NIMBY-palooza, fight the power

Wrapping up on the rest of the snipped video: here is a Bay Farm resident asking what would happen if Alameda doesn’t have a compliant Housing Element. Andrew Thomas answers simply that we would have to pay fines and would be sued. Now, for those of you who have read anything that I’ve written about the Housing Element “bad stuff” you’ll know that this is a gross oversimplification of the enforcement mechanisms of the State of California. Not only that the Attorney General’s office has now formed a housing strike taskforce of sorts to go after recalcitrant cities in the case that they want to dare the State to act.

The resident asks who has been sued and Andrew Thomas goes to his go to of Pleasanton, even though there are lots of other cities who are currently embroiled in litigation over this housing cycle but the Pleasanton example is always a good one because Pleasanton is close enough to people that it’s within their ability to care about. The resident then says that the amount of money that Pleasanton had to pay (around $2 million) is “nothing.” Leaving unsaid that the City should just pay that and be done with the state as though it were that simple. Then someone chimed in from the audience that the City would be more exposed to liability because of the traffic from increased building will stop people from getting to the hospital or some other sort of nonsense because, could you imagine. I mean, if that were something folks could litigate over the courts would be absolutely littered with those types of lawsuits.

Anyway, it’s not just $2 million in fines and done. It’s millions in legal fees to just fight the state in the first place and then, like $10K in fines monthly until a valid Housing Element in certified. Without a valid Housing Element, the city also does not have a valid General Plan which means it can’t do any ministerial actions when it comes to approving building stuff. That doesn’t just mean that it can’t approve housing, it means everything: commercial, retail, and even your own small residential remodel. The authority to approve all of that would go to an assigned judge and they have the ability to approve any developments as long as it meets state requirements even if it conflicts with the City’s zoning codes. On top of all that we would not be eligible for any state or federal funding or grants for parks, infrastructure, or housing.

This is the video I described on Twitter but I did not have a video for. This is the one where, when asked by Andrew Thomas, where building should be located in Bay Farm and the audience largely shouted out: Mt Trashmore. Because new residents should literally be forced to live on top of trash before some Bay Farm residents will allow them in their backyards:

This is a video that I love where a residents opines that no multi story buildings can be built on Bay Farm because it’s on fill and you can just sense the annoyance radiating out of Andrew Thomas when he announces “wrong” when the lady spits out some made up facts that she clearly had yanked from deep in her gut because it felt right and sounded possibly truthful.

Okay, I changed my mind, this is the video that I actually love because it’s someone asking about the old Raiders facility because she’s going to suggest that the housing be built out there but, because Andrew Thomas is an old hand at this and has been hearing NIMBY “why can’t it go x” for decades, he knows exactly where this lady is heading and heads her off by saying that it would be possible but that there would need to be negotiations with the Port of Oakland and all of the concession which have been put into place about flight paths, etc would be on the table and up for negotiation if the City of Alameda wanted to go the direction of putting housing in the business park area. As you can imagine that was met with dead silence.