Good morning. It’s Friday, June 7. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
UC Berkeley gets a legal victory in the battle for People’s Park
A decades-long land-use saga in Berkeley has (maybe) finally reached its conclusion.
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that UC Berkeley can build its long-planned student housing project on the community’s storied People’s Park. That decision overturned an appellate court ruling last year that sided with opponents who filed a lawsuit against the university to block the project.
“The housing components of the project are desperately needed by our students and unhoused people,” UC Berkeley officials said in a statement, adding that more than 60% of the site “will be revitalized as open park space.”
The ruling caps more than half a century of conflict over the ideal use of the land, my colleagues Jessica Garrison and Hannah Wiley reported Thursday, “that launched a 55-year experiment in utopian ideals — and the harsh realities that sometimes trail after them.”
A history of activism
Protesters stand behind a fence as California Highway Patrol and Berkeley police officers destroyed trees, flowers and plants in People’s Park and put up an 8-foot chain-link wire fence to keep people out from planting more flowers on May 15,1969, in Berkeley. (Robert Altman / Getty Images)
The battles go back to 1969, when the university attempted to put up a fence around the space, which had become a site for local protests. That set off a violent conflict with armed officers and led then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to call in National Guard troops.
Tenacious activists eventually triumphed, declaring the 2.8-acre green space “People’s Park,” with the idea that it be a public haven free of government interference. Battles over the land continued as People’s Park remained a center for social activism for decades.
“For many it was a Berkeley institution, where generations of students and community members had picnics, smoked dope, organized to end apartheid and police brutality and communed naked with the moon, among other activities,” Hannah and Jessica reported. “But in recent years, it also became a refuge for homeless people and a magnet for drugs, rats and crime.”
A pivotal battle in the state’s housing wars
The conflict also highlights the walking-a-tightrope-while-juggling-chainsaws-esque challenge of trying to build housing in California.
In the case of People’s Park, some activists argued the land held more value as a public space with a rich history as a haven for free speech and organizing. Campus officials and local leaders contended it was most needed to house students — something the university and dozens more across the University of California and California State University systems have struggled to do amid the state’s broader housing crisis.
In an interview last year, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said the university is able to house just 23% of its students. The project is seen as an important way to alleviate that crisis. It aims to provide high-rise dormitory housing for more than 1,000 students — plus supportive housing for more than 100 formerly unhoused people.
Then came a familiar extra chain saw to juggle: a CEQA lawsuit.
People’s Park photographed on Jan. 3, 2024. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
That refers to the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires public agencies to prepare detailed analyses of the potential environmental consequences of new construction — including housing, transit projects and freeway widening.
A “very-Berkeley coalition of park idealists and NIMBYs opposed to growth” sued the university, Jessica and Hannah wrote. They claimed officials failed to study more alternative sites and did not properly account for noise generated by “unruly parties.”
A state appellate court sided with the anti-development activists in a 2023 ruling.
That didn’t sit well with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who blasted the decision, saying the state “cannot afford to be held hostage by NIMBYs who weaponize CEQA to block student and affordable housing.”
It also didn’t sit well with state lawmakers, who passed Assembly Bill 1307in direct response to the legal spat. The bill amended CEQA rules so that noise generated by people who live in a housing project can’t be viewed as a significant environmental impact.
Newsom signed the bill into law in September and Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero cited it in the court’s unanimous opinion this week, writing that “based on the new law, none of [the lawsuit’s] claims has merit.”
The court’s ruling is one thing. The response from fervent activists and local homeowners on the ground is another.
“There’s no way people are just gonna watch construction equipment go through these gates and not do something about it,” recent UC Berkeley graduate Enrique Marisol told The Times. “There’s no solid plan, but I’m certain there will be people in the streets.”
Today’s top stories
Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate at UCLA on April 26. University regents are being sued by students who say they were blocked from the heart of campus. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
Crime and courts
Pat Sajak signs off
More big stories
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Today’s great reads
(Stephanie Yang / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the race to train more workers in the chip-making capital of the world. Taiwan produces nearly one-fifth of the world’s semiconductors, microchips that power just about everything — home appliances, cars, smartphones and more. But a pandemic-induced chip shortage, along with rising geopolitical tensions in Asia, have highlighted the fragility of the current supply chain — and its reliance on an island under the specter of a takeover by China.
Other great reads
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For your downtime
(Illustration by James Olstein / For The Times)
Going out
Staying in
And finally ... a powerful photo
Show us your favorite place in California! We’re running low on submissions. Send us photos that scream California and we may feature them in an edition of Essential California.
Joaquin Castillejos advocates for Bloomington residents whose neighborhoods are targeted for warehouse projects. But he said people are experiencing the impact of years of poor planning. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s powerful photo is from Times photographer Robert Gauthier from Bloomington, Calif., where an e-commerce warehouse is taking out the neighborhood.
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