Activist's Diary on Middle Housing in Berkeley, California
July 8, 2025 is the 2nd reading of new middle housing ordinance
The second reading of “Zoning Ordinance and General Plan Amendments Relating to Middle Housing” is the final step at least for now in cementing middle housing zoning into City of Berkeley zoning law. It is the first item in the city council agenda on Tuesday, June 8, 2025 listed under consent as item A.
Middle Housing started on February 26, 2019 as city council agenda item 21 with the Missing Middle Report from councilmembers Droste, Bartlett, Kesarwani and Robinson. It was continued twice with passage as a referral to the city manager on April 23, 2019.
Councilmembers presented missing middle as filling a gap in housing options and affordability with unobtrusive duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes that fit neatly into neighborhoods on residential lots taking up no more space than a single-family house. Other missing middle design options in the Missing Middle Report listed courtyard apartments, bungalow courts, townhouses, etc. All of these options were proposed as undoing the wrongs of redlining and creating equity.
The drive to label single family housing as innately racist and to eliminate R-1 single family housing zoning picked up in earnest in Berkeley in 2020. Berkeley always likes to believe it is first, but Minneapolis, Minnesota was the first city in the U.S. to eliminate single family zoning in 2019 under the banner of eliminating segregation and creating equity in a process to increase housing that started at least two years before the murder of George Floyd.
Placing the single-family house as the cause of housing inequity rather than the result of systemic racism, economic disparities and economic hardship is a misunderstanding of American history and the laws and practices of othering used to segregate people of color and ethnic groups from white neighborhoods. However, single family housing as innately racist makes for a good story and tag line in a city that likes to think of itself as liberal and progressive to open neighborhoods to increased density and development.
From all appearances, it looks like the formerly redlined neighborhoods in south and west Berkeley with the highest resident diversity will be the target. The lingering legacy of redlining leaves these areas as lower in value making them ripe for demolition, development and gentrification. And, this makes the residents living in lower valued properties with lower rents and market values the target instead of the beneficiary.
The key to demolishing existing housing is a plan to increase density by adding more residential units to the parcel in what is called “infill” development.
There are good reasons to increase density in already developed cities and towns like limiting and stopping sprawl into wildland, farms, forests, prairies, nature resources and fragile ecosystems.
Adding housing by increasing density in already developed areas can come with benefits like decreasing driving, improving transit, access to services, walkable neighborhoods, etc., but that requires planning.
The problem with the singular focus on the single-family house as the cause of housing inequity and its elimination and increasing density as the solution means there is nothing in the ordinance to preserve tree canopy other than the restrictions on removing a coastal oak or to address the risk of stormwater runoff and flooding and heat island effect.
The singular focus on density means there is nothing in the ordinance or even in city council action pipeline to address the impacts of density and the expansive addition of hardscape (buildings, walkways and driveways). There is nothing to preserve open space, habitat, ecosystems. There is nothing to require permeable paving to address water runoff. There is nothing to partner the increased density with adding public parks and public open space.
This Middle Housing Zoning Ordinance passed by council contains no affordable housing requirements. The proposed affordability is by design. The entire promise of affordability is based on the expectation that property owners and developers will choose to build the larger number of smaller units instead of fewer more luxurious larger units. And, the expectation that those smaller units will come with low rents.
What was the outcome of the special City Council meeting on Thursday, June 26, 2025 on Middle Housing Zoning that opened at 6:11 pm and ended at 11:50 pm with the vote to approve middle housing zoning?
The presentations on Middle Housing from the Planning Department and councilmembers came first with public comment following starting at 7:59 pm and ending at 10:42 pm. Each speaker had one minute which they could grow to four minutes through the donation of time from three other speakers.
There was considerable comment from the public that they received inadequate notice on Middle Housing zoning. That was true of the Supplemental proposal from Councilmember Kesarwani with co-sponsors Mayor Ishii and councilmembers Bartlett and Lunaparra, but not on middle housing which was first introduced as the “missing middle” in 2019.
The Kesarwani proposal that rolled zoning districts R-1, R-2, R-2A and MU-R into one zone with 90 units per dwelling unit acre (dua) was never presented to the public before the June 26, 2025 special city council meeting. The Planning Commission never held a hearing on combining all these districts into one density of 90 units per dua. And, the supplementals appear to have been posted late on June 25, 2025 the day before the scheduled special council meeting.
The same absence of notification can be said of the compromise motion made once the meeting started of 70 units per dua.
The supplemental from Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development matching the Kesarwani supplemental essentially declares that we shouldn’t worry about all this density of 90 units per dua, because we will never build out 90 units per dua. The Klein document proposes that densities would only result in a unit increase of 937 more units than the 19,098 total new units which were adequately studied in the 2023 – 2031 Housing Update Environmental Impact Report approved by council in preparation of meeting the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of adding 8934 units in Berkeley in the eight-year 2023-2031 RHNA cycle.
Looking at what 90 units per dua could actually mean, the starting point is Berkeley’s existing density with the population of 124,321 on a land area of 10.43 square miles. Berkeley rates as the 18th densest city in California and the 84th densest city in the nation in a list of incorporated places with a density of over 10,000 people per square mile. Berkeley’s population density from the 2020 census works out to 11,919.6 people per square mile.
Using 2.2 persons per dwelling unit if 19,098 units are fully built and occupied that would yield an additional population of 42,016. (166,337 total = 15,948 per square mile). The 2.2 multiplier is found on page 141 in the main document Zoning Ordinance and General Plan Amendments Relating to Middle Housing to calculate the number of persons per unit,
Putting it altogether 937 more units would add another 2,061 to the 166,337 changing the density in Berkeley to 16,146 people per square mile. (Density per square mile in Oakland 7878, El Cerrito 7,070, Emeryville 10,138, Richmond 3849, Albany 11,324.6, Kensington 5,631)
Where “Missing Middle Housing” started and ended may well have violated AB 2904 signed into law by Governor Newsom on September 27, 2024 with an implementation date of January 1, 2025. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2904/id/3005238
AB 2904 requires a 20-day notice of zoning change of use because 10 days is inadequate. Berkeley residents barely got 24 hours and that is only if they accessed the meeting agenda with the added supplementals the evening before the meeting. Since the proposed zoning changes impact all residential neighborhoods except the Hillside Overlay (high fire zones) and the Southside (the concentration of UC Berkeley student housing south of UC campus which is already upzoned to increase density) this leaves about half of the city missing what appears to be legally required notification.
Much to my surprise it was councilmember Taplin who said he could not support a density of 90 units per dua noting that 60 units per dua was the maximum proposed and he did not have time to study the new proposal.
Even that 60 units was limited to R-2A and MU-R as shown in Table 4 on page 12 in the main document for the June 26, 2025 meeting. The table below compares the proposed increase in housing density from the July 23, 2024 City Council meeting, the Kesarwani supplemental with co-sponsors mayor Ishi and councilmembers Bartlett and Lunaparra and the compromise recommendation from councilmember Humbert of 70 units per dua that passed unanimously.
The final motion folded in the supplemental from councilmember Tregub to evaluate the effectiveness of the middle housing zoning ordinance and the impacts. However, in the direction to staff to return to Council with an equity report within 12 months of receiving 25 middle housing project applications or two years whichever comes first the phrase “to the extent feasible” was inserted along with “consider” weakening Tregub’s supplemental asking for evaluation of loss of open or permeable yard space, solar access, privacy, tree canopy, biodiversity and stormwater runoff.
Other changes from the current zoning increase the building height limit to 38 feet for pitched roofs while maintaining 35 foot cap at the eave, an additional 5 feet beyond the 35 feet including guardrails and parapet is allowed for roof access, the front and rear setback minimum is a combined 20 feet. There is no change in the side setback which is 4 feet.
The Kesarwari supplemental contains that at least 40% of the lot should be maintained as open space where it is currently 60%. However, in accordance with state law, ADUs (accessory dwelling units) do not count in calculating lot coverage. Currently, ADUs in Berkeley can be up to 1000 square feet, however, the Planning Commission recommended on June 4, 2025 to increase ADU size limit to 1200 square feet. That is larger than many of the single-family houses in the Berkeley flats. A parcel may contain two ADUs (if the lot is large enough to add two ADUs).
Klein in his supplemental pulls out the number 8,380 buildable lots of at least 3000 square feet in size with 3,246 parcels in the R-1 District and 5,134 parcels in the R-1A, R-2. R-2A and MU-R in his forecast that only 937 more units would be built with 90 units per dua than the 19,098 studied in the housing element.
I did not find this forecast reassuring.
There should be no expectation that small parcels can’t be combined into bigger parcels (lots) for development. We have seen in the past, developers purchasing multiple parcels and then requesting the merger of parcels for projects.
Additionally, the Klein supplemental is using historical utilization under current zoning limits to predict future construction under expansive upzoning.
The Middle Housing ordinance is wide open for abuse.
For a a more visible image to consider what eight units on a 5,000 square foot lot might look like take a trip to Roosevelt at Bancroft in the Berkeley flats and check the six unit building at 2310 Roosevelt, built in 1958 on a 5,800 square foot lot, the six unit building at 2306 Roosevelt built in 1965 on a 4200 square foot lot, and the fourplex at 2304 Roosevelt built in 1924 on a 4200 square foot lot.
The entire Middle Housing Zoning is just that, maximizing housing development without planning for the impacts or planning how to increase density and at the same time make space for what makes cities pleasantly livable like preserving urban open space and adding and expanding parks and leaving room for nature.
Often the podcasts in my regular listening contain book recommendations. Here are mine:
The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown
A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul
Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City by Ben Wilson
Patrick M. Condon covers why increasing density does not lower the cost of housing in Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land.
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Notes:
Link to all the June 26, 2025 documents https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-june-26-2025
Link to February 26, 2019 Missing Middle Report https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2019-02-26%20Item%2021%20Missing%20Middle%20Report.pdf
Link to Housing Element and Regional Housing Needs Allocation
Link to existing BMC (Berkeley Municipal Code) prior to passage of Middle Housing Zoning on June 26, 2025:
R-1 https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.202.050
R-1A https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.202.060 (R-1A is now consolidated into R-2)
R-2 https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.202.080
R-2A https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.202.090
MU-R https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.206.090 (5 or more units Use Permit with public hearing)
Link to population density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density
Link to Minneapolis Bipartisan Policy Center Comprehensive Zoning Reform in Minneapolis, MN
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/comprehensive-zoning-reform-in-minneapolis-mn/