Homefulness Press Statement 4.23.19

This is a transcript of a statement EB PREC's director Noni Session made in conjunction with a recent report released by POOR Magazine.

See the full report on POOR Magazine's website Here.

Good Morning,

My Name is Noni Session. I am a Third Generation Black Oaklander, the Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative and I stand with the young Poverty Skolarz as well as the over 34,000 Black Oaklanders who have been displaced from Oakland in the last 10 years (Policy Link)

In Service to these Young Peoples’ Vision, we are here today to offer

A Few Contextualizing Facts:

There are 74 billionaires that reside in San Francisco, Alone.  This means that there are only 104 homeless for every billionaire in the the San Francisco Bay Area (https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/SF-billionaires-richest-Zuckerberg-Ellison-12920145.php)

According the the 2016 US Census, In Alameda county alone there are 19,263 vacant units

(2016 Census, 406,000 available, with a 4.74% vacancy Rate)

Yet, While these nearly 20,000 3-$5k luxury units sit empty in Oakland and the East Bay, over 5,000 souls woke this morning on the streets.

More than half of those unhoused folks are working Oaklanders whose income would support housing for themselves and their families if housing were fairly priced and fairly distributed--that is if housing was treated not as a commodity, but a basic right

Call to Action:

While 88% our our current housing stock is small site housing (2016 OakCLT analysis of of county assessors data).  Our city Municipalities and Private Developers continue to focus primarily on large scale development and increase in density,

Yet because of the ways new site development pro formas front load profits over community need in conventional financial modeling, we blithely continue to build more luxury units for incoming guest works and economic migrants (Those some call gentrifiers) without attending to those most in need; despite increasing evidence that density does not bring down rents nor has it impacted positively the lives and conditions of our unhoused citizens, not to mention our marginally house legacy residents

To all but the most politically and ideologically entrenched, these facts clearly indicate that our ability to make an impact on the crisis in our cities could be remediated very easily with some purposeful but unbound thinking toward solutions that take an honest look at what is wrong in our cities

Thus while we at East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative encourage the release of vacant lots to HOMEFULNESS and other homeless advocacy groups for multi unit housing so sorely needed by our unhoused neighbors,

we also contend that a limited policy that focuses only on vacant lots continues to protect and exempt those who are hoarding housing and public resources by holding back empty luxury priced units in service to speculative economic gain.

WE MUST:

1. Release Excess land to frontline communities to steward for the public good
2. heavily tax and penalize absentee and foreign investors holding speculative units, blighting our communities with morally reprehensible and outmoded rent scales
3. Use the current housing stock we have BEFORE resorting to more density that has been demonstrated does not bring down rents and rather exacerbates the same in that it accommodates more and more high salaried migrants and tech labor to the detriment of our citizens who live, work, and serve Oakland

Very few of us here listening to these words today are among the 1%.  Thusly, we implore us all to wake up to the reality that building collective assets for our community and Using public Land for public good will keep us all safe from the profiteers, rent seekers, and economic despots.

Public Land for Public Good, Wealth Without Gaps, Justice without Blindness, and Land Without Landlords

Sincerely,

Noni Session