Berkeleyside publishes many opinion pieces submitted by readers in its Opinionator section. Recently, many of them have focused on housing and on homelessness.
On July 7, Matthew Lewis, Housing Commission Chair for the Associated Students of the University of California, argued that the Berkeley City Council should adequately regulate short-term rentals to protect Berkeley’s housing supply.
On July 18, we published an open letter to the Council by a group of Berkeley citizens under the name REAL Berkeley that laid out why they think the city need real equity and access to a livable Berkeley.
Garret Christensen, a Berkeley resident and an economics researcher at UC Berkeley’s Berkeley Institute for Data Science, wrote on July 19 that Berkeley should endorse, not oppose, Governor Brown’s housing proposal. Just a couple of weeks later, Zelda Bronstein, former chair of the Berkeley Planning Commission, argued that councilman Jesse Arreguín, who is running for Berkeley mayor, is right to oppose what she termed Jerry Brown’s “anti-democratic give-away to the real-estate industry.”
On July 22, Sonja Fitz Director of Development and Marketing for Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), wrote about her concerns that cuts to downtown services threaten the basic quality of life for the homeless. Shortly afterwards, Donald Frazier BOSS’s Executive Director, outlined what he sees as the causes and solutions of mass homelessness.
Finally, H. Scott Prosterman gave a first-person account of what it is like to be borderline homeless.
If you would like to add your voice, please share your comments on the individual op-eds.
Berkeleyside welcomes submissions of op-ed articles. We ask that we are given first refusal to publish. Topics should be Berkeley-related, local authors are preferred, and we don’t publish anonymous pieces. Email submissions, as Word documents or embedded in the email, to editors@berkeleyside.com. The recommended length is 500-800 words. Please include your name and a one-line bio that includes full, relevant disclosures. Berkeleyside will publish op-ed pieces at its discretion.
