E'Ville Eye Editor Rob Arias Throws Another E'Vile Temper Tantrum

We Must Fight Blight!* Says Rob Arias

*Homeless People

Opinion
Rob Arias, editor of the right wing pro-business blog the E'Ville Eye; a guy who always has a disparaging word for the working poor in our midst and who can always be counted on to crank up the hyperbolic invective against his favorite punching bag, homeless people, made quite a spectacle at the April 18th City Council meeting, even by his own pugnacious standards.  Down slammed the box filled with drug paraphernalia in theatrical fashion while he proceeded on with his infantile rage, voice cracking, about how the City Council is not doing it's job.  And by that Rob means they're not clearing away homeless people (from Oakland near Emeryville's border).

Rob's increasingly aggressive behavior against homeless people now finds obtuse expression in his attempt to highjack the City's Capital Improvement Program (CIP) to spend Emeryville taxpayer money on.... a dog park in Oakland.  Wait...what?

I am here to distract you.

Emeryville's right wing found themselves without a mooring after the Chamber of Commerce collapsed a couple of years ago and Rob, ever the entrepreneur, saw a niche to re-fix the pastiche of Emeryville's right wing around his new blog and make money while he's at it.  The demise of the Chamber of Commerce wasn't a random thing.  Rather it happened as a result of our citizenry's increasing expectation that their institutions should reflect their values. That left a small but angry base of right wing support for Rob's project.
Besides making money, Rob has used his blog for attacks on labor and homeless people.  He seems to hold a special kind of hatred for homeless people, seeing them as a problem best solved by clearance sweeps.  We remember Rob inveighing against 'those people' using Joseph Emery Park as "targeting" of the park.  Rob demanded the Emeryville police make sweeps of homeless people out of West Oakland at a Public Safety Committee meeting; they are drifting into his neighborhood he told the committee.  He's going to be a father he said and this will not stand he warned them.  Homeless people should not be seen by children...think of the children, he says in an attempt to shame the City to go all extra-legal on 'em.

After he was told Emeryville is not going to use its police to clear homeless people out of West Oakland near his residence, Rob came up with another idea: let's create a buffer at the border in the form of a dog park under the 40th Street Bridge he started calling the Halleck Beach Dog Park.  He used his blog to gather his minions and ultimately they descended on City Hall to berate and hector City Councilman John Bauters at an informal meeting the Councilman called to address the issue.  After explaining in his lawyerly way, the myriad problems with Emeryville locating a municipal park in Oakland, not the least of which is the large and ongoing expense that would be incurred, Mr Bauters skillfully separated the crowd away from the red herring of the dog park and exposed their true desires; they want to keep homeless people out of Emeryville, the dog park is just a means to that end even if some of them like dogs.

Councilman Bauters' blog and his (rather wonky) story on the Halleck Beach Dog Park may be viewed HERE.

The Halleck Beach Dog Park
Clean, no blight.

Never mind the use of a sociopathic overlay while formulating public policy and its attending problem of Constitutional prohibitions, we're not going to use our local government to adapt Rob's new word for homeless people unveiled at the John Bauters meeting, 'blight', nor sign on to do to them as the old Redevelopment Agency did to blight in a more decorous and genteel era when the word was merely used to describe decrepit buildings, not people.
Adding to the current state of callous narcissism emanating out of Washington and taking over the polity, Rob Arias is our own little local installment in this growing culture of cruelty sweeping the nation.


Like all (privileged) children who disparage authority not doing their bidding, Rob cries 'it's not fair' to the City Council...'you should be pushing MY agenda...clearing away homeless people and protecting my real estate investment.'  Many techie newcomers to Emeryville, those for whom we have built housing here exclusively over the last twenty years, obviously agree with Rob.  These are his readers.  They are concerned, besides wanting to know about the latest ramen shop and crime blotter (with its Black suspects), many of them attended the meeting about the dog park.  They scolded Councilman Bauters; Rob's right, Emeryville should remain "clean", no blight here they insisted.  That's Rob's community.

Like so many others on the right wing, Rob co-opts the language of the left; he calls himself a "community activist" and he is an activist (for his specific community) although not one normally associated with that title.  What Rob has done for community activism, he's also done for blight.  Community activism now includes reverse Robin Hood policies and blight now includes poor people (that need to be cleared out) in Rob Arias' Emeryville.

Dog Park Feature: Push Out Homeless People

Do Your Techie Residents Have a Problem With Homeless People?  

Solution: Clear the Homeless Out!

Opinion

These guys are on their way up in Emeryville

Homeless people are a problem that should be dealt with by clearing them away.  So says the Emeryville City Council as they now prepare to use Emeryville taxpayer money to build a dog park entirely in Oakland who's primary function will be to clear out persistent homeless encampments near the Emeryville border under the 40th Street bridge, the site of the future dog park.  These encamped homeless people have been venturing into Emeryville committing crimes and spreading disease plus they smell bad says E'Ville Eye blog editor Rob Arias.  He testified to the Public Safety Committee recently that he's fearful about walking in his own neighborhood and he implored the Emeryville police to clear out the homeless encampments in West Oakland since Oakland cops are not responsive.

Dogs In, Poor People Out

...these guys are on their way down

Mr Arias used his blog to rally his readers to descend on the City Council chambers May 17th  to insist the City clear out the homeless people by putting building the dog park at the top of the list of priorities for the Five Year Capital Improvement program for the City.  This is the same list that provides funds for parks, children, seniors, pedestrian/bike bridges over railroad tracks and the like.  No mention was made by Mr Arias or his followers or the City Council facing the crowd and feeling their pain that another dog park is going in only one block away at the Sherwin Williams site when the developer for that project gets the go ahead (after the election in November).

Two Side by Side Dog Parks Needed

...and these guys are out...all the way out.

Why didn't anyone mention the Sherwin Williams dog park at the capital improvements discussion on the 17th?  Because techies and homeless people don't mix and the dog park under the bridge isn't really meant to serve as a dog park...it's meant to be a buffer between homeless people in West Oakland and the techies populating the Park Avenue neighborhood in Emeryville. As more and more techies move into Emeryville thanks to the City Council building bock after block of drive-in drive-out market rate (men's) dormitories to house them, clearing out homeless people is becoming a pattern and practice of our progressive City Council majority.

In With the New
Meet Emeryville's newest resident.

We remember who's pain the Council felt when calls were made to deny a toehold to these undesirable types at the Center of 'Community' Life bike/pedestrian path and the EBI pedestrian path and the Joseph Emery Park.  The City Council even amended the General Plan to stop bike/ped connectivity in order to deny homeless people places to congregate when they deleted our bike/ped paths and moved to replace an existing park that the E'Ville Eye warned the homeless had "targeted", into a skate park.  The Council noted the skate park would serve a dual function of providing a space for skateboarders and clearing out homeless people...a twofer.
To her credit, Councilwoman Jac Asher told her colleagues that the City bears a responsibility to providing for people living with homelessness and that she expects them (her colleagues) to agree to part with some cash (for unspecified uses) to help with the problem when the budget comes under discussion later in the year.  We'll have to wait to see how that turns out.

Lots of Dogs
Emeryville's City Council really likes dogs.  They just finished building a ersatz public dog park at the Parc on Powell project, a whole city block of rental apartments that go for $3000 per month for a one bedroom unit.  Now they're going to build two dog parks right next to each other in the Park Ave area, a neighborhood that's going to absorb almost 1000 market rate all rental techie units associated with the Sherwin Williams project.  That's a lot of dogs.

At least they can't be accused of not listening to their constituents.

And who's generally not included among their constituents?  Poor people and families.  These are the two groups that are being edged out of our town, all the overheated hyperbolic rhetoric from the City Council notwithstanding.  Over the last ten years, Emeryville has grown exponentially but even with all that growth, families have actually been reduced in numbers.  Emeryville's housing policy (in practice it's more of a lack of a policy) has resulted in a hemorrhaging of children, so much so that we're now the city with the fewest  children in the whole East Bay.  And poor people?  They've been ignored and pushed out as the Council lets developers build residential projects to suit their stockholder's profit needs.  The progressive Council majority so far has only managed to keep affordability from decreasing (they kept the status quo) at one project, in the aggregate, we're keeping on our headlong rush to provide safe haven for residential projects filled with dog loving single techies (girlfriends or wives welcome when applicable).

Two dog parks a block away from each other...nice!