conarb
Registered User
This is the 4th recent fire destroying a building under construction, the cities want mixed use to make money off the sales taxes, One Bay Area wants new high-rise apartments to pack the population into the urban core within walking/biking distance of mass transit to "save the planet" by getting people out of cars and single family homes, but the activists are anti-capitalist and anti-gentrification and are burning the buildings down:
Bottom like is the activists want the old broken-down non-code compliant buildings to remain to keep rents low and provide cheap places to live for our large minority populations.
¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/07/oakland-fire-four-alarm-blaze-at-downtown-construction-site/
East Bay Times said:“
OAKLAND – The fourth suspicious fire at a large apartment or condominium complex in the Oakland and Emeryville area in the past 12 months ripped through a six-story building under construction early Friday, forcing 700 nearby residents to evacuate and escalating fears of arson.
The massive four-alarm fire broke out about 4:30 a.m. Friday, engulfing a mixed-use building at the corner of 23rd and Valdez streets, two blocks from Lake Merritt.
No one was injured but the fire left a construction crane teetering and unsteady, spurring the evacuation of several hundred residents for an unknown period until the crane can be dismantled.
Oakland has a housing crisis,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a news conference. “This is the type of development Oakland needs.” The mayor added that it was “miraculous” no one died.
And area residents, many of whom have expressed concerns about the increasing number of construction projects in their neighborhoods, echoed the same sentiment.
“I get that there are people upset about gentrification, and I am one of those, myself,” said Hollie Hardy, a local author and college instructor who lives near the burned building.
She’s watched as her artist and writer friends have been pushed out. After Wood Partners put her property up for sale, she said she and her neighbors have been worried that they, too, will be forced to leave their rent-controlled apartments. Hardy has been living in her building since 1997, she said.
Even with those fears, Hardy said burning these buildings down is not the answer.
“We need housing,” she said. “More apartments means cheaper rent, even if you can’t afford the luxury ones. Now, there is a pattern of arson of burning these buildings down, and it’s just really scary.”¹
Bottom like is the activists want the old broken-down non-code compliant buildings to remain to keep rents low and provide cheap places to live for our large minority populations.
¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/07/oakland-fire-four-alarm-blaze-at-downtown-construction-site/