I am all for Cliff Bar, with the exception of sending them to our schools and I am not certian about the location. It sounds like they might be using one of the old buildings across from Jack London which I thought was suppose to be torn down and replaced with restaurants and a waterfront park?

Also in my opinion, not one of those buildings are architecally worth keeping tear them all down and start over, with a building designed for the purpose it was build for. The old hospital is the only one with any design and it is falling down.

I hate to see them cut corners just to accommodate getting someone in there quickly.

High-density brings a number of problems with it, regardless of whether or not those problems are directly due to high-density in and of itself.

Those problems come in the form of crime, traffic congestion, air pollution, quality of life issues and so on.

As for crime, all you have to do is take a look at the crime statistics. The cities you like to villify - Livermore, Pleasanton, etc, have better crime rates than Alameda, San Francisco and Oakland.

What Measure A opponents are advocating is San Francisco style density and mix - and San Francisco has higher crime than Alameda, and I don’t want that.

And again, the rationale you use to increase the mix of housing is to allow more housing for people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder (i.e. “poor people” - but those are the people responsible for crime, according to your UT study! Why do you want to bring into Alameda Point a high concentration of people that are more prone to crime?

There is a mix of housing proscribed in the current Measure A-compliant plan. 50% of the housing in Alameda is already multi-family. If anything, the balance is already tipped too far towards a domination of multi-family units.

did you actually read the last post? you’re arguing again a false-statement (again). No one has claimed that there should be housing only for “poor people.”

The argument was the exact opposite, that crime is lowest when housing includes a mix of various incomes.

Per your question about Antioch on another thread, I don’t have a problem with Antioch, but I live in Alameda precisely because of what it offers differently than Antioch.

Antioch exists for people who want to live in Antioch–walled off housing separated from commercial and retail uses, and totally car-dependent. It’s odd to me how people screaming to “save” alameda from development then want to turn around and change it into antioch-style suburb which it isn’t. (Bay farm not withstanding).

Irving, TX = Apples.
Alameda, CA = Oranges.

I’m merely advocating building out Alameda Point in compliance with Measure A. It will provide a mix of structure types, and range of prices (all of which, ultimately, will be expensive, just like the rest of the Bay area.)

Measure A opponents are advocating higher-density for the purpose of including more people at the bottom end of the socio-economic ladder. If your study is true, and I’m wrong about housing prices, then Alameda Point will be filled with people from the bottom of the ladder (because it’s cheap to live) who are more likely to commit crimes (because UT says so.) No thank-you.

David Howard

P.S. Doesn’t “low socioeconomic status of the delinquents” = “poor people” ???

Consider the results of this University of Texas study, “The Real Picture of Land-Use Density and Crime”:

“A widely held belief is that high-density land use is intimately associated with high crime rate. . . . However, results of GIS [Geographic Information Systems] analysis show that high crime rate is not necessarily linked to high-density development, but more to the low socioeconomic status of the delinquents. . . . The results of this study also imply that housing and land-use policies stressing low density should be reconsidered, and crime prevention should not neglect the importance of social policies aimed at improving education attainment and social and economic equity.”

The results of the study are hardly surprising. For example, imagine two high-density developments, an exclusive luxury condominium project and an all-low-income housing project, both with exactly the same density and total number of residents. Would one really expect to observe the same crime rate in both projects just because the density is the same?

If Mr. Howard is certain that “ALL the housing is going to be expensive” at Alameda Point, then his fears of crime are unfounded, no matter what the density is. However, I believe it is wrong to assume that all the housing at the Point must be expensive, given the amount of leverage the City will be able to exert as the plans are drawn up.

Research confirms the widely held belief that exclusively low-income neighborhoods tend to have high crime rates; however, contrary to popular belief, the solution to crime is not to build neighborhoods exclusively for the rich. The safest neighborhoods are those that have a broad mix of incomes, as demonstrated in the Loyola University study, “Crime in economically diverse neighborhoods”:

“To our question whether mixed-income neighborhoods are safe, we can safely reply that there are less occurrences of crime there than in other neighborhoods, including those that are predominantly inhabited by high-income residents.”

Thus, it is in everyone’s interest for cities to do what they can to ensure that new neighborhoods have housing opportunities for people of all incomes. Unfortunately, current policies tend to produce developments in which the middle rungs of the “ladder of housing” are all missing. There are often a relatively small number of below-market-rate units for the poor and large single-family homes for the rich, with nothing in between.

As for you - why don’t you use your real name??

I risk mine and my family’s life everytime I pull out of the driveway between the SUV’s parked on the street on either side of my driveway.

Within the bounds of Measure A, there will be “affordable” housing built.

But this is a fallacy anyway - is a $1M condo more “affordable” to long-term renters than a $1.5M freestanding home? Just because it’s relatively less expensive?

Because if you give the developers increased density, you can be sure you’re going to get a lot more condos that the market will drive beyond the range of affordability for the people you’re trying to help. So we get all the problems of over-crowding without the benefits of the “affordable” housing you are looking for.

The fact that this chunk of land is in the middle of San Francisco Bay is going to ensure that ALL the housing is going to be expensive. 1700 acres on the San Francisco Bay with a view of the city is a ridiculous location to try to build affordable housing - the geography of the tract, along with the demand for housing in the entire Bay area, will drive up prices, and the developers will use an exemption to Measure A as a way to maximize profits, quality of life, crime and traffic be-damned.

As for crime, simply look at the crime stats comparing Alameda to Pleasanton, or Livermore, or Oakland or San Francisco.

http://alameda.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Alameda&s1=CA&c2=San+Francisco&s2=CA

High-density areas have higher crime rates. Chalk it up to whatever your favorite demon may be - “oakland” people, poor people, your least favorite race, whatever.