AS I was graphing a scatter chart of time versus the pro and anti speakers at the 8/3/2020 Alameda County Planning Commission I was confused who to call pro and who to call anti. As everyone spoke I had tagged each with either a star or ASS. For this chart, I decided to label the two groups ENV or HOUSING. Isn’t that really what it breaks down to? There were no arguments that said Boo! destroy the environment! I hate health! I hate trees! We were all righteous in our own ways. We all communicated as we knew how and I appreciate the Planning Commission’s allowing us to speak freely.

Environment is such a broad word. Physical environment includes many factors. Our bodies are permeable to the physical environment. We soak in the air around us. We have big holes that let things in like our digestive tract. Our interactions with the environment continue down to smaller openings like our pores, and all the way down to each cell of our body formed surrounded by semipermeable membrane.

There are 36 ENV and 18 HOUSING in my chart. Several of the ASS speakers we can explain away because they are paid employees of the real estate mogul developer, Eden Housing, a conglomerate corporation. Another bunch we can explain away because they are local known developers and landlords in the buddy buddy league. There must be some neighbors in there who really just want denser housing at any cost.

One speaker who claimed to live on Ruby Street and want apartments on Ruby Meadow is a known facebook troll who lives on A Street. We can hope we save Ruby Meadow, create more community, and he feels more included in his neighborhood some day. Another neighbor spoke against developing Ruby Meadow because low-income housing will destroy his home’s value that he hoped to leave to his kids. We have to be very clear that it is entirely illegal to block housing because it is for low-income tenants. His comments were ASS but I counted him as ENV because he wanted to SRM.

Several of the ASS speakers complained that the Appellant’s presentation said low-income housing brings trash and crime, which I never said. I cited Ordinance regarding the County’s purpose for requiring that each unit has outside storage. I cited the Sheriff’s recommendation for additional outdoor lighting because more lighting causes more damage to the riparian wildlife corridor. I didn’t address what the environmental impacts of low-income versus market rate housing are because people aren’t low-income by choice. A corporate developer who purports to protect and elevate people who are vulnerable needs a lot more scrutiny than Eden Housing is getting.