Public input Zooms online
Video testimony adds voices to policymaking
By most accounts, the recent hearing on the Bay Area’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation wasn’t the social event of the season.
The material was dry, the arguments technical and yet dozens of people called in to testify, some seemingly willing to wait hours to be heard.
Many were part of a new collection of desk-chair lobbyists now able to speak up on live video, adding their voices to a debate where they once might have been silent.
“In a grassroots organization like ours, you struggle to show the grassroots,”
said Matt Lewis of California YIMBY, a nonprofit prohousing group. The convenience of video testimony, he added, “is a total gamechanger.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new energy and testimony, through web-based platforms like Zoom and call-in participation, to state and Bay Area housing debates, policy watchers and advocates say. Logging into a virtual meeting — without the schedule-busting complications of travel, child care and sitting through hours of off-topic debates — has made it easier for activists to raise their voices.
Winning public votes over new developments or housing policy often depends on getting bodies into city council chambers and state Capitol committee rooms. But housing advocates have long lamented that land-use debates are dominated by small and dedicated cadres of older homeowners intent on killing projects. Meanwhile,
young parents and renters who are more apt to support development simply cannot cram a day or night of civic engagement into their busy work and family schedules.
Enter the new tool of democracy, video conferencing. Now California YIMBYs have joined NIMBYs to flood hearings in Sacramento in recent weeks with comments, condemnations and passionate speeches about suburban redevelopment, lot sizes and parking spaces. Local planning commissions and city councils have also been on the receiving end of long-running Zoom comments.
In a region where home construction has slowed and the housing shortage has pushed home prices to the highest in the country, the stakes are high.
Slow-growth and neighborhood conservation groups also applaud the increased digital access to state and local committees. “We’re all for open government,” said Keith Gurnee of Livable California. Group members have shown up in person for housing policy hearings in Sacramento, only to wait hours and have
the hearings postponed or moved up on the calendar, he said.
Gurnee wants better scheduling and equal time to testify over the phone. “YIMBY is supremely wellorganized and supremely well-capitalized and they flood these calls,” Gurnee said. “More access is better, as long as it’s fair.”
Assemblyman Alex Lee’s Assembly Bill 339 would require cities to stream public meetings and allow live, remote public comments. Lee, D-San Jose, said the goal is to open hearings to more of the public. “Land use doesn’t just affect older, white homeowners,” said Lee, a housing advocate. Decision-makers should also hear from the diverse community of renters, younger parents and immigrants.
The proposal could be particularly salient for housing debates. Critics have long argued city councils and commissions too often work on the squeakywheel principle — where a small, noisy group of residents gets the attention and votes to kill new development.
A study by UCLA housing
researchers argues land-use decisions in California too often favor older, established residents — largely white, affluent homeowners. The researchers point to a poll asking Californians how they felt about housing reform. Roughly 64% of Bay Area residents polled by Lake Research Partners for California YIMBY favored more housing, while 28% opposed new residential construction. But the minority opinion carried the day as a state housing reform measure, Senate Bill 50, was defeated in Sacramento last year.
Making it easier to testify can bring in more diverse opinions and influence the debate.
Video meetings have been in stark contrast to pre-pandemic days of organizing housing reform in Berkeley, Lewis said. City housing advocates usually scrambled to find a member free for an entire afternoon or evening to testify at a City Council or Planning Commission meeting, he said.
Berkeley resident Libby Lee-Egan, a graphic designer and mother of two preschool daughters, said
the video meetings have allowed her to increase her civic engagement. She’s now a member of two city advisory committees and has spoken up more often to advocate for new housing.
Lee-Egan wasn’t always able to get to council hearings before the pandemic and remembers being turned away at one meeting because the chambers and outside lobby were overcrowded.
At one virtual hearing, she designed a Zoom background to spell out “More Homes Now!” for YIMBY supporters. “I’m kind of dreading when everything goes back to normal,” she said. “It’ll be less fun, less chill.”
A recent Senate committee hearing on two measures loosening development rules drew more than 100 callers from Long Beach and Los Angeles to San Jose and Berkeley. Few likely would have been able to testify in person. The measures, SB 9 and SB 10, passed through committee, with strong support and opposition weighing in from around the state.
San Jose planning commissioner Pierluigi Oliverio said video meetings have kept speakers focused, and less likely to run over time. He hasn’t seen a noticeable change in participation, although he’s encouraged that hearings are available to more residents.
And the regulars, he noted, still speak up: “They’ll call Milpitas. They’ll call San Jose. They’ll call Campbell,” said Oliverio, a former San Jose city councilmember.
Lisa Vorderbrueggen follows development issues in local cities for the Bay Area chapter of the Building Industry Association and often uses video connections to advocate for projects. The audiences seem to have a broader range of views, and to be more willing to speak up from home than under the podium lights of a city council chamber, she said. “That’s going to be a plus for democracy,” she said.
Larger crowds also can send a clear message to lawmakers, Lewis said. “One time might be a fluke. Two times might be a pattern. Three times, you better listen.”