on housing costs in Berserkeley). So UCB’s solution was to take “People’s Park”, empty out resident bums, and build student housing on the site. And … of course low-cost-housing activists and the priests and priestesses of The Sacred Homeless are pissed and obstructing.

It’s Blue-on-Blue, so .