Required low and very low income housing units appear concentrated in and around the city corporation yard in Moraga Canyon in the City proposed Housing Element.
An open letter to the Piedmont City Council,
Sadly, Piedmont has a well-documented history of using restrictive covenants to exclude non-white families, and of using city resources to force them from the community. But we now have an opportunity to redress those wrongs because state law requires California cities to find sites on which developers can build housing for low-income households. To avoid yet again using city power to exclude, segregate, and stigmatize residents, current City of Piedmont policy is to “Support equitable distribution of affordable units across the City.” Working to comply with the law, city staff has unveiled a draft list of sites that mostly complies with the policy of equitable distribution although 100 of the 200 or so required units appear concentrated in and around the city corporation yard in Moraga Canyon.
Your decision on whether, and how, to change the sites before sending the list to the State will reveal Piedmonters’ values to witnesses, including our children, to your choices. Your most telling choice will be whether you comply with your stated policy of “equitable distribution of affordable units across the city.” Equitable distribution has become an issue because public comment includes the recommendation that the Council reassign low-income units from elsewhere in Piedmont to Blair Park across Moraga Avenue from the 100 units already assigned to the corporation yard.
Blair Park is a former landfill exposed to levels of noise and air pollution among the worst in the city, where pedestrians and bicyclists regularly encounter speeding vehicles with drivers whose sight corridors are limited by the curvature and slope of Moraga Avenue. Indeed, the danger inherent in crossing Moraga Avenue proved so unacceptable that a plan to locate soccer fields in Blair Park a decade ago had to be abandoned. No scheme, including those with pedestrian bridges and “traffic calming,” sufficiently reduced the danger, particularly for children, to warrant moving forward. The Safer Streets Plan you adopted only six months ago states, moreover, that “The Moraga Avenue/Red Rock Road location has been removed from the 2014 list (i.e., of pedestrian safety improvements) because of feasibility issues in providing adequate pedestrian access in Blair Park…”
An objective observer aware of Piedmont’s sad history and of the suggestion to locate nearly all the State-required units in Moraga Canyon, including 50 or more in Blair Park, could reasonably conclude that we had reverted to our exclusionary past. Indeed, stigmatizing low-income families by isolating them in Blair Park would reek of a history decent Piedmonters regret.
I live in Moraga Canyon and endorse the staff recommendation that the corporation yard be made available for a large share of the low-income housing Piedmont must accommodate to comply with law. But as a Piedmonter who believes that our shameful history compels us to act in accordance with our current inclusionary policies, I object to leaving open the possibility of reassigning units now shown elsewhere in Piedmont to Blair Park. Such a reassignment would amount to nothing more than a cynical reversion to the despicable exclusionary policies of the last century. The Council should honor the current policy of equitable distribution and explicitly reject such reassignment.
Respectfully,
Ralph Catalano, Piedmont Resident
Editors’ Note: Opinions expressed are those of the author.
