The new policy, which was approved by the Berkeley City Council last Tuesday, will give certain groups priority when it comes to affordable housing.
Those groups include people who were displaced by a home foreclosure or an eviction, members of the unhoused population, and people living in areas that were once redlined. The highest priority group are those with descendants displaced by BART, whose construction destroyed some Berkeley neighborhoods in the 1960s and 70s.
Ayanna Davis is the Deputy Executive Director of Healthy Black Families, one of the organizations that advised the city.
"Berkeley is actually a highly segregated city. That was established through redlining and housing discrimination and institutional racism since the founding of the city," Davis said. "And yes we would have preferred a race-based preference, but the fact is that California has Proposition 209, which doesn’t allow that.”
Residents applying for affordable housing in the city will be given points based on how many of the preference groups they belong to. These points will inform residents’ standing in the affordable housing lottery — though not all affordable units will be affected.
The city is currently in the process of determining just how many units will be assigned using the new system.
