Facebook’s Housing Echo Chamber Details
PERSPECTIVE-In 2019, I reported in 48 hills that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was using mega-grants to shape California housing law and policy.
CZI gave Enterprise Community Partners $500,000 to draft and then lobby for Assemblymember David Chiu’s AB 1487, the law that authorized the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to become a one-stop regional planning agency overseeing transportation and housing and to levy taxes on the nine-county Bay Area; CZI formally endorsed that bill.
CZI also gave the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley nearly a million dollars: $440,000 for unspecified uses and $500,000 to start a Housing Lab essentially, a development incubator under the aegis of the celebrated public university.
Editor’s Note:
Zelda Bronstein, formerly Berkeley Planning Commission chair and Daily Planet Public Eye columnist, has an ongoing series of articles on San Francisco’s 48 Hills news site which spotlights the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability for-profit corporation which is funded by Facebook stock owned by founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.
The corporation (known as CZI) mimics non-profit foundations by making grants to groups which advance its political/policy agenda. The latest piece in the series reveals CZI’s $750,000 investment in creating a KQED radio news desk which has showcased CZI’s view of remedies for what’s called the California housing crisis under the unwittingly ironic title of “Sold Out”.
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THE 46TH “Dianne Feinstein signals she’s open to abandoning Senate filibuster for voting rights,” by the LA Times’ Jennifer Haberkorn: “The idea of eliminating the filibuster or making it harder to do has gained momentum among Senate Democrats concerned Republicans would use the tool to block all of President Biden’s agenda.”
(Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Jocelyn Foreman was full of nervous energy and dread.
It was a crisp morning in early March. She arrived at the Pleasant Hill Community Center to find a handful of men and women in a semicircle outside the sandstone-colored building, clutching folders and holding cell phones.
They were there for a foreclosure auction, poised to bid on the house that Foreman rents: a single-story, 1,500-square-foot tract home in Pinole. It’s a simple home, set back from the street, with a steep sloping backyard, worn carpets and a roof that leaks when it rains.
A man with a clipboard started the bidding at $175,000. A woman in a maroon sweatshirt and another man offered competing bids. First $176,000. Then $177,000. Then $180,000.
Erin Baldassari/KQED
toggle caption Erin Baldassari/KQED
Sacramento s Elmhurst neighborhood is comprised of mostly single-family homes. The City Council has voted on a draft plan to allow fourplexes in all residential areas. Erin Baldassari/KQED
Real estate developer Kevin Khasigian stands in an empty lot near Sacramento s booming downtown. The sound of a jackhammer from a nearby construction site rattles behind him. We re not in any buildings, just an open field with grass and trash cans and parking, he says.
He points to the edges of a future, four-unit apartment building he has planned for the space. Hopefully someday this will provide the opportunity for people to live in an area where they want to and that s really being underutilized.