Emeryville Home Ownership Dropping, Rentals Rising

Council Member Priforce's Numbers Reveal YIMBY Obeisance: 

Home Ownership Falls, Rentals Rise

Public Policy Crisis: General Plan Overturned to Developer's Profit Seeking Goals

Emeryville is the worst city in the East Bay as far as home ownership is concerned.  Statistics show it's bad and it's getting worse.  While the City's long standing approach of letting developers do what they want has fueled the worsening condition, it stands to codify and put into law the 'hands off' approach by certifying the new Housing Element plan and its provision to officially seek to "remove government constraints" on developers.  While the future looks bleak, Council member Kalimah Priforce has been busy detailing for citizens how the condition has worsened over the last decade.

Mr Priforce has publicly released housing data that puts numbers to a multi-year project taken up by the Emeryville City Council that has been forwarding transformational but not fully accountable housing policy that favors the building of rental housing over home ownership.  The tranche of data delivered by the Councilman on his website objectively tracks what many residents have been sensing over the years and petitioning against: Emeryville has been fully turned into a city of renters, now comprising 72% of us, the highest percentage of any East Bay city.

The revelatory information is presented on Councilman Priforce’s informational website, votepriforce.com he has set up expressly for Emeryville residents since his election last November and is viewable HERE.

The rental housing numbers are likely as distressing for Emeryville residents as they are antithetical to the General Plan’s general provision to increase the percentage of ownership housing.  In 2011, shortly after the certification of the General Plan, 36% of residents were homeowners compared with 28% by 2021 (the last year presented), an eight point drop.  Compared with the neighboring cities of Oakland and Berkeley, Emeryville’s drop is seen as even more troubling.  Those cities dropped their homeownership percentages but only by one point; from 42% to 41% and 44% to 43% respectively.  In fact when cities across Alameda County are studied, there is shown to be a remarkable consistency; county-wide homeownership percentages dropped less than a point: from 55% to 54%.

When the data is broken down by race, Emeryville is shown to be failing people of color in our town, especially Black and Brown people.  Black homeownership dropped from 2011 to 2021 from 16% to 13%.  Latinos were shown to drop from 29% to 17% and Asians dropped from 37% to 35% .  

Emeryville stands alone in the East Bay area as the lone city looking out primarily after the interests of developers and the latest renter data proves it.  The lion’s share of damage to our homeowner percentage can be tagged to the 2014 election of Council members Scott Donahue and especially Dianne Martinez who showed animosity towards the scientifically generated jobs/housing balance proffered by ABAG (the Association of Bay Area Governments, of which Emeryville is a dues paying member) and their RHNA numbers (Regional Housing Needs Assessment).  These two council members along with the later elections of John Bauters and Courtney Welch have helped shepherd Emeryville’s housing policy on a YIMBY (the developer lobbying organization Yes In My Back Yard) track.  This obedience to YIMBY picked up speed in 2016 with the election of Ally Medina and John Bauters to the Council.   

Over the last eight years, Council members Donahue, Martinez and Medina all expressed deference to YIMBYs rental only housing ideas in practice with their unspoken 'hands off developers' policies.  More recently, Mayor Bauters and Vice Mayor Welch have followed the policy deference to the out-of-town lobbying group but also they have expanded YIMBY's reach into Emeryville's City Hall by accepting YIMBY cash to their campaign accounts.  

YIMBY primarily concerns itself with changing law in Sacramento and it has had great successes there and flush with tech entrepreneur money, the group has also spread into cities across California.  Developers can make more money building rental housing over ownership units and as a result, YIMBY has shown hostility towards municipalities encumbering developers in any way, including even any encouragement of the building of ownership housing.  Mr Priforce’s data shows how influential YIMBY has been at Emeryville's City Hall regardless of the General Plan's call to increase the ratio of ownership housing.  

Council member Priforce says he will hold a town hall style meeting for the citizens in the future about this disturbing trend.  The Tattler will report details of the meeting when they become available.

  Emeryville's homeownership numbers trend is down, especially since Council members Bauters, Welch, Medina, Donahue and Martinez took office.  Source: City of Emeryville & US Census.

Oakland home ownership has been inching up over the years.  Unlike in Emeryville, developers are not in the driver's seat in Oakland.

Berkeley too has very stable home ownership numbers.  YIMBY has had 
a much lesser effect than in Emeryville.

Home ownership numbers are remarkably non-changing in Alameda County.