Formerly Berkeley Food & Housing Project
Meet the millennial mayor of Berkeley, who changed his mind on the housing crisis. ‘I can’t sit back and see more people being priced out of my city.’
The story of housing in Berkeley, California, is one of retribution.
The city was the first in the US to enact single-family residential zoning, an explicitly racist type of legislation that restricted each housing lot to one unit. The 1916 vote sparked a wave of similar zoning laws across the country. More than a century later, the status quo is changing. Those flawed zoning practices of old are just now starting to get tossed out, thanks in part to Berkeley’s 37-year-old mayor Jesse Arreguín.