[sudo-discuss] WOSP – City of Oakland’s Plan for Gentrification: A Target For Anti-Displacement Activity : Indybay

[Sonja Trauss]

On Saturday, May 17, 2014, Andrew Lowe <andrew at lostways.com> wrote:

> Sonja, no one is saying we shouldn't build new housing. But, this has
> nothing to do with population increases. Its about attracting more people
> from the outside to Oakland and attracting not just more people, but more
> rich people.
>
>
> The causation is backwards here. The rich people are coming/ here no
matter what. THATS WHY developers and cities want to build. They see an
opportunity and they want to take advantage of it. Cities are playing the
long game: all cities go through periods of investment and growth then
years of disinvestment and abandonment.

We live in the result of yesterday's, yesterday's growth. The building I
live in is 150 years old.

Capital wants to build. Money is here trying to turn into infrastructure
and housing. There is no other way this stuff gets built other than through
private capital. Even when cities build things, what do they do? They float
bonds - private capital has to decide a city is worth investing in.

Let them build. The crash will come. The money, the bullshit app, will
disappear. The new housing will still exist.



> There is no need to build expensive condos on San Pablo . no one in the
> neighborhood wants that but the landlords. A long time resident (more than
> 30 years I believe) on my block ( which is in this plan) was just evicted
> and the landlord for another place on the street is trying to raise the
> rent 50% in order to kick out my friends so he can build lofts.
>
> Suburban living is the solution to population increase,
>
>

What



> not urban development. But again population increase isn't the problem the
> city is trying to solve. Their problem is that SF is rolling in tax income
> and they want a piece of the pie.
> On May 17, 2014 9:30 AM, "Sonja Trauss" <sonja.trauss at gmail.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','sonja.trauss at gmail.com');>>
> wrote:
>
>> This is an Orwellian notion of anti-displacement.
>>
>> In the face of increased population these people seek to build nothing
>> new. I really can't understand what they think is going to happen when the
>> population goes up but the housing stock doesn't.
>>
>> Sf tried that! Look what's happening there! It sucks!
>>
>> This is the saddest thing to me because all efforts like this do, is make
>> building more expensive and difficult. That means the only things that get
>> built are at higher price points. Or, if they're slightly successful,
>> whole projects are blocked, and they miss the opportunity to get capital to
>> build something useful, instead of something stupid like a new calendaring
>> app.
>>
>> On Friday, May 16, 2014, Romy Snowyla <romy at snowyla.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/04/18/18754399.php
>>
>> WOSP – City of Oakland’s Plan for Gentrification: A Target For
>> Anti-Displacement Activity : Indybay
>> [image: 1888463_10151853655272163_918216235_n]<http://advancethestruggle.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/1888463_10151853655272163_918216235_n.jpg>
>>
>> Advertisement for Public Release of WOSP in Feb. 2014
>> March 29, 2014
>>
>> *Snapshot of the State and Capital in the Bay Area*
>>
>> If the Bay Area’s economy was compared to every other national economy in
>> the world, it would be the 19th largest. The Bay has the highest GDP per
>> capita in the entire United States, and even outpaces London and Singapore.
>> It captures 40% of the entire flow of venture capital in the US (p11),
>> which constitutes a higher amount of capital than that captured during the
>> dot.com boom. While the Bay accounts for only 2.4% of the total jobs in
>> the US, it has 12% of the computer & electronics manufacturing, 10.3% of
>> software development, and 8.3% of internet related jobs (p13.) Seven of the
>> top 10 social media companies are here – Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter,
>> Linkedin, Zynga, and Yelp. In short, the Bay is home to one of the highest
>> concentrations of capital in the world and mapping out the composition of
>> capital is key for us to situate ourselves as we continue to engage in
>> class combat. *(Footnote #1)*
>>
>> The regional state is well aware of its place within the world economy.
>> Over the past years, city politicians from the greater Bay Area have come
>> together to generate a 30 year strategy about how to restructure the
>> region’s housing, employment, and transportation structures. Plan Bay
>> Area <http://onebayarea.org/plan-bay-area.html> (PBA) was developed by
>> the Association of Bay Area Governments <http://www.abag.ca.gov/>(ABAG)
>> to carry out the tasks of determining how the state can support and
>> facilitate the accumulation of capital throughout the region. In order to
>> grease the wheels of the local capitalist economy, the PBA aims to
>> redevelop housing and transit throughout the Bay; New units are set to be
>> built, new transportation “hubs” developed, and both of these projects are
>> to be coordinated across single cities and the bay area as a whole.
>>
>> PBA aims to align the various metropolitan areas of the Bay in their
>> development of housing to match projected increases in employment.
>> Internet, computer and electronics manufacturing, along with professional,
>> scientific and technical services are accounting for some of the largest
>> contributors to job creation here. PBA states that between early 2011 and
>> late 2013 the Bay Area added more than 200,000 jobs, an increase of 7.5
>> percent that is well above the state’s average of 4.5%. PBA is projecting
>> that this area will continue to outpace the rest of California and the US
>> in its share of job growth due to the heavy concentration of tech related
>> industries which forms part of the economic base of Bay Area political
>> economy. *(Footnote#2)*
>>
>> *West Oakland Specific Plan – One Part of Capital/State’s Total Plan*
>> [image: opportunitysitesWOSP]<http://advancethestruggle.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/opportunitysiteswosp.jpg>
>>
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