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.

Sukhdeep Kaur Ascends To City Council by Appointment

 City Council Appoints Sukhdeep Kaur Emeryville's Newest Council Member

Breaking News

Tonight, at the first Emeryville City Council meeting open to the public to attend in person since the pandemic closed City Hall in 2020, the City Council voted 4-0 to elect Sukhdeep Kaur to the City Council on their first ballot.  Ms Kaur who lives in the Watergate neighborhood and who ran a nearly successful bid for Council in November replaces Ally Medina who quit her Council post in January.  Nine candidates applied but two dropped out before the 5:30 meeting.  Council member Kaur immediately assumed her position on the dais, as is the tradition for newly sworn in City Council members 

Sukhdeep Kaur takes the oath of office in the City Council chambers in a sparsely attended 
first open meeting since the beginning of the pandemic.

Kalimah Priforce Wins Democratic Party Delegate Race for Emeryville

 Mayor's Losing Fight Against Councilman Priforce 

Priforce Victory Called 'Huge Upset'

Money & Power Backed Council Member Courtney Welch Loses

Council member Kalimah Priforce
Big winner in Friday's delegate race and rising 
regional political star representing Emeryville.

Emeryville City Councilman Kalimah Priforce was part of a slate of 12 progressive candidates, all of whom won a landslide victory in a contentious Democratic delegate race to the California 18th Assembly District, announced by the party Friday. Council member Priforce handily defeated Councilwoman Courtney Welch who ran as part of a corporate backed slate of candidates, but that slate of 14 candidates were all defeated excepting for one.  The rank and file Democratic Party delegate election represents a defeat for the corporate backed 18th Assembly District representative, Mia Bonta, who leveraged her power to try to get her slate of candidates elected.  The election results, what many are calling a ‘huge upset’, were unexpected owing to the power and money representing Ms Bonta’s slate.  The newly elected delegates will serve under a now weakened Assemblywoman Bonta.

Mayor John Bauters
He endorsed the loser,
Councilwoman Courtney Welch.

The election of Mr Priforce as Democratic delegate means Emeryville’s interests will serve an oversized role in the delegation with our little town representing one of the 14 in a district that encompasses all of Alameda and most of Oakland.  Had Ms Welch also been elected, Emeryville’s power in the California Democratic Party would have been hugely increased.  However, Emeryville’s Mayor John Bauters used his position to lead a drive to steer votes away from Council member Priforce being elected in favor of Ms Welch.  As such, the regional election for the 18th District, conducted over the last couple of months, has come to be seen by East Bay politicos as part of a proxy battle for who is to control Emeryville City Hall, Mr Bauters or Mr Priforce.

The loss for Ms Welch is a blow for Mayor Bauters who has used his position to push against Council member Priforce in the Council chambers and in the delegate race securing the endorsement of Ms Welch by Council colleagues Ally Medina, and David Mourra.  Despite his Council colleagues working against him and with the delegate race won, Mr Priforce is now seen as a rising political star in regional politics, and a challenge to Mr Bauters. The two councilmen can be seen as representing two different visions for Emeryville with Mr Bauters’ side represented by a deference to housing developers versus a deference to a more democratic policy vision shown by Mr Priforce.  

Assemblywoman Mia Bonta
Her slate of corporate backed
candidates, including Courtney Welch
 lost.

The ‘battle for the 18th ‘ delegate race was represented by the two opposing slates, Mr Priforce’s grassroots progressive “People’s Slate” and the Mia Bonta corporate backed and ironically named “Progressive Unity and Labor Slate” that Ms Welch ran with.  The People’s Slate for the 18th District was endorsed by Our Revolution, a national grassroots political organization started by Senator Bernie Sanders and a critic of Councilwoman Courtney Welch, whom they called a “corporate backed Democrat”.

During the campaign, Councilman Priforce signed a pledge to not take donations from corporations including from corporate real estate organizations such as YIMBY, an action that the YIMBY backed Councilwoman Courtney Welch mocked on the campaign trail.

Speaking to the Tattler, Allyssa Victory, the top vote getter in the Democratic delegate race and an Oakland mayor challenger in the election last November said,  “The People’s Slate was truly independent and all 12 candidates were successfully elected due to a strong grassroots campaign that included a people-centered platform, direct outreach, voter registration, and education to overcome the many hurdles in the election process. All members of the Slate, whether re-elected or elected for the first time, ran to change the status quo by addressing the crises in our democracy and increasing accountability to the people we are elected to represent."

Council member Priforce came in 6th place in the delegate race with 286 votes while Council member Welch came in 16th place with 192 votes.

Councilwoman Courtney Welch
She has the support of corporations but she
does not have the support the of the people.

The People's Slate
Swept the Corporate Backed Slate
Non corporate and victorious.  All signed pledges not to take corporate money.
Every candidate won their race.

New Emery School District Test Scores Plummet

 Emery School District Slides Precipitously

Department of Education Shows Emery on Bottom Academically

School Board Election Claims Shown to be False

Board Member Brynnda Collins
She got the endorsement of the
Alameda County Democratic Party
and she told voters to "Keep Emery
on track".

The California Department of Education has released new test score data that tracks an academically plummeting Emery Unified School District, getting worse over last year’s results which already had Emery in the basement.  The plunging test scores reveal Emery to be once again, in last place among all Alameda County school districts, a position the district has inhabited for several years running.  

The district fell from 23% proficiency in math last year to a new low of 14% proficiency, a dreadful nine point slide; making Emery the worst performing district in the county.  English proficiency wasn’t much better.  That plunge from 37% to 34% proficiency, makes Emery now second only to San Lorenzo Unified School District, a district with a much lower number of students with English as their primary language.  When that is factored, Emery performs lower than San Lorenzo in English (as well as math).

The test results show while Emery is taking up last place outright in math and very nearly in last place in English proficiency, the rate of ‘English learners’ at Emery (22%) is much lower than at the second and third worst placing districts, Hayward and San Lorenzo.  Those two districts show a rate of 28% and 30% of students classified as English learners.  Emery is shown to have a ‘Hispanic’ student population of 24% while Hayward and San Lorenzo have 64% and 28% Hispanic population.  Both those two districts show Hispanics as the primary student demographic. 

Board President
Susan Donaldson
During the election campaign
she told voters the district's test score
data was "misinformation being
shared by someone running for
School Board". 
Now what does she say?

When the two primary test scores in math and English, tracked by the State are numerically combined, Emery registers at 48 while Hayward and San Lorenzo total 53 and 62 respectively, making Emery the worst performing school district in Alameda County (even before factoring in the English learners handicap).

Emery is also unique among East Bay school districts with its high administration cost.  Emery has the highest ratio of administration to students of any district in the East Bay.  The data reveals that even though Emery spends by far the most money per student, they spend only 19% on actual instruction, the lowest amount of the money taken in of any district in the East Bay.  The lion’s share of revenue at Emery goes to administration salaries and election consultants.

The disheartening new data from the Department of Education comes after a November School Board election that featured three incumbents gushing over how good they are at their jobs and how the voters must not risk putting in a new person with different ideas about how to run the district.  School Board President Susan Donaldson told voters in October the three incumbents were doing a “great job” and that Emery is a “top rated” school district, never mind the actual data from the State.  Board member Brynnda Collins warned voters not to listen to anybody who brings up test data but instead insisted we must keep Emery “on track”. 

School Board member Regina Chagolla
She insisted voters re-elect her and the 
other incumbents because new ideas 
must not be allowed to take hold at Emery.

The Tattler editor Brian Donahue, who ran a low cost insurgent campaign for the Board countering the three incumbents, told the voters the top down, administration heavy Emery should try a new path by putting teachers in a higher position and paying them more.  It was a stance the three incumbents strongly refuted, stating the teachers were happy with what they have at Emery.  Mr Donahue ran on the three incumbent’s records, reminding voters of the low test scores putting Emery in last place, a charge the three refuted.  Hiding the fact that Emery’s English language learner rate is much lower than San Lorenzo and Hayward, President Donaldson made a case that Emery is only the third worst district in Alameda County and that is part of what makes Emery “great”.  

Notably, the three incumbents refused to answer the Tattler election questionnaire for voters last October, a first in Emeryville electoral politics, and none of the three would comment on the new State of California Department of Education data for this story.

Straight From The State
These numbers are as critical for Emeryville residents to know as they are 
 inconvenient for the three incumbents.