It probably happens all the time. It probably happens all over. An out-of-the-limelight negotiation, some winks and nods, a few shrugs, a quiet vote and a developer ends up with a prime piece of previously publicly owned land on the cheap.
This time it happened in Oakland, and this time, one time, it didn’t happen. The not happening began with deliberate action to violate the law on the part of City officials, proceeded to astroturf, a surprise direct action, eight million dollars of “sweetener” and ultimately a leaked document.
Here’s the anticlimatic end to the story…
On Tuesday, Oakland quietly issued a “notice of intent and offer to convey property” for the 12th Street Remainder Parcel, the acre of land near Lake Merritt that until recently was slated to become a 300-unit luxury apartment tower. Under the Surplus Land Act, Oakland was required to first offer the site to affordable housing developers, but the city instead issued a private RFP to three companies seeking to build luxury housing on the site… The new notice was issued to government agencies and affordable housing developers. It gives them sixty days to notify the city if they have any interest in purchasing the land.
Boring, eh? Definitely. But how we got from There to Here is not.
In a real estate boom, land which has sat vacant “forever” suddenly becomes of interest. As Oakland began its recovery from the Great Recession a plot of City-owned land on 12th Street – near the shores of Lake Merritt just into East Oakland – became, shall we say, a “parcel of interest.”
The City put it up for sale. By City ordinance, they were supposed to offer it to non-profit developers and negotiate with any that were interested. First Problem: They didn’t. Instead, City officials only offered the land to for-profit developers and ended up negotiating a preliminary deal with one of them sometime around December, 2014.
By State law, the sale of any “surplus” property for residential purposes by a municipality must include a provision stipulating that at least 15% of the units be set aside for “affordable housing.” Second Problem: The negotiated deal required no affordable housing.
People began to take notice. Something was rotten in City Hall, and it wasn’t Danish cheese. A group calling themselves “Eastlake United for Justice” (EUJ) formed to oppose the sale. Public hearings were held, at which opponents to a proposal that would further gentrify Oakland by creating 300 luxury apartments while providing no affordable housing were vocal and numerous. But at one of those hearings in April the developer bused in supporters to testify for the project. Just a Third Problem:
As the night unfolded, it became clear that the immigrant seniors, who live in the Eastlake neighborhood near the proposed tower, had been misled. They thought the tower was to be an affordable housing development that they would be eligible to live in. The deceptive Astroturf effort was exposed by several bilingual Cantonese and Vietnamese speakers who talked to the group of seniors. In addition, the Express learned that UrbanCore, LLC, the developer of the luxury tower, had paid to have the immigrants bused to the meeting and had given them the placards supporting the project.
A vote on the deal was scheduled for the May, 5th, 2015 Oakland City Council meeting.
Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm, became involved. They wrote an open letter to the City Council on behalf of EUJ pointing out the terms of the sale were in violation of the California Surplus Lands Act (requiring 15% affordable housing), and the process by which the sale was conducted was in violation of various City ordinances.
To no avail. The City Council seemed ready and even eager to take the vote and approve the sale on the evening of May 5th, and despite a protest rally and march that evening from Lake Merritt that had arrived at City Hall I had little doubt that was what would happen.
However, just as the City Council meeting began it came to a halt! Some Twenty people entered the area between the Council dias and public seating. Some had banners, others took out arm locks and stood enjoined in a semicircle. They all began chanting: “Public Land for Public Good” as did much of the public.
Speeches via bullhorn and chanting continued as the City Council looked on, dazed and unclear as to what to do. Unwilling to call in the police to do a mass arrest in the face of most of the room in support of the action, they did nothing for quite a while, hoping the protesters would eventually leave. They did not. The City Council members recessed and left their seats, which were then filled by protesters. Ultimately, with chants and songs still ringing through the chambers, a few City Council members slipped back in and, barely audibly, managed to adjourn the meeting.
The vote to sell the 12th St. parcel had been, if not prevented, at least delayed.
City Council President Lynette Gibson-McElhaney was livid. So livid that she declared war on the public and future protesters. At the next Council meeting, even though the 12th St. vote was not on the agenda, mass formations of Oakland’s police were stationed inside the Chamber, within City Hall outside the chamber and outside City Hall on and around Oscar Grant Plaza. People were not allowed into City Hall without having their possessions searched and signing in (an explicit violation of California’s Open Meeting Law). The balconies of the City Council chamber, consisting of almost half of the available seating, were closed off. Admission to the lower level was strictly controlled, so that no “mass” of potential protesters could get in – people were denied entry even with large numbers of open seats visible. (Another clear violation of the law, and one they were eventually called on. A judge ultimately issued an injunction against such behavior in late June.)
Meanwhile, community outrage over the giveaway of 12th St. land and the violation of the law in doing so grew. The issue was slated to come up again at the June 2nd City Council meeting, but in disregard of this growing outrage, the Council was still expected to pass the proposal – this time with armed police and Orwellian crowd-control to make sure nothing went amiss.
In an almost miraculous turnaround it did not pass – the story of that night is told in greater detail here: Public Land for Private Profit: Only It Didn’t Happen. Sometime around 1:00 AM, after ninety people had been called to testify on the proposal and all were against except save one – the President of UrbanCore, the developer – the item was almost defeated, but ultimately tabled, with staff directed to reopen negotiations with UrbanCore.
And re-negotiate they did. From a sales price of $5.1M with essentially no community benefits, to a sales price of $5.1M with $8M in hard community benefits, including money handed to the City to build affordable housing somewhere else in Oakland. Looked at another way, the City Council had been more than willing to sell Oakland short by $8,000,000 and violate various laws, only to be (barely) stopped from doing so by, shall we say, extra-parliamentary procedures.
On June 16th the renegotiated deal was considered by the Council: the vote was 6-0-1 with one recusal – yet still in technical violation of the Surplus Lands Act because there was still no affordable housing on site – and a second vote, necessary because of City Charter requirements for selling public land, scheduled for July 7th.
Opposition, torn between what seemed like a much better deal and the principle that public land should be used for public good, was divided. Whereas before a lawsuit seemed certain, now it was unclear whether one would be filed. Some activists had seemingly resigned themselves to the loss of public land – $8,000,000 was nothing to sneeze at.
On July 6th, one day before the final vote, all hell broke loose. The East Bay Express published a leaked letter from Oakland City Attorney, Barbara Parker, dated February 27th, 2015, to the City Council stating that her legal opinion was that the sale of the 12th St. parcel was illegal under the Surplus Lands Act and otherwise. As the East Bay Express reported
Parker wrote in her February opinion that Oakland is required to offer the land, called the 12th Street Remainder Parcel, to local government agencies that plan to build affordable housing and to affordable housing developers before soliciting bids for the construction of market-rate housing on the site.
And regardless of who develops the 12th Street Remainder Parcel, if the project contains more than ten units, a minimum of 15 percent of the units on the site must be affordable to low-income households. Neither of these legal requirements have been followed by the city council and city staffers, despite the fact that the city attorney explained the law to councilmembers five months ago in a closed session meeting.
No only had City Council members gone against the plain meaning of laws they had been able to read themselves, they had done so in complete and utter disregard of the advice of their own attorney. Their last fig leaf of cover exposed, open to lawsuit and perhaps – at long last – embarrassed (it needs hardly be said that all the newly elected Councilors had advocated affordable housing in their election campaigns), they had had enough.
Not very many hours after the letter had been made public, the 12th St. sale item had been removed from the next day’s agenda.
On July 14th the City of Oakland formally decided to reopen the sales process, presumably with the intent – this time – of following the procedures and restrictions imposed by law.
So it goes in Oakland.
The direct action component of this campaign – shutting down the City Council meeting – should be regarded as one of the most successful civil disobedience actions in a while. Even without any arrests or confrontations enough attention was directed at the issue that another $8,000,000 was eventually forced onto the table, exposing what could well have been a shady appraisal process for the City, making the City look ridiculous and raising not a few eyebrows. Can any entity really be so bad as to misevaluate by more than 150%, or was there something else going on?
It seems reasonable to believe that without the attention the Council shutdown prompted, exposing the whole rotten edifice, whomever leaked the City Attorney’s letter may well have decided not to risk it. And without that leaked letter, the deal would not have been skuttled, the land would not now be available should any organization really be able to use it for public good, not profit. Or if the Council had proceeded, and the letter later leaked, a hugely costly lawsuit against the City might well have been inevitable, and that was avoided.
Direct action – and a leak – produced when no amount of rallies, protest marches, having consituents speak to their representatives, opposition at public meetings, or testimony at City Council seemed to.
#Shutitdown.
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