National Horror Story: America’s pastime

I’m not a baseball fan or even a sports fan, really.  I do enjoy the Olympics but probably because it’s a spectacle, but I have to say that reports out of yesterday’s World Series game was really quite enjoyable:

Here’s video of Trump getting booed again, this time by the whole stadium. pic.twitter.com/ppRpQzWWap

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) October 28, 2019

Full on “LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!” chants heard throughout the crowd at Nats Park after President Trump was announced and shown on screen here #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/1ktVXkHYFy

— Monica Alba (@albamonica) October 28, 2019

Alameda, let’s stop running over kids, okay?

Yesterday marked the sixth car/child collision in Alameda this year.  Fortunately the child hit yesterday was not seriously injured (kid was on a bike, collision happened with a driver in a car).

We need to start prioritizing the safety of those using non-vehicular modes of transportation over those safe and snug in their cars.  The City is hosting a Transportation Plan Open House in a few weeks which is the perfect time to continue these discussions.

We have to do something because, I think, most of us want to make it so that the streets of Alameda are safe for everyone to use and are not just for cars to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

Reiterating what we (should) already know

And another article which demonstrates the folly that is our housing policy, particularly in Alameda, the long standing, enshrined in the City Charter (only circumvented because of state law) ban on multifamily housing.

From City Lab:

Housing policies are designed to ensure that new neighborhood entrants are as rich or richer than those who arrived before them. The typical resident of multifamily housing in the U.S. earns half as much as the typical resident of a detached single-family home. A ban on apartments is a ban on these families.

Within single-family-home neighborhoods, minimum lot sizes are wealth sieves. You can only enter such a neighborhood if you have enough wealth to hold 5,000 square feet of land (the baseline Los Angeles minimum), or even an acre and a half (most of Weston, Massachusetts, which happens to be the second-richest town in the state).

National Horror Story: which dropping shoe is this?

U.S. envoy says he was told release of Ukraine aid was contingent on public declaration to investigate Bidens, 2016 election https://t.co/Ch0yQ8PTth

— Anne Rumsey Gearan (@agearan) October 22, 2019

 

Fighting on all fronts

Did everyone get a chance to read the Alameda Magazine article about the Housing Authority?. If you did you will understand why the staff members of the Housing Authority came out en masse to defend the work of the Housing Authority and why Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft was positively bristly during this agenda item.

Based on the presentation and the amount of work it takes to run a functioning entity whose sole mission is to keep and house the most vulnerable among us, it is no wonder that there were some clearly hurt feelings on display.  No one, I mean no one is raking in the big bucks working for the Housing Authority.

Anyway there are some real issues with some of the facts laid out in the Alameda Magazine article, first there was no response in the piece by the Housing Authority of the allegations laid out by the resident.  From what I understand, just based on the presentation, release of tenant information must be authorized by the tenant.  So if the tenant did not give authorization to the reporter to talk to the Housing Authority, the Housing Authority has no right to share any information about the case.

Blurry optics

Last Tuesday at the City Council meeting the agenda item on the Carnegie Innovation Hall was up on the docket with a number of speakers.  It was definitely not the most strategic public comment session for a group of supporters.  The commenters, even the ones which were speaking on behalf of the official group took a weirdly offense as defense stance.  It felt as though they were assuming that their lease was pretty much dead on arrival which is perhaps why the official line came off as much more hostile than it should have been.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that the group — who wanted to remind everyone that they were volunteers (ignoring the fact that the people that they were trying to persuade are also all volunteers) — and therefore didn’t have the resources to properly hash out a project labor agreement even though the union representative who was present that night said that he was really trying to be accommodating particularly around trades that were more specialized.

Anyway it was a weird public comment period.

National Horror Story: one week

This was all in one week people. One week. Exhausting.

A Republican source inside the Trump-Pelosi meeting described attendees as “shaken” and “shell-shocked” by the President’s demeanor.

“He is not in control of himself. It is all yelling and screaming.”

—@jamiegangel reports pic.twitter.com/OMxR0o7sTX

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) October 17, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Raise your hand

There were quite a few notable items on Tuesday night’s agenda but if this doesn’t sum up the pandering of Councilmember Tony Daysog in one short agenda item, I don’t know what else will.

Let me set up the scene. The agenda item was on the SAFER grant. The SAFER grant, for those that don’t know, is a federal grant to help fund public safety. The budget had already been approved by the City Council, unanimously, which means that this funding was already allocated in the budget. Voting against it would mean the City would have to find the difference in the reserve or some where else.

This was the end of the meeting so things were moving really quickly.  A motion was made and seconded early and the vote was taken which was also unanimous until….

Aging in place

In case anyone was wondering there is a Housing Authority meeting tonight.   So maybe folks who think that “yeah, it would be good to add this load to the City Council” should check out a meeting or two.

Here is something that I found interesting while reviewing the agenda packet.   It was sort of referenced in the piece by Steven Tavares, but is apparently more complex than was presented in the story.  In an overview of September operations there was this notation:

LifeSTEPS and property management staff continued to spend a considerable amount of time on tenant cases this month. There is an increasing number of elderly and disabled tenants facing serious challenges with living independently in our owned and subsidized units. These growing high acuity households need significant additional services. This situation is not unique to Alameda or to AHA. AHA already provides more supportive services than most PHAs and does so entirely voluntarily. None of our AHA owned properties are required to provide services. These issues can also bring pest control, repair and maintenance costs that the tenants cannot pay which must ultimately be borne by the Housing Authority.

Exhaust all remedies

On the City Council agenda tonight there is a referral regarding the Alameda Housing Authority which then makes the very random presentation by the Housing Authority in the regular agenda make more sense.  By the way the presentation is very informative.

According to the Council referral the genesis of the referral is:

A number of residents have expressed concern to members of the City Council during Oral Communications and informally about their alleged mistreatment by the Alameda Housing Authority. In this current housing crisis, it is critical that some of our most vulnerable residents are treated with dignity and respect and provided housing.

Because the Housing Authority was separated from the City in 2012, there is no accountability to an elected body and/or the City Manager for residents who have been aggrieved by actions of the Housing Authority.

And indeed, at the past few meeting of the City Council there have been allegations of problematic incidents at the Housing Authority.  But, naturally, a public comment period is no way to adjudicate issues such as these.