The Berkeley City Council shifted more than $9 million out of the police department budget Tuesday night to help pay for a range of reforms called for by community members and city officials alike in recent weeks.
Council was set to vote on whether to require developers to include affordable housing units in their projects downtown and in parts of South and West Berkeley. The item was postponed.
Last week, officials voted to spend about $11 million in tax revenue on new and existing services to address homelessness, including an RV parking program and an outdoor homeless shelter for up to 50 people.
There are now 1,108 unhoused people in Berkeley. The growth rate of people experiencing homelessness is much lower than in nearby cities, however.
The Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday night to analyze the possibility of service-rich senior housing on the parcel now occupied by the West Berkeley Service Center.
Berkeley school news — in brief.
Officials approved a new Kaiser Permanente medical center on San Pablo Avenue after property owner Wareham agreed to give four months of free rent to several of its struggling tenants who have to move.
A council majority voted late Tuesday, after more than three hours of public comment, to outlaw overnight RV parking after creating an RV permit system and trying to help “priority populations” find stable housing.
Some of Berkeley’s biggest developers, concerned about homelessness, have donated to the city fund. At least two of them did so while Berkeley was considering their projects.
The city of Berkeley expects to spend more than $20 million in the next year on a range of ambitious infrastructure projects funded by Measure T1, a $100 million bond that won landslide support from voters in 2016.
Despite clear qualms, the Berkeley City Council said yes Tuesday to a staff proposal to bring shared electric scooters to Berkeley in 2019.
Citing the “tremendous” need for new housing in Berkeley, and its location near BART along key transit lines, officials overturned a zoning board vote to reject a five-story “co-living” project at Shattuck and Ashby.
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