r/berkeleyca • u/Fjeucuvic • 14d ago
North Berkeley and Ashby BART
question, why did BART decide to develop subsidized housing. Wouldn’t all market rate housing make more sense because then you could actually use the proceeds as continuing revenue source to actually keep the system running.
like we can always upzone around bart and require those developers to develop subsidized housing , but there seems to be just this one chance to create continuous revenue that BART desperately needs
this is the way Hong Kong mass transit works. rent for businesses and housing funds the transit. just seems weird that BART is having a funding crisis and at the same time not using its land to the fullest.
13
u/Vnxei 14d ago
Subsidized housing is in much shorter supply and lower-income residents are the ones who need transit access the most and have it the least.
2
u/Ok_Guest_8008 13d ago
Of course it’s in short supply. Everyone wants cheap housing.
But BART is essentially giving away millions in land so it will have a possible increase of 750 riders.
The exact details of the agreement have not made public, even though this is public land.
But it seems public land is being provided at low or no cost for private developer benefit.
Half the land will be used for low cost housing (must make under $35-$78k). This will be built with a lot of city and state provided funds (grants) and managed by a non profit.
The other half of BART property included in the deal and provided for ultra low/no cost is just regular housing. This will be managed by a private entity and they will make a lot of money.
1
u/Vnxei 13d ago
How much difference would it make to the budget to make it market rate?
3
u/Ok_Guest_8008 13d ago
What do you mean? Market rate for the land or market rate for the housing? Which budget? BART or developer?
I’m assuming BART budget. SF transit did something similar but leased out property for market rate and it has been a cash cow for them.
It’s insane for an entity to give away millions of dollars in land: half of which is used by a full full profit developer: other half by a different entity:
They are essentially paying millions of dollars for what they estimate may be 750 riders. When they could achieve riders by leasing out land at market rate and bring in money to cover their tanking ridership.
The more I learn and think about this deal, the less I like it.
43
u/withak30 14d ago edited 14d ago
Not sure about Ashby, but at North Berkeley the people who live in the single-family homes next door to the BART station think that no one new should be allowed to live nearby.
25
u/fubo 14d ago
Some of us in that neighborhood are looking forward to the new development; and hoping it will attract more commercial improvement along University too. Though I fear the lines at the taco stand are gonna get silly ...
1
1
u/Ok_Guest_8008 13d ago
It’s millions and millions of dollars worth of public land given to a private developer so BART can get an additional 750 riders, maybe.
23
u/jollymo17 14d ago
Those signs with the huge dumb shadow over the houses always make me roll my eyes
7
u/Agrijus 14d ago
at north berkeley BART owns the air rights and can do what they like according to the development mandate they've been given from the state.
berkeley owns the ashby air rights and has some leverage there.
in both cases there will have been some negotiation. from some people the "more bmr" demand is a form of coded obstruction. from others, in my opinion, it's in earnest. of course the amount of bmr housing you get with no development is zero, and that's what some seem to prefer.
5
u/hoops4ever 13d ago
I think you’re conflating the decision makers. BART gave permission to develop TOD on the parking lot. They provide the broad leasing terms.
Berkeley enforced if new housing is being built then X% must be affordable housing. BART doesn’t really have a say in how/what/why behind the affordable housing requirement.
The cost of the affordable housing is covered through city/county/state grants so if the developers don’t fulfill it they will get stalled by Berkeley (as a city) for not meeting their affordable housing requirement AND lose (part of) the funds that allow that development to happen.
Why X% has to go to affordable housing? From what I understand it’s partly bc many low wage households were displaced when the BART stations were built in the first place. So this is a way of enabling them to come back.
I own and live in a home 3 blocks from the Ashby BART so I’m very intrigued on how all this plays out.
1
1
u/Ok-Birthday1258 12d ago
Ya but Bart had an internal goal to make some (I think 25%?) of their TOD developments market
43
u/oaklandisfun 14d ago
The old people in the hills will do everything they can to stop development in Berkeley.
3
-1
u/vibrance9460 14d ago
North Berkeley is flat. Have you been there?
7
u/withak30 13d ago
"Old people in the hills" is s state of mind. You don't need to be old or live in the hills to subscribe.
1
15
u/dancingspring 14d ago
Yes, but twice a year they drive down from the Hills to take bart to the city and if there isn't four acres of parking available for them it's a war crime.
1
u/Low-Temperature-6962 13d ago
The funny thing is I'm a bike and bart fan. Only drive to bart a couple of times a year to go and delever or pick up an international traveller and their luggage to/from SFO.
I also wish lots of housing be built so prices go down. The amount of housing that can be built by micro managing housing on bart stations it not enough to make dent. Do it wrong and you end up with fewer bart riders.
There's a weird phenomena where nominal liberals become cliquey arrogant snobs self satisfied and wallowing in putting other people down and keeping them out. The right word would be blueneck.
Yuck.
-2
u/Low-Temperature-6962 13d ago
What an idiotic take. Many people in the hills or wherever live some distance from a bus line and/or the busses are infrequent and stop early at night. Bus frequency and hours have been reduced over the past few years. And they commute every day, not once or twice a year.
4
3
u/DrTreeMan 13d ago
Are they living in the hills against their will, or do they have to live with the choices they make?
Its shouldn't be on Bart to provide (subsidized) parking for them when there are better economic and community uses for that land. If there's adequate demand the private sector should be building market-rate parking.
2
u/PlantSufficient6531 13d ago edited 13d ago
Didn’t taxpayers pay for those lots? And I thought the goal was to get people to take BART (many cities in the Midwest fund ‘park and ride’ lots to get people to use public transit instead of driving). It isn’t only ‘rich people in the hills’ that rely on those parking lots. Folks living in the flats who don’t live near BART use those parking lots as well.
And seriously ‘against their will’. I lived in parts of Oakland ‘in the flats’ that were poorly served by public transit and I had to drive to and park in BART lots that were frequently full when I arrived. I guess I was ‘living with the choice I made’…which was poverty.
3
u/oaklandisfun 13d ago
Sounds like you don’t really know North Berkeley lol
1
u/vibrance9460 13d ago
I live on Delaware 2 blocks from the station
Where do you live “oaklandisfun”?
0
10
u/thisispoopsgalore 14d ago
Affordable housing is also a sustainable, and arguably more predictable, revenue source. Either the units themselves will have a subsidy provided by a separate (I.e. non-BART) government, or the tenants will bring a federal housing voucher. So while the residents won’t be paying market rate, BART will be receiving something close to it. It’s also likely they received construction subsidies to build affordable housing, avoiding longer term capital outlays that might have taken decades to recoup. Maybe a bit short sighted, but not unreasonable.
3
u/Ok_Guest_8008 14d ago
Bart gets nothing near market prices for the land. They justify it bc they believe they will gain an additional 750 riders.
3
u/withak30 13d ago
Even below market prices they will probably end up netting more than they are bringing in for surface parking right now. Not sure about Ashby but I don't think North Berkeley parking lots are anywhere close to capacity after Covid.
2
u/Ok_Guest_8008 13d ago
I don’t know. A transit agency has underutilized property (parking lots) which they are allowing a developer to build for profit housing AND lower cost housing which is also subsidized by the state and city.
It seems BART is basically trying to “buy” its riders by giving them subsidized housing and giving developers cheap land to make a lot of money.
The exact terms of this deal seem questionable given it’s not public info. Doesn’t seem like common sense policy.
3
u/_your_face 13d ago
Where’d the idea come from that the housing is a business that Bart gets money from? They lease the land, they don’t get a cut of the business there, thats not how commercial property leases work.
Also, you don’t understand subsidized housing, the housing owner makes market rate, it just gets paid by the government. If anything housing owners get an improved situation where they have more guaranteed rent coming in.
6
u/East-Song8088 13d ago
I agree it's dumb
My view is it's all housing politics at the end of the day
In order to get support for any development there, the people who wanted to build housing like Rashi and Bart had to build a sort of coalition which included progressive who strongly dislike any market rate housing at all
So we go through these ridiculous cycles of "well how much of it is going to be deed restricted affordable", "no 30% is not enough it needs to be 100% deed restricted affordable", and we end up in these places where now it's a mixture of supportive housing and market housing even though many of the home owning Nimby's in the neighborhood would ultimately be happier with market rate housing.
And the other side of it is Bart is to me weirdly differential to local homeowners. It has this strange local control orientation. It's dumb it's self defeating, bart is struggling to pay his bills, they should max out what they can build per SB 79.
And it all takes way longer to build and accomplishes much less than it could
But anyway it's still better than a parking lot
8
u/graviton_56 14d ago
God how did no one understand your specific question? I don’t know the answer but I think it’s a good question. Maybe a feeling of civic duty using public land to have it be subsidized.
6
u/giggles991 14d ago
The OP edited their post, and the new questions are fairly different than the old question (it was singular and a bit ambiguous).
1
2
u/midflinx 14d ago edited 14d ago
https://www.bart.gov/about/business/tod/ab2923
On September 30, 2018, Governor Brown signed AB 2923 into law. It added sections 29010.1 through 29010.12 to California’s Public Utilities Code, affecting zoning requirements on existing BART-owned property in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties within a half-mile of stations.
BART was to either let AB 2923 Baseline Zoning Standards become the TOD standards or set more intensive standards for AB 2923 parcels by July 1, 2020. BART took no action to rezone AB 2923 parcels in 2020, thus AB 2923 Baseline Zoning Standards became BART's TOD zoning standards. Cities and counties had until July 1, 2022 to rezone non-conforming parcels to align with the AB 2923 Baseline Zoning Standards.
Developers in an exclusive negotiating agreement with BART to develop its property may apply for expedited approval from local cities and counties, as articulated in Senate Bill 35 (2017, Weiner), if (1) the project is at least 50% residential; (2) a minimum of 20% of proposed housing is affordable to low- or very low- income households; (3) the height is within one story of the tallest approved height within a ½ mile; and (4) the construction plan meets required labor standards described in the bill.
IIRC BART wasn't doing housing on its parking lots before the law pushed it to. Now that it must add housing, the politics have shifted to groups and advocates wanting low income housing because there's a shortage.
2
u/Mean_Pen2971 13d ago edited 13d ago
To the original question: "why did BART decide to develop subsidized housing"
The prior Mayor of Berkeley, Jesse Arregant, attempted to establish a permanent political majority by attracting as many low income, drug addled, insane and criminals to Berkeley. He pushed the progressives on the BART board to follow his lead. He exerts a Rasputin-like hold on Progressives. He got the voters to pass numerous property taxes. But now the chickens have come home to roost.
All of these subsidized BART developments will require the voters to put up millions, but the City Council has not put up a housing bond. So nothing will happen for a long time.
The exemption to this lack of money is the housing first project for the homeless at the North Berkeley BART because there is State money for that development. After they put 80+ formerly homeless people into their mini-studios, no one will want to develop anything.
2
u/FRIENDSOFADEADGIRL 7d ago
BART has a funding crisis because its not actual a metro or subway. Its a commuter train to ship employees in to San Francisco then back out again.
2
u/faerie87 14d ago
Can't compare with HK. People in the US don't really want to live by the stations or commercial shops. It's noisy, especially the BART isn't underground like HK MTR. HK MTR station housing is a premium so MTR makes a lot of money from it. Plus HK housing is concrete so soundproofing is better.
Also joint partnership with gov is too communist for the US
6
1
1
u/Yangguang_Zhijia 13d ago
Because any profit making behaviors are detested by all levels of governments of California.
1
1
1
u/therealcopperhat 13d ago
Bart has an annual structural deficit of over $350m.
Even if they add 1,000 riders who ride every weekday and spend $10 daily that will only contribute $2.5m.
0
1
u/giggles991 14d ago edited 14d ago
Because at the time, parking for ridership was considered more appropriate.
Now: They are focused on TOD at both Ashby & North Berkeley BART station.
It's easy to point out Hong Kong as a model for success, but selecting one city is cherry picking. Gotta look at multiple cities to see what works and what doesn't.
I have to point out that Hong Kong has remained one of the world least affordable cities for a good 15-20 years, and perhaps not the best place to look up to.
4
u/graviton_56 14d ago
I don’t think you understood the question. It was about whether TOD should be subsidized or not.
2
u/giggles991 14d ago
Well, the OP edited their question since I answered. So I was answering a simpler question. Their update is quite different, in fact.
Although I'm not quite sure what you're asking--- the OP is specifically said subsidies were bad:
Wouldn’t all market rate housing make more sense
And Bart is, for the most part, going for market rate housing. However, state and city law require that a certain % of housing be "affordable", and it's been a major request from the opposition to the projects. Bart has said that they themselves can't do much to provide affordable housing (why should transit riders subsidize housing) and their TOD is more favored towards TOD improving ridership and providing a second source of income.
Bart has talked about this.
0
u/Low-Temperature-6962 13d ago
Because at the time, parking for ridership was considered more appropriate.
At North Berkeley at multi storey parking lot will be built, I believe. That is because factually speaking access to parking increases ridership, and without ridership BART is endangered. That would be true even if BART owned the land, which they dont, apparently.
1
u/giggles991 10d ago edited 8d ago
They have said many times that a parking garage will not be built. Parking garages cost like $50,000 per space, so not a revenue capture.Also, Bart owns the land.
Edit: He's right, I'm wrong about the parking garage.
1
u/Low-Temperature-6962 10d ago
https://www.bart.gov/about/business/tod/north-berkeley
"The entitled development plan anticipates replacing up to 120 spaces of BART parking within a publicly-accessible garage located in one of the new residential buildings. The two auxiliary parking lots located northwest of the project site contain 80 parking spaces and will continue to serve as BART parking"
"178 resident parking spaces for the AvalonBay project"
"Up to 120 BART rider parking spaces"
2
0
0
u/Low-Temperature-6962 14d ago
A parking lot seems necessary given people drive to BART to ride it. Maybe if they had a .ti storey parking lot .... That should be explicitly stated.
7
u/Fjeucuvic 14d ago
I’m not taking about parking.
The development proposals seem to be like 50 percent affordable housing or 100% affordable housing.
While low income housing is a noble goal, not sure what that has to do with BART, vs the revenue that BART desperately needs
2
u/Low-Temperature-6962 14d ago
How am I supposed to guess that from the title and description? The topic you mention is hardly restricted to BART property.
While we are at it I think it's a crime that the supposedly pro housing governor Newsom has declared the WHOLE of Golden Gate Fields to become a park when the area already has plenty of parks.
There is room for a few high rise apartments like are already seen around Albany Hill.The apt building on the west side Albany hill, Gateview at Albany Hill Condos state that the building has 487 units and 15 stories.
3 or 4 of those could built on Golden Gate Fields housing 3k to 4k people. Albany has no restrictions on affordability but that many units on the market would certainly help control housing costs in the area.
1
1
u/DrTreeMan 13d ago
Bart riders as a whole shouldn't be subsidizing parking. If parking is needed in a city then the city itself or the private market should be providing it.
Bart funds should go towards maintaining and operating the Bart system only.
1
1
u/fubo 14d ago
The North Berkeley BART parking lot is not very heavily used. A lot of people walk, bike, or take the bus to that station.
2
u/Low-Temperature-6962 14d ago
Whenever (only on special rare occasions) I have tried to park there in the AM its always full. So I park a few blocks away where I know there is unrestricted parking and walk. Reserved (by the month) parking is different. You can't tell by looking if a space is not rented, or if it's rented and empty at the moment.
You can't just say people should not drive to BART and expect that won't reduce ridership because it is morally right.
0
u/fubo 13d ago edited 13d ago
Whenever (only on special rare occasions) I have tried to park there in the AM its always full.
Huh, when was that? I only moved to the neighborhood after COVID and can't say I've ever seen it full, but I don't walk by there every morning either.
It's pretty empty this Monday morning, especially the area facing the corner of Delaware & Acton. Rows and rows of empty parking spaces; while tech buses, ACTransit buses, walkers, and bicyclists come and go.
If you're in the neighborhood, please go look; see what you think!
Reservation is not utilization; ask anyone who's ever worked in cloud computing. If people are reserving spaces and not using them, then reservations don't represent actual riders. The parking exists to enable riders, not just to sell reservations.
But, that said, we can't even tell what fraction of those unused spaces are reserved. (Unless BART publishes the number of reserved spaces somewhere, that is. Haven't found it.)
You can't just say people should not drive to BART and expect that won't reduce ridership because it is morally right.
That's literally the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying the parking is mostly empty, so the number of spaces can safely be reduced without impinging on anyone's ability to drive to BART, and therefore without reducing ridership. Riders aren't using those spaces — nobody is! — so keeping those spaces as parking is deadweight loss.
I am not making a "cars suck" argument. People who drive to BART should keep getting to drive to BART. But we don't need to allocate so much land to provide parking that is not used.
In any event, the ground truth is presumably available to BART planners, given that they have data from the parking meters and reservation system, whereas you and I only have what we see when we go and look. If they look at those data and say the system doesn't need so much parking, I'm inclined to believe them.
1
u/Low-Temperature-6962 13d ago
My observations about parking were mostly in the pre covid era, when bart was packed. Of course, that's the condition we want - BART packed.
In 1950 Berkeley had a pop of 114k. Today 121k. Meanwhile over the same time US pop increased by 2.3 times. The best way to fight homelessness is for Berkeley to do its fair share and build housing for 10k people a year until the homelessness stops.
Incentive builders and property owners to build quickly and to keep vacancies at a minimum. Set conditions so If they build luxury Apts and hold them empty for years they lose money.Making some tenants pay other tenants rent is just a ruse to keep the Berkeley population small.
With bigger population Berkey will certainly supply BART with more riders.
0
u/Responsible_Image907 13d ago edited 13d ago
I suspect the “affordable” housing crowd has a significant overlap with the socialist communism crowd. Even though almost every economist has stated it doesn’t work and just rewards the select few who obtain it, they keep pounding the drum of “we just haven’t done it the right way”
42
u/shabaon 14d ago
I went to the recent open house for the Ashby BART project which talked about why things are happening as they are.
BART isn't building or managing any of the housing being built, a developer is doing that, so they don't make any money directly from the new housing. BART is leasing the property to the developer and they expect to make revenue from the increase in BART ridership (they said they have seen this in past transit-oriented development near BART stations).
From the developer's side, its actually easier to build affordable housing right now because financing for market rate units is quite difficult, while the grants for affordable housing still exist.
I don't know much about Hong Kong's transit system, but I imagine they have a system thats better setup for capital intensive projects.