Parks Get in the Way of Housing Says Emeryville Mayor

Mayor Announces Parks Are No Longer a Priority for Emeryville

It's Only Housing, Housing and More Housing For Emeryville

General Plan Parks Policy Overturned With Mayor's Proclamation

News Analysis

Emeryville’s mayor Tuesday night, finally put to words why Emeryville has stopped building new parks; “Because people don’t need to sleep in a park, they need to sleep with a roof over their head” he said, adding that “the region is suffering from a lack of housing”.  

The surprising announcement came as a response to questions from the Tattler at the City Council meeting, when Mayor John Bauters presented a major reversal of settled public park policy for Emeryville.  He said the City of Emeryville will no longer prioritize building parks, focusing instead on building as much housing as fast as can be built.  “Our housing jobs balance is off” he offered as a rationale. 

While his City Council colleagues looked on silently, the Mayor did not equivocate, “Every person on the City Council agrees we wish to expand parks and find opportunities to do that but not at the cost of housing” he said.

Mayor John Bauters
He says Emeryville needs housing
instead of parks.  He presents a false equivalency
between the two: it's going to be
parks or housing and he choses housing.

The issue of parks was discussed Tuesday night as a result of developers who had responded to a request for proposals from the City of Emeryville to build a large, new all rental residential tower on land south of Christie Avenue park.  The developers told the Council they were prepared to expand the existing park by as much as 10,000 square feet if they are given permission to build their proposed project.  But 10,000 square feet of park expansion is anemic, short by about 120,000 square feet if we are to keep pace with what the General Plan says should be built to offset the proposed tower.

The false equivalency of parks or housing put forth by Mr Bauters mimics draconian language from the national housing advocacy organization YIMBY, a group with tendrils extending into the Emeryville City Council.  YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), a lobbying organization funded by developers and right wing entities such as the Koch brothers, was formulated as a pro-development foil to the discredited and disorganized NIMBY phenomenon that local residents sometimes engage in to fight undesirable development.  Other cities in the Bay Area have also recently taken up the YIMBY cause, some council members taking money from them and approving formerly controversial development projects as the organization grows in political power.  Several Emeryville City Council members are associated with YIMBY and at least two have taken money from them, either directly or indirectly.  

It's important to note while NIMBY represents opinions and behavior from individual citizens and as such is not an organization in any meaningful sense of the word, YIMBY is a powerful lobbying organization funded by interested parties, often with corporate dark money.

Emeryville City Councilwoman Courtney Welch (in red)
She agrees, Emeryville needs much more market rate housing.
Posing with YIMBY luminaries at the
YIMBY Prom Gala: "2022's biggest YIMBY party".  
City Council candidate Welch quietly took a campaign
donation of $1000 from the 'YIMBY Victory Fund' .

What Mayor Bauters failed to note as he announced Emeryville’s new park policy is that our guiding document, the General Plan, says Emeryville DOES need to build more parks.  A lot more.  In fact, more than 50 acres of parks are delineated by the sunset of the General Plan in 2030.  As of 2020, Emeryville had (and still has) only 22.4 park acres.  We should have had 41.6 acres by 2020 if we were following the General Plan.

Mr Bauters’ unquantified announcement that the City will not build parks until some future day when there is enough housing, was really more of an imprimatur, finalizing what has been a 'no park' trajectory by the City since the General Plan was written more than ten years ago.  The City has not been building parks nearly fast enough to offset all the new housing being built and Emeryville has been falling further behind our designated park needs every year.  The mayor’s announcement simply puts to words what has been the City's default policy of not building enough parks.  

The ‘parks or housing’ false choice proffered by Mr Bauters belies Emeryville’s massive market rate housing boom of recent years.  The City has been building housing at a prodigious rate.   The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that Emeryville wants to exceed housing requirements from the Association of Bay Area Governments by 50 percent even while neighboring cities are failing to meet the ABAG housing minimums.  The Chron reported as such, "One Bay Area town, the small city of Emeryville, is shooting to not only meet the target but exceed it by a mile".  Councilman Bauters admitted as late as 2019 the City was doing its share building housing, “Developers line up to build in the City”, giving Emeryville a “pro-housing” designation, he told the Real Deal, a local real estate magazine. 

YIMBY Prom Court
Ms Martinez, a vocal
antagonist against planning and
a long time critic of ABAG's 
housing needs assessment,
was also a 'VIP' guest at the
October YIMBY prom gala.

So while Emeryville has built housing more than what the jobs/housing balance actually requires as tabulated by ABAG and in spite of Mayor Bauters’ proclamations,  Mr Bauters now says the City needs to step up even more in its zeal to build housing.  Taken at his word, the parks-at-the-expense-of housing equivalency presented by Mr Bauters hints that whereas before Emeryville could presumably build parks, now we can’t, regardless of what our General Plan says.  Parks are a luxury Emeryville can no longer afford Mayor Bauters implies.  

The new no parks policy has come at a bad time for our town.  Emeryville has been the worst city in the East Bay area for parks for decades.  Our residents per acre of park in 2020 was at 549.  That number has gone higher since 2020.  We need to be much lower; three acres for every 1000 residents or 333 residents per acre. As we build more housing and don’t build enough parks to offset the increase in population, every year Emeryville gets worse.  And with Mr Bauters’ new no parks policy, delivered by executive fiat, that will likely be our fate.  Against all this pressure from an outside organization and barring a democratic pushback, Emeryville is now on track to remain the worst city in the East Bay area for parks into the foreseeable future.

Mayor Bauters refused to comment for this story but he said his comments made at the City Council meeting can be quoted as accurately portraying his policy ideas.

How Do We Know When We've Built Enough Housing?

Councilwoman Martinez Says Emeryville Hasn't Built Enough Housing.

ABAG Says She's Wrong.

Who's Correct?

Answer: ABAG

News Analysis
Just about everyone knows at this point, that the Bay Area is in need of more housing.  Developers and Wall Street concerns are united in agreement on this of course but so is the media and even academia's city planning cognoscenti.  But what about Emeryville specifically?  Does Emeryville need more housing?  Emeryville has built a lot of apartment buildings over the years - more than our municipal neighbors have.  Has it been enough?  How do we know when we've built enough housing?

Emeryville is a dues paying member
of this, the premier housing authority
for the Bay Area, it's true.
So why does City Hall
downplay its findings?

City Councilwoman Dianne Martinez says she knows; Emeryville hasn't built enough she says.  Ms Martinez is unequivocal on the subject, "We really need more housing" she said at a recent City Hall study session without qualifying that sentiment.
That statement isn't quantifiable because it isn't true.  Ms Martinez posited an opinion as though it were factual.  In fact, we know Emeryville does not need more housing.  We know this because the premier housing authority in the Bay Area, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), of which Emeryville is a dues paying member, tells us Emeryville has been over-building housing since 1999.  For the last 20 years, Emeryville has built more than its share of housing, more than what ABAG has recommended.
Emeryville, as it turns out, is not part of the Bay Area housing crisis.  At least not as far as market rate housing is concerned.

We've Built More Than Our Share
Even as developers seeking to make a quick buck in our town and certain Emeryville City Council members with an ideological point of view argue that Emeryville must build more housing, ABAG's findings are as definitive as they are vexing for these two groups.  The State of California has charged ABAG with compiling a cogent and rational housing plan for the Bay Area, assigning each city with a list of housing goals through a data base known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA; pronounced Reena).  RHNA compiles the numbers based on equalizing several factors including matching the jobs a geographic region has or is anticipated to get to available housing.  Each city is then assigned a number of homes it needs to provide sub-grouped into affordability categories.  Emeryville, unlike many neighboring cities, has consistently over-built housing in the 'Market Rate' or 'Above Moderate' category.  Sometimes by a huge amount.

For instance in the critical years 1999 through 2006, Emeryville built total housing at 234% of RHNA recommendations with a whopping 525% of recommended market rate housing.  And every year since 2006, we've continued to build more market rate housing than RHNA recommends, averaging 105%.

Interestingly and to the developer's advantage, ABAG divides each RHNA implementation period into seven year time horizons and overages from previous periods don't have an effect on the new period's housing needs assessment.  So Emeryville's massive overbuilding during the early 2000's doesn't drive down the amount of housing we're now tasked with providing; we still must continue to provide housing as if we were starting from zero.   However, even without counting all the surplus market rate housing stock Emeryville built up over the previous implementation periods, the most recently completed period that ended in 2014 shows we've overbuilt market rate housing at 105% of RHNA recommendations.

Council member Dianne Martinez
"We really need more housing"
she says, but she refuses to tell
us where she gets that information.

The current RHNA implementation period, 2015-2022 shows Emeryville market rate housing at 60% of RHNA recommendations over a period of 57% of elapsed time, meaning we are building housing at almost exactly the rate recommended up until now.  However, the 60% figure doesn't count the 500 homes that will be built at the Sherwin Williams Project, slated for approval later this year.  With that project added to this implementation period, the 2015-2022  period will show Emeryville again well over 100% of recommended market rate housing.

City Hall Fudges Numbers
The ABAG/RHNA numbers reveal a city stepping up to the housing plate and then some.  Indeed,  Emeryville has bragging rights when it comes to doing its share of housing in the Bay Area.  Yet, for all the over-building of market rate housing over the last 20 years, Emeryville is not taking any bows.  Quite the opposite actually.  The City has sought to actively downplay its housing record, suggesting more needs to be built.  Planning Director Charlie Bryant even denied there has been an overage of market rate housing at all at a recent publicly held Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE) meeting on the incipient 638 rental unit Onni Project slated for Christie Avenue.  Ms Martinez steadfastly refused to tell citizens where she came up with her idea that Emeryville needs more housing, citing a City Attorney ruling that Council members not discuss the Onni Project with anyone either publicly or privately except the developer himself.

The City is preparing for and greasing the skids for an onslaught of major apartment towers it anticipates in the coming years.  The February 5th City Hall Study Session where Councilwoman Martinez revealed her opinion that we "really need more housing" is instructive; the Council is considering rolling back family housing regulations and our 'tower separation' regulations in order to accommodate much more market rate housing.  Not satisfied with merely downplaying the RHNA numbers, City Hall so strongly believes in building more market rate housing that it is pushing to drop these regulations enacted in 2015 (after a year of public deliberations), all at the request of the developer of the Onni Project.

Public policy is not based on politics or hearsay or rumor or assuaging the whims of any developer.  Even billion dollar developers.  Councilwoman Martinez's fatuous comments notwithstanding, we know how much housing Emeryville needs.  There is only one repository for factual information about housing specific to Emeryville and that is ABAG and the RHNA.  It is hardwired into the City's General Plan and is used to determine how much housing to build in our town regardless of what a misguided City Councilmember, the City Staff and a developer seems to think.

Councilwoman Martinez says Emeryville hasn't built enough housing.  How does she know?
Video Guide-  Start at 1:18:32
Ms Martinez on the Onni Tower Project: "Building housing is imperative..."  "I'm loath to delay it..." "I don't want to see more study sessions...we need to move the ball forward"
"Onni will create a lot of housing at a time when we really need it [in Emeryville]"

From City of Emeryville ABAG's RHNA 199-2006 numbers: Emeryville over-built market rate housing at a rate 525% of recommendations.

City Council Moves to Increase Housing Affordability to 12%

Council Makes Bid For Greater Affordability for Renters

Residential Developers to Face 
New 'Bonus Point' Program

But Will It Work?

News Analysis
Last Tuesday, the City Council finally took up the problem of a flawed and overly lenient set of planning and zoning regulations that have heretofore allowed and even encouraged a plethora of overpriced for rent studio and one bedroom apartments to be built in Emeryville over the last several years.  It's been a problem the residents and even the developers themselves have been in agreement about: rents keep skyrocketing and something needs to be done about it.  Tuesday, the Council finally did something about it.  They have imposed a set of incentives to encourage developers to built new residential development with 12% affordable units included in the mix.  But with an opt-out the Council provided allowing developers to simply write a check to the City instead of building affordable units in a project, will Emeryville actually achieve greater affordability moving forward?
The numbers as they say, don't 'pencil out' for a good outcome for affordability.

The Background
Emeryville has been on a major housing spree over the last 20+ years, filling our town with luxury apartment blocks, doubling our population.  Before last November's election when there was a pro-developer Council majority at the helm, developers were given a green light to do whatever they wanted regarding building housing.  Now however they're facing a more circumspect City Council majority.  Developers are insisting we keep up the building boom, citing the economic law of supply and demand, insisting rental rates will finally go down if the Council will only let them build out the last few parcels of land left in Emeryville with market rate housing.  So their solution to the problem of overpriced rentals is to build more of them.  But Emeryville has already built more than its share of market rate housing, especially rental housing.  In fact, we have more than doubled what the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) recommended for our town as documented in their Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).
Ironically, before the decades long building spree, affordability wasn't on the mind of anyone in Emeryville.  The doubling of our housing stock has only served to decrease affordability, despite the contrary proclamations of economic laws from profit seeking developers.
Seeking to disrupt the spiral of unaffordability, the City Council majority last February moved to impose a temporary moratorium on large new residential projects for the last parcels of fallow land left but they were rebuffed by the old guard of the Council in a 3-2 vote requiring a super majority 4-1 vote.  The failure of the moratorium is what is driving this Council majority's new policy proscription.

The Solution

Emeryville isn't completely without affordable units.  The Planning Department at City Hall puts the number at 11.17% city-wide as of now.  The new Bonus Point system proposal seeks to increase that number to 12%, still low by Bay Area standards but an improvement over the current condition.
The developers can still build 'by right' whatever they want regarding including affordable units.  A 'by right' project bumps up against our zoning and planning regulations as spelled out by our General Plan, the document Emeryville residents crafted to make the town they want to live in.  However developers, always seeking ways to maximize their profits, routinely request permission to build bigger projects than the General Plan normally allows, bigger than what they can build by right.  The permission is granted in the form of 'bonus points'.  This is essentially a baked in set of negotiating parameters between the developers and City Hall.  If a developer wants say a taller building, he must provide something to temper the project, like traffic amelioration.  To be included in the new list of bonus points is the 12% affordability plan. Developers will get the points they want to increase their project's density if they build in at least 12% affordable units as prescribed by City Hall.  

'Affordability will move 

from 11.17% up to 12% 

if everything works 

according to plan'

However, the Council is proposing developers can still get their bonus points without building the affordable units on-site by cutting an in lieu check to City Hall who will later build the required number of affordable units off-site in Emeryville.  The idea of off-site affordable units it should be noted, tends to turn its head away from contemporary ideas about mixed income residences peppered throughout the city and embraces the old Robert Moses model of geographically cordoning off housing projects for poor people.

Council Second Guesses Its Own Study
Much of the talk at the Council chambers Tuesday centered around the in lieu off-site idea.  The question before the Council was the amount of money the developers should pay in lieu of building the required affordable rental units on-site.  Implicit in that argument is the idea that the money paid should equal what it would take to build the required off-site units.  An Emeryville funded nexus study on this (the Keyser Marston Study) that showed the market in our region will bear some $35,000 in lieu fee per required affordable unit but the City Council regardless settled on a $28,000 per unit fee, the same as what the City of Berkeley currently charges.  However the City of Berkeley conducted a nexus study of their own recently and strangely, that study showed an $85,000 market rate for replacement off-site affordable housing.  Presumably the newly revealed higher replacement costs revealed by the new study will drive Berkeley to increase their developer fees accordingly.

All of this drives the question of what does it really cost to build affordable housing?  Is the City Council hamstringing us by not charging developers what it actually costs to build off-site?  Will taxpayers be left holding the bag?  Or will we simply fall behind and drive down our affordability?  For years Emeryville built affordable housing using the Redevelopment Agency.  Presumably, the cost per unit the Redevelopment Agency paid is known.  These are the numbers the City Council should be guided by.  Barring that, Emeryville's affordability will go up or down over time, showing everyone if this Council's stated desire to increase affordability for our town is genuine.  The actual numbers will reveal all.

The City Council will engage in a second and final reading of the ordinance containing the new bonus point system at the November 3rd Council meeting.

Emeryville Can Demand More From Developers Than Neighbors Cities Can

Position of Power:

Emeryville Can Say 'NO' to Developers and the Developers Know It

After a generation of taking anything and everything from every developer who wished to make a buck off our town, Emeryville is finally in an inarguable position now to demand better development.  And we can easily get it.

Opinion / News Analysis
Abstract:

• Emeryville doesn't need any more market rate housing.
• Emeryville doesn't get any positive revenue from housing.

Got that?  These two points aren't a matter of someone's opinion even though that word precedes them in this story.  These two points are factual and they assertively inform us through hyperbolic debate frames rising up from interested parties of the ideological sort as well as those who would materially benefit.  Once people realize the prophetic exigency of these two points, how we finish the job of developing our town becomes a lot clearer.

Emeryville is in an enviable position with regards to development. Due to forces in our control and those out of our control, we're at a powerful place where we can call the shots; we can rationally say NO to flawed development, starting now.  The last City Council election with its progressive sweep and the rise of a newly enlightened electorate has something to do with this fortunate position we find ourselves in, of course, but in addition it has to do with the extremely limited supply of large scale development properties left in our town and the incredibly valuable geographic location of Emeryville that only gets more valuable over time.   But more pressing than those extant and compelling realities, our new power position has to do with our over the top, nay epic RHNA numbers.

Emeryville's RHNA Numbers
Twice as big as we need.

RHNA or Regional Housing Needs Assessment (pronounced reena) is a housing data compilation of the whole Bay Area produced by a consortium of local governments meant to mete out each municipality's work load share of the goal of providing a jobs/housing parity.  The state mandated idea is each city should carry its weight as far as providing enough housing for the entire region.  Emeryville was given a specific housing goal by this consortium (known as Association of Bay Area Governments ABAG).  Due to Emeryville's huge housing boom over the last 20 years, we not only met our ABAG goal, we smashed the goal.  We actually doubled the market rate housing goal, Emeryville's built market rate housing right now is more than 200% of what RHNA suggests.  At this point, nobody can claim with a straight face Emeryville needs to build more market rate housing, that we're somehow derelict in our duty.
If we do approve more housing projects moving forward, it can and should be only those that improve the livability of our town.  We've already more than done our regional market rate housing duty.

Emeryville's 'double RHNA' numbers have the effect of punching a huge hole in the 'supply and demand' argument that's always proffered by developers.  They use that argument to shame municipalities into approving housing projects they want to build.  Some places, they would have a point.  Not here.
Everybody knows the argument; if we increase the housing supply, the housing demand goes down and so do the prices.  Except here in Emeryville we've doubled RHNA and the housing prices still keep going up, especially rentals.  That's because all the developers are really interested in is maximizing their profits and thus, all they're interested in building (and all we've been getting) are $2500 per month one bedroom luxury apartments. As shocking as it is, this shouldn't come as a shock.  The idea that a developer (or indeed any business owner) might lie to protect his profits should be seen as a given...especially since there's no down side to lying, no penalty.  And so that's what we get from them generally.

With the supply and demand canard off the table, there's really no cogent reason developers can offer as to why we should accept a flawed housing project.  Some apologists will fatuously claim housing development adds to the City's tax base, but that's a lie too; Emeryville actually loses money (a little) off residential projects.  Residents use more in services than they pay in.  City Hall gets its revenue from businesses, not residents.

With nothing to gain and much to lose, at this point with these RHNA numbers, developers better offer something overwhelmingly good in trade for approving a project that will increase traffic, noise, pollution and crowding.  That's the point of the Tattler story of July 23rd.  We posit there are four chief areas where Emeryville needs improvement:

1. Affordable Housing
2. Family Friendly Housing
3. Parks / Open Space
4. Locally Serving 'Non-Formula' Retail

These points are measurable.  We say every developer's project proposal must demonstrably improve (or least not make worse), the existing ratios we have in these four categories.  These should be the starting point for any residential project.  Otherwise, the default position should be no development at all.  Right now, we have an intensively developed town with a lot of density and a lot of commercial revenue shared by our existing population.  If we stay as we are, we're fine.  Unlike our neighbors who haven't met their RHNA goals, we don't need to take on more market rate residential development.
The residential developers may be salivating at our remaining three or four fallow patches of land with their boatloads of potential profit but we could retain the status quo; keep a couple of patches of our town fallow for future consideration (a future park perhaps?), and we'll be OK.
Or we could allow more development...a new kind of development we haven't demanded or gotten up until now; development that demonstrably improves our town.

Emeryville has always had naysayers in our midsts.  There's always been those who loudly claim we're no good, terrible really and we must let the developers have what they want because we don't rate anything better.  Indeed, before last November, the City Council majority itself said as much ad infinitum over the years.  There are plenty of regular residents still saying it now.  Somehow, these Chicken Littles see these last pieces of fallow land left as an emergency; a gap that must be filled with whatever the developers want.   No time to waste they're saying, we must defer to the developers now.
Or maybe they'll bide their time: we expect the naysayers to try to retake the City Council majority next year with lots of hidden campaign donations from developers.
But in the meanwhile, next time you hear the old 'supply and demand' con, remember our epic RHNA numbers.  Next time you hear them try to frame the debate in terms of development being a given, remember we don't increase our revenue from residential projects.

To reiterate:

• Emeryville doesn't need any more market rate housing.
• Emeryville doesn't get any positive revenue from housing.

Sherwin Williams Developer Charts New Course; Skips City Hall

Developer Skittish About New City Council Majority, Bypasses City Hall

Telephone 'Push Poll' Suggests 
Ballot Initiative In The Works

'Supply and Demand' is the New Boss

News Analysis/Opinion
You know it's a new day in Emeryville when a couple of developers can't stroll into town and easily pull a favorable vote out of a compliant City Council, greasing the skids for a huge flawed housing project with practically no community benefits but lots of negative impacts for the residents.  A new day indeed...that kind of thing in the old days could be done with impunity, without the developer even breaking a sweat. But now after Emeryville citizens elected a new progressive Council majority...well, Joe Ernst and Bruce Dorfman, the developers of the Sherwin Williams project, the giant 100% rental residential proposal slated for the Park Avenue neighborhood, are charting a different course to get their project approved.  Starting with a city-wide telephone poll, it would appear they'll be taking their case directly to the people of Emeryville, ending in a voter's ballot initiative on the project, bypassing the newly resident friendly City Council majority and City Hall's pesky planning documents.

Ernst & Dorfman are starting with this...

If you have a telephone land line and you live in Emeryville, you've probably already gotten the call (or soon will); EMC Research, an Oakland based telephone polling and corporate PR company has lately been barraging our town with phone calls paid for by the Sherwin Williams developers.   They've probably called you around dinner time with their classic 'push poll' about housing, to see if you're aware of the law of supply and demand and how Emeryville hasn't built enough housing over the years and about how the low housing supply is why the rents are so high here.  Ostensibly the poll is asking us our opinion on the Sherwin Williams project but it's also pushing us toward the developer's position.  It's a terrible situation with the high rents in Emeryville they agree, but not to worry these pollsters tell us, help is on the way; the developers of the Sherwin Williams site are here to fix all that with their 100 unit per acre 100% rental project.  The Sherwin Williams project will drive down rents in Emeryville the law of supply and demand and the developers tell us in the push poll.

But like Washington's endless phony free trade deals touted to help average working Americans, we're left wondering; if they're right, why hasn't all the housing we've already gotten in Emeryville (and all the free trade deals in Washington) helped yet?  We keep building and the rents keep going up.  In fact, the more we build, the faster the rents rise.  What about the law of supply and demand the developers keep reminding us about?
And why are the developers of Sherwin Williams paying so much money to call Emeryville residents to poll us on this?

Emeryville Doubles RHNA

Supply and Demand
Build enough and eventually
the cost of housing will come down.

Emeryville has been on an apartment and condo building binge over the last 20 years.  We've built so much housing here, we've doubled what the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) recommended to keep pace with needs.  ABAG's calculations of how much housing is needed is compiled in an official assessment called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA, pronounced reena).  The law of supply and demand would assert all this new housing should be lowering the price of housing in Emeryville but in fact the price has been going up...way up.  This is because developers, who want to maximize their profits, have been building only luxury rental apartments recently and that's had the effect of raising rents elsewhere in town....everywhere in town.  What the developers of Sherwin Williams are selling us is simply more of the same.
The strange correlation between building more housing and rising rents has been documented in a recent city funded nexus study on San Francisco housing.  That study shows how counter intuitively, when developers build luxury units, an exponentially rising number of affordable units are needed to keep the city's housing affordability numbers on target.  It has to do with an exponentially rising number of service people needed to cater to the demands of the wealthier people moving in.  The study shows how if the city demands say 15 percent affordable set-asides, then every market-rate building adds more demand for affordable housing than it supplies. That means every new building actually makes the housing crisis worse. 
The counter intuitive notion of more housing causing higher rents creates a space for developers to assert the intuitive but false canard of supply and demand.  
And yet the supply and demand adage keeps running up against reality; everyone now sees how we keep building more housing at a frenetic pace and the cost of housing goes up, also at a frenetic pace.  
Perhaps the developers will tell us Emeryville's double RHNA is the problem....what we really need to drive down rents is quadruple or quintuple RHNA.  A 50 story apartment tower on every parcel in town ought to do the trick.  Emeryville is to become a battle ground...a sacrifice zone in deference to a thick-headed meme put in the service of profit maximizing developers. 

Ballot Initiative on the Way?

...and they hope to get this...

Mr Ernst and Mr Dorfman's  problem was revealed to them in the City Council residential building moratorium vote last February.  While the developers won the fight against the moratorium because it required a super majority of four votes on the City Council, they're now left exposed; the Sherwin Williams project needs a simple majority to pass, three votes out of five.  The moratorium vote clearly showed them they won't get three votes for their flawed project.
We don't imagine Mr Ernst and Mr Dorfman are paying for the telephone poll to try to convince the progressive Council majority they must sacrifice Emeryville to the supply and demand god.   Clearly that's a non-starter.  Their only option is to call a special election (paid for by the taxpayers) to try to convince the citizens it's in their interests to bypass the City Council and overturn Emeryville's General Plan and go all in with their proposed Sherwin Williams housing project.

...in order to overturn this...

The election will likely at least partially be about the abstract supply and demand idea since the Sherwin Williams project as proposed is so clearly not in Emeryville resident's interests.  Maybe our patriotism will be called into question: we've got to do it for the greater good.  But that's an argument the Republicans in Washington have been trying to make for the last six years...we've got to go with austerity because deficit spending is no good they've told us.  Social security must be cut, aid to poor families must be stopped in order to balance the budget.  Americans have rightfully rejected that lie from the Republican Party and we think Emeryville residents won't buy the patently false canard of supply and demand coming from Ernst and Dorfman or any other developers.  The developers have a right to force a special election if they can muster enough signatures, it's true.  But we'll have the right to say NO to turning Emeryville into a sacrifice zone.  We've already done our regional duty by building twice the recommended housing.  Ultra density comes with ultra problems and we're not thinking about abstract memes...we're thinking about our town and how to make it a livable place.

...ultimately getting them lots of this.