Hayward Plans for Climate Breakdown
A new townhome development is approved, a primer on New Urbanism and transit, and Hope despite petty opposition
Welcome back to the Herald, Haywardistes! I took some time off for the winter holiday and now I’m back at it. Unfortunately, Council won’t meet until the 23rd despite other Councils getting back in session as soon as the 2nd. In the meantime, let’s catch up on what’s happened since my last story.
Planning Commission
This Planning Commission happened on December 14th, but I wasn’t able to get to it until now.
New Townhomes Coming Downtown
A development that’s been in the works downtown for years was approved by the Planning Commission. It will have 13 market-rate townhome units on the corner of Watkins and D streets. It’ll have a modern design and a single-car garage for each unit, despite being 3-bedroom homes (with some being as small as 1,000 square feet).
This development seems like it’ll be a good addition to downtown, though I don’t really like the aesthetic. My main gripe is the palm trees—the fronds can cause damage, they provide no shade, they’re non-native, and they’re not even trees—and the first-floor suites seem awkward in practice, though I have no personal experience with them. Thankfully the development will generate around $384,000 for affordable housing projects in the city.
The newest Planning Commissioner, Ron Meyers, bought up some issues around property line and fence conflicts with the existing neighbors, which is in line with his background as a landlord and self-proclaimed Street Mayor. However, he also honed in on a PG&E vault which, given his background as an electrician, may be the kind of thing he focuses on with developments going forward.
Commissioner Franco-Clausen asked about the difference between being “solar ready” and having solar panels already. Staff later clarified that all new developments must have some solar panels on them, according to state law. This is good for the environment, but will also mean additional expense and, like everything else, put “green” only in the hands of those who can afford it. But that’s Capitalism, fam.
Acting Chair Lowe tried to get some kind of artwork included as a Condition of Approval so that the people driving by on D Street have something to look at. The architect expressed concern about space issues in the breezeway but seemed open to the idea. Commuters driving through Hayward at over 35 mph to get to 580 probably won't take the time to look into the breezeway, but at least the gate will be “artistic”.
The development was approved without any real conditions attached, aside from a promise to carefully consider the placement of the mailboxes.
Hayward Climate Plans Face Uncertain Commission
This item is a doozy and I haven’t read the full 11 attachments quite yet—I enjoy having a life sometimes—but it’ll go to Council at the end of January, so I promise I’ll dive into it by then. This item is a 6-20 year strategic plan for what the City will do about the climate. It’s a Climate Action Plan (what are we going to do about it?), a Hazard Element Update (how will we address climate hazards?), and an Environmental Justice Element (how will we do this equitably?).
One image that showed what we’re up against is a pie chart showing where our biggest greenhouse gas emissions come from:
Transportation—like cars, trucks, and vans—makes up 62% of our emissions with natural gas—both in homes and industry—taking up 26%. Removing those two things would get us 88% of the way to zero emissions in the City. Removing tailpipe emissions and natural gas should be the most important thing the City addresses to reach Net Zero Emissions by their 2040 deadline—which even Staff felt was “very ambitious.”
I always hope that the Planning Commissioners will educate themselves on ideas like new urbanism and eco-socialism and the kinds of systemic changes that will help to fix many problems at once: city funding, greenhouse gas emissions, equity in transport, traffic, the housing crisis, and others I can’t even think of right now. There are whole books on the subject which I’ve read and think everyone should at least glance at, though I won’t burden you with a book list right now.
We need dense, mixed-use development with narrower streets and robust support for public transit that will decrease the reliance on cars, open up green space, lower the maintenance cost burden on the city, and—with the right policies—generate enough affordable housing for everyone. Simple, right?
Wake Up To Walkable Urbanism
But I continue to be disappointed. Commissioner Meyers—who had only been appointed 2 days earlier—focused on an idea of “vehicle minutes travelled,” which is the same fallacious idea Public Works Staff used to tie improved traffic flow to helping the environment. Commissioner Patterson was also concerned about idling and it bothered me that Staff refused to respond to their questions with the very simple idea behind reducing vehicle use: induced demand.
The reason it still takes the same amount of time to get from one end of Hayward to the other despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expanding the roads is because if you build it, cars will come. Adding lanes has never reduced traffic because as soon as traffic decreases, drivers change their routes to use the new lanes and they fill up all over again. Traffic and environmental pollution both increase, even though there are more lanes which were supposed to make things faster.
Commissioners Franco-Clausen, Patterson, and Lowe were also concerned about the reliance on electric vehicles to reduce emissions and how those vehicles are out of reach to low-income residents. This is an important point, but the answer isn’t to subsidize electric cars. The answer is to make cities more walkable since walking is cheap and environmentally friendly, higher density housing can be more affordable, and higher density housing is more energy efficient from economies of scale—it’s easier to heat one building with 10 apartments in it than to heat 10 single-family homes.
Parking fees, congestion tax, and street closures all orbit around the idea of increasing walkability. Commissioner Patterson was worried about parking fees impacting local businesses, but parking fees increase turnover and are a net benefit to businesses. An ideal on-street parking area is about 80% full, so there’s always room for a car to park. But if you look at B Street after 10am on any day you’ll see that there is never any parking, which hurts local businesses.
Congestion tax is another stick that can keep people from driving through Hayward to get to 580, though it’s impossible to know how well it’d work. The main benefit of it is that it’s cheaper than doing actual road work.
Closing streets should only be done with the intent of creating a Bicycle Boulevard network, similar to Berkeley. With how sprawled out Hayward is, there’s no way any existing neighborhood can survive without cars. They were designed with cars in mind and so long as we insist that we’re a suburb and never push for radical zoning changes, they’re necessary to live there.
Equity a Top Concern
Commissioners Franco-Clausen and Patterson were both concerned about equity, especially around electrification. After some confusion about solar panel requirements, Commissioner Franco-Clausen said that solar panels represented another equity gap because of the cost of installation and retrofitting. She and Commissioners Patterson and Goodbody wanted Staff to look into partnerships with Ava Community Energy (formerly East Bay Community Energy), which is a really good idea.
Hayward already has 100% renewable energy available to residents, but it’s too expensive for lower-income residents. Finding ways to make existing renewable energy affordable will remove the need for solar panels and also help the City’s carbon emissions. This would be even easier if PG&E wasn’t a for-profit company that passes along costs for deferred maintenance to rate-payers and we instead had publicly-owned energy generation. But that’s another show.
(con)Dissenting Voice
“There’s a lot of environmental advocates in California who are actually bullies,” Commissioner Stevens said before accusing them of not understanding how to practically implement policies. After asking if it’s possible to run a gas appliance indoors with a propane tank (illegal and ill-advised), he claimed that stoves don’t break down regularly, citing his own stove from the 1920’s. He was also upset that there wasn’t clear liability for all 186 actions in the plan, unsatisfied by Staff’s assertion that liability would differ for each project. He was derisive of nature-based solutions to climate resilience, like restoring wetlands to prevent flooding or drainage swales, as well. He claimed, without evidence, that “a lot of the nature-based solutions” he had seen had failed during last year’s storms.
I can only guess why a privileged white man who lives in the Old Highland Neighborhood would decry environmentalists as incompetent bullies who just don’t understand how the Real World works and frame himself as The Rational Adult Voice In The Room. Calling into question the environmental costs of upgrading to all-electric appliances as opposed to using existing ones for as long as possible is a valid thing. Consumerism will definitely not save the planet.
But when we look at the map above—green is better environmental quality and yellow/orange/red is worse—and you live in the dark green area and you’re telling people who live in the yellow and orange areas that environmentalists are bullies, it’s hard to believe that you care about them when you’ve only been talking about yourself. And when you vote down the plan to help people in the yellow and orange areas because you don’t want to make any meaningful change in your lifestyle, it makes me question whether you should be up there.
In the end, this is just a set of plans. Nothing has been done yet and nothing will be done without money and support. This plan was put together by only 3 people and at best would take decades to implement. Even Staff recognized that it was ambitious and that some things just wouldn’t work for Hayward. But we continue to do them because, as Vice Chair Lowe said before the plan was passed, “We have hope.”
And if you don’t have hope, you don’t have anything.