The City maintains that the sweet spot for developers to build housing in Berkeley is 7 stories. Current zoning requires that buildings of 7 stories include on-site affordable units. Are you in favor of changing the existing zoning in the North Shattuck, Solano, San Pablo and College corridors to allow market rate 7-story buildings so they would not have to include any on-site affordable housing.

I am in favor of the seven story limitation.

I am not in favor of lowering the on-site affordable housing requirements.

City staff, along with paid consultants, spent several years formulating the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan (SPASP), engaging with community members and encouraging them to offer their vision for the transformation of San Pablo Avenue. The resulting ideas and recommendations were entirely ignored by the city council. Would you support revisiting the community’s recommendations and incorporating these into whatever final SPASP the council proposes?

Yes, I could support revisiting the community-generated recommendations.

It is the responsibility of the city to take the input from those constituents most effected with seriousness and respect. When the Council chooses not to follow a community recommendation, it should publicly explain why.

We have already rezoned to allow a doubling of the city population. Is it necessary to rezone commercial streets specifically for high-density housing to meet our housing goals? What is the maximum number of stories, including the density bonus, you believe preserves the sense of community and human interactions that currently exists in the North Shattuck, Solano, San Pablo, and College corridors?

There is a big difference between zoned capacity and actual construction for population. Changing zoning doesn't automatically double population. And yes, I do believe that rezoning commercial streets, especially along transit corridors, is necessary to meet both our housing and our climate goals. If we build more housing where people live and work, we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which is essential to combatting climate change.

I believe each commercial corridor requires a capacity analysis - there is no one size fits all solution. Street width, setbacks, sunlight, surrounding trees, sidewalks, public spaces, building articulation, and ground-floor uses can matter as much as the raw story count. That being said, in my initial analysis of the San Pablo plan, four to five stories (before the state density bonus) makes sense to me.

Council members assert that building market rate housing invariably will lower rents. Yet, as reported this April by the Emeryville Tattler, despite a massive building boom between 2020 and 2024, Emeryville has had a 16.3% year-over-year increase in one-bedroom rents, the largest in the Bay Area. Despite building a substantial amount of market rate housing, Berkeley’s rents are still far from affordable. How do you propose that Berkeley actually build affordable housing for truly low-income (non-student) residents?

I do not believe that the market can solve our housing crisis on its own. We must create policies that protect our most vulnerable residents. We must require deeply affordable units in market-rate developments. We must continue to use our Housing Trust Fund to finance 100% affordable development. We need to aggressively pursue state and federal subsidies, tax credits and nonprofit financing to use toward affordable housing projects like our Small Sites Program, and work with our state and federal partners to expand those opportunities.

We can do even more to encourage land trusts, nonprofits and the Small Sites Program to purchase existing rental buildings and permanently remove them from the speculative market. That can preserve lower-cost housing without waiting years for new construction.

We can do more to get large institutional investors out of the housing market. Housing is a human right, and there should be no room for corporate landlords in Berkeley.

Do you support proposals allowing developers to buy their way out of the requirement to build on-site affordable units in their developments?

I would much prefer if every housing development included on-site affordable units, but I also recognize that in-lieu fees (what you are describing here) are the main source of funding for our Housing Trust Fund, and the city has done wonderful things with those funds. I want to make sure that in-lieu fees are reviewed regularly so that they are set at the highest rate that still encourages housing development, while maximizing the benefit to our Housing Trust Fund.

In July 2025, the City Council passed a version of middle housing that went far beyond the state requirements and could potentially double the population of Berkeley, which is already one of the densest cities in California. Do you favor or oppose what the City Council has passed? Should the council continue to pass bills far in excess of what the state requires?

The state of California has suppressed the construction of new housing for decades, and Berkeley in particular has set exclusionary zoning laws that have not only suppressed housing development, but advanced unjust and racist conditions. I believe the middle housing ordinance is a major step towards correcting these failed policies.

However, we should revisit the policy regularly to see if it is having its intended effect, and to make course corrections in the case of negative unintended consequences.

The City Council has limited the ability of Berkeley residents to protect and landmark buildings for their historical, artistic and architectural heritage. Do you favor or oppose the changes that were made by the council?

I support the designation of historic landmarks, but not historic districts. It is deeply important to support preservation of significant sites -- landmarks with real architectural, cultural, Indigenous, civil-rights, labor, or artistic significance.

Will you support a measure to rescind the July 2026 Council vote on Hopkins until a full complete street study, as required by the Bicycle Plan, is concluded? By necessity, it would fully consider budget costs, the possibility of paving with pedestrian improvements only, accessibility issues for all ages and abilities, alternative cycle routes such as Rose and Ada Streets, and include community input meetings.

I appreciate that the Hopkins Street bike lanes have become a very contentious issue, and a stand-in for many existing tensions between different groups in Berkeley. My understanding is that the city has already studied the needs and alternatives to Class IV cycle tracks, and that is why the council voted 7-2 to advance that plan. I wish the city had done a better job of communicating the results of those studies, and done more to address the concerns of opponents. The city has an obligation to educate the public about decisions like this.

However, given the fact that the city approved this plan, the role of a new councilmember is to make sure the final engineering plan keeps the promises included in the referral approved on July 28th. As an elected official, I would be looking for the following imperatives: First, is ADA access increased? Currently the only ADA parking is within the Monterey Market parking lot. Has parking been preserved along one side of the street between California and The Alameda, for access to businesses and recreation sites? Thirdly, will the request from local businesses for extra loading zone space be honored? In other words, is the plan being put forward a good faith effort to meet the needs of the community? Only then would I approve the final plan.

The biggest safety hazard on Hopkins is its poor pavement condition. Will you support repaving Hopkins now, as originally proposed, with only the pedestrian and other safety improvements, since moving quickly would help avoid further deterioration and the higher costs that come with delay?

Hopkins is slated for repaving in the 2027-2028 fiscal year, and I fully support working to prevent any further delays. The most efficient path to repaving would be to include all the pedestrian, ADA, bike safety, transit access, and traffic-calming improvements at one time. I think that goal is achievable.

Critics of current developments have suggested that the City Council consider the concept of a “livable city” as one that honors the environment, human scale buildings, personal relationships centered around community gathering places, safety, and embraces all ages. What is your concept of a livable city?

I believe a livable city should meet the needs of human beings, not corporations.

I believe in human scale where buildings, streets, sidewalks, and public spaces are designed around people's experience at ground level. Human scale does not necessarily mean low-rise. Height is one factor, alongside street width, setbacks, sunlight, and trees.

Human scale also includes community and social connection. A livable city provides places where relationships can form -- at cafés, parks, libraries, neighborhood businesses, schools, plazas, community centers, theaters, farmers' markets, music venues, etc.

A livable city is also a city with housing people can afford.

That includes market-rate housing but also permanently affordable housing for people whose incomes cannot afford market rents, as well as housing for families, seniors, people with disabilities, and people living alone.

And this is an issue that gets talked about less and less, a livable city is also an environmentally conscious city. Trees, parks, biodiversity, clean air, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, access to nature, energy-efficient buildings, protection from excessive heat, and responsible use of land and water all contribute to livability.

A city for the entire lifespan, for our children to our seniors, with a bustling local economic life, democratic participation, and continuity.

I made a video on aspects of a livable city here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdHHcYRIDzT/