Sonoma, First Street East developmentn project

 

Fred Allebach

5/16/14 Sonoma Planning Commission meeting public comment

First Street East (FSE) project agenda item 4.1

Kelso Barnett, FSE developer

5/15/24

-see acronym list at bottom

 

Primary comments and suggestions (approx. 700 words)

Ø  Bring FSE project back for another hearing. If all approved in one shot the public will see this as a developer give-away/ sweetheart deal flying under the radar. There are no news articles on it as of 5/15/24. The packet came out five days before the hearing, no time for public to adequately digest it all. Best course IMO will be to allow the public more time to become aware and weigh in before totally approving the project.

 

Ø  The Project needs to be reviewed for consistency with AFFH, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. The staff report did not do this. The Project site has RHNA potential for 50 total units including five Moderate-income and five Low-income units. The Project proposes 31 units, a 25% inclusion of 31 is eight units. By using the 850 sf exemption the Project burns six affordable housing (AH) units. These are the only 6^th cycle Low-income units slated for the whole east side. Given that the Project is in a Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC) High Resource Opportunity Area, tops to be integrated with, such an outcome can be read as not materially consistent with AFFH. AFFH in the city Housing Element (HE) is about fostering integration throughout the city, lower-income units are a proxy indicator for racial diversity; does this project help AFFH integration or does it perpetuate segregation?

 

Ø  Suggestion: Add deed restriction in perpetuity for six 850 sf units, three at 140% AMI, three at 160% AMI. AMI = area median income. This will satisfy the intent of the 25% inclusionary ordinance to have eight of the 31 units be affordable at some level and show good will by the developer by earmarking “missing middle”/ affordable by design units for the local young professionals that need that type of housing.  Alternately, make six of the 850 sf units to go as three Mod and three Low to voluntarily conform with the 25% inclusionary ordinance. Perhaps since the 850 sf exemption does allow gaming of the intent of the 25% inclusionary ordinance, some type of mitigation for this could be made by the Planning Commission (PC) and the developer.  

 

Ø  Move the deed-restricted units to separate buildings to not concentrate them all in one place, spread them throughout the development.

 

Ø  Disclose in writing projected price points of 850 sf units so as public and city can determine if they fit the 120-160% AMI affordability range.*  A couple making 140% AMI can afford a $550,000 home, that with $50,000 down and a $3,300 a month mortgage. What will be done to see that the 850 sf units do not all go to the highest bidder as second homes? How to prove the affordable by design theory?  If no solid price point then there’s no way to measure the affordable by design thesis.

 

Ø   While the FSE Project is legal by the books, the 850 sf exemption is inconsistent with the intent of the 06/2021 25% inclusionary ordinance; it brings an unintended consequence. Within six months or sooner, staff, PC, and City Council can take note and either remove this exemption or modify the 25% inclusionary ordinance to close the 850 sf loophole. Modify it to set missing middle size limits, deed restrict missing middle units, whatever ever it takes for the next step by the City in this cat and mouse game. Try to eliminate developer’s choice to take the path of least AH production. Bob Felder, in 4/21 PC meeting, did not want to see smaller units trend to market rate prices like on the Broadway auto lot project; “don’t give a developer a chance to do what was done on Broadway again.” With no changes the city will set a precedent for Hanna, SDC, and Springs Specific Plan affordable by design claims by developers.

 

Ø  Could the Project be refigured to take away some of the private and common space and thereby make more room for AH units of various types? Is a pool necessary? Or does a higher density market rate project get to a plateau tipping point where returns are not as great with higher density?  

 

Ø  Project mentions local investors. Are there any local investors who are on the PC, Council or former PC and council? What decision makers need to recuse?  

 

Ø  Was the Project site purchased in a window that overlapped the 850 sf exemption being proposed as a Code change?

 

Ø  Please take note of subjective terms used around this Project and how they do not meet objective standards to justify development projects:  compatible (for who?) with neighborhood and town character (for who?), quality of life goals (for who?), sustainable neighborhood (for who?), missing middle, missing middle income, affordable by design   

 

Entitlement process grand slam 

-Staff recommends to entitle FSE all in one shot on Thursday 5/16/24, this is exactly the same process PC members complained bitterly about in the Darius hotel.  Project has a number of what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander items.

-normally developers would be heavily challenged on everything, on FSE it is especially clear that the intent of the 25% inclusionary ordinance is being undermined, and that the city will be losing AH units in this deal, will anyone call this out?

--Darius hotel opponents (Vic, Johanna, Carol) were objecting strongly over potential loss of three or four units; FSE loses six to eight

-the normal PC modus operandi is to question and hit developers hard and ask for changes; in a previous I-T interview Kelso said he expects FSE to pass the PC with no troubles 

(*Kelso 5/15/24  but this is what I said:

"Barnett added, "compared to the previous projects that failed, we believe our proposal strikes a better balance between density, compatibility, financial feasibility and our responsibility to be sensitive to both our surrounding neighborhood and the city of Sonoma. Earning support from our neighbors is just as important as winning approvals at the Planning Commission. We hope our proposal will succeed because we've done both.")

  

-if this passes all at once with no future reviews, and no AFFH analysis, it will look like a sweetheart, inside baseball deal

 

FSE Project Narrative

-Project narrative mentions that 850 sf/ smaller units are “theorized to be affordable by design (ABD)”

-Need a written price point from Project to calibrate this theory, peg it to an AMI, if no objective calibration then we can expect a repeat of Mockingbird Lane price inflation, which everyone cites as an abuse of process and misleading claim

 

6^th cycle RHNA site inventory, no net loss, RHNA excess capacity

-The FSE site is counted for 50 6^th cycle RHNA units: 40 Above Mod, 5 L, 5 Mod

-with 31 total proposed, FSE will result a RHNA net loss of 17 Above Mod-income units, four Mod, and four L

-Sonoma RHNA excess capacity for VL is 29, L is 30. There is no excess capacity for VL or L on east side

-with FSE approved as is there will be only one Low-income unit in 6^th cycle RHNA for the whole east side

 

Private space at FSE: a boon or a waste?

-317 sf private space per 1 BR, 960 sf private space 2 BR

-8,642 sf total private space, this is a luxury Sonoma amenity, opportunity hoarding of space

-Siesta Way senior apts. has only a small balcony/ patio private space per unit

-the PC and Council pulled for smaller units in the 2021 hearings

-private space uses up valuable city space for upper-end quality of life amenities and makes sale prices go up; lower density overall means GHG goes up per capita, lower density/more private space means more exclusivity = unsustainable neighborhood

 

FSE Staff Report comments

Inconsistency with AFFH is minimized

-AFFH is state law in the HE; HE has to be consistent with AFFH, why no staff analysis?

-in Martinez v Clovis 2023 WL 2820092, Clovis land use and low-density zoning perpetuated segregation and both Clovis and HCD lost on a certified 5^thcycle HE. Clovis needed to upzone.

-the Clovis parallel is with the Sonoma east side where RHNA site inventory has it so if FSE is approved as is, there will be only one L unit on the east side for the whole 6^th cycle; the city HE and Code have effectively locked off the east side from lower income housing.

-how is that not maintaining segregation in the TCAC highest opportunity areas of the city?

 

General Plan consistency, comments 

AFFH

-no focus on project’s impact on AFFH, all on consistency with the character and neighborhood compatibility side, even as FSE continues a Sonoma pattern of Above Mod RHNA over-production

-GP says everyone who works here should be able to live here, is the Project consistent with that?

 

Encourage infill development

-with infill like this, space keeps getting taken up by Above Mod units, gradually squeezing out potential for VL and L and for AFFH in Sonoma; this is Sonoma housing BAU and how Sonoma is sorting to wealthier and wealthier

-project errs heavily to preservation of small-town character justifications

-dense infill was part of the UGB bargain, what we are getting IMO is excuses, lower-density market rate gentrification, and lack of political will to address exclusionary zoning and segregation

 

Community Development Element (CDE) /Opportunity Site

-FSE will be another Opportunity Site lost to AH even as project is consistent with this element and staff says FSE is “consistent with city AH goals”

-it is my understanding that the Growth Management Ordinance is now not in play for the 6^th cycle HE, but the staff report cites the CDE for GP consistency to “limit growth to rate based on cost-effective provision of services”; why even cite this?

 

Preserve and enhance scale of neighborhood

 -promote higher density while ensuring scale is compatible with neighborhood and town character; more subjective terms

-there seems to be a systemic city bias against AFFH and towards character and compatibility

 

HE MM unit type diversity

-quality of life goals is another subjective term; the current HE claims that inclusionary units are the main source of AH in Sonoma; here we have a project that is then materially inconsistent with AFFH and AH production

-Sonoma appears like an eternal sitting duck for market rate housing oversupply; city needs to ramp up focus on AFFH, show political will

 

Maintain sustainable neighborhoods that fosters neighborhood character

-subjective phrases again, what is a sustainable neighborhood?

 

Promote environmental sustainability that minimizes reliance on natural resources

-FSE, by choosing lower than max density and taking no density bonus, more resources per capita will be used; the focus on character is environmentally unsustainable because wealth correlates with unsustainable GHG footprint and the more market rate units, the more wealthy residents, the less sustainable overall

 

Fire risk? 

-the fire risk is essentially the same as Donald Street area and SDC

-will there be similar public outcry? Do those folks even know this project is up for entitlement in one fell swoop? It was this exact same lack of comprehensive notice that precipitated the Donald group’s opposition to the Springs Specific Plan

-with fire insurance being dropped in CA, and insurance needed to get a mortgage, MM buyers will get squeezed out by cash buyers who can pay for high-risk insurance

 

Fred’s current General Plan (GP) comments

-Sonoma has a fundamental planning and housing tension between exclusion and inclusion

-this shakes out as tension between character preservation that has effect of maintaining segregation and policies like upzoning and dense infill with VL and L units that would foster AFFH and integration

 

Affordable by Design (ABD)

-ABD is aimed at the “missing middle income” (MMI) cohort, a subset of Above Mod who can’t quite afford market rate

-for MMI people to get units in their price range, MMI units have to be set aside so market rate cash buyers don’t bid up the price and get them all

-how to calibrate ABD? How to get these units to the intended buyers?

-the FSE project is in a 2024 TCAC High Resource Opportunity Area, in a 2023 TCAC Highest area; FSE is an extremely desirable location, walk to Plaza, creme de la top location in Sonoma, one minute to the Mission, to dining, wine tasting, a stroll on the Plaza, perfect for second homes and work from home

-in all likelihood all FSE units will sell at max highest market prices making any ABD intent moot, who will turn down a street legal windfall profit?

-ABD is highly unlikely to be affordable to the MM cohort in Sonoma unless price is deed-restricted to 120-160% AMI

-without objective price calibration, ABD is not an objective standard; it’s an unproven theory but one thing is known, the market jacks up all prices as high as possible, trusting the market to voluntarily create affordability is naive, as SDC opponents to ABD have pointed out, you can try to justify ABD as actually affordable but there is little proof

-trailers in Sonoma are not ABD, average space rents are now $1,100- 1,200, these plus utilities and other related housing costs inflate monthly trailer housing costs well above 30% annual income level

-it is generally assumed that ABD is not possible in Sonoma, unless claiming it helps someone’s interests

-an FSE entitlement that buys the proposition that the 850 sf unit are ABD will create a precedent, based on the 6/21 25% inclusionary ordinance, that ABD is a valid affordable housing category that will also work also at SDC and Hanna

 

UC Berkeley Terner Center take on ABD prices

UC Berkeley Terner Center: no uniform way to measure non-deed-restricted affordability: “Policies and programs seeking to address the shortage of units affordable to middle-income households must carefully consider how to determine eligibility thresholds, in order to ensure that proposed solutions will reach the people that they are designed to support.”

https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Landscape-of-Middle-Income-Housing-Affordability-April-2022.pdf

 

*Fred’s ABD calibration

-A “studio” apt is @ 600 sf

-SB-9 units, ADUs and FSE 850 sf condo units all closely overlap in size

-some ADUs are counted as Mod for City RHNA, even as no proof that Sonoma ADUs are Mod-priced

-SB-9 units and 700/ 750 sf units were said by the public and by PC members to never be ABD in Sonoma

-Sheila in 2021: “750 sf sells for market rate”; Bill Willers said the same when seeking to show that SB-9 units would never be affordable

-ABD can’t be infeasible one day but then magically feasible another depending on who’s interest are at stake

-SDC opponents have totally poo-pooed ABD as a valid category, as developer BS; ABD is a good-sounding idea but does it pan out for price point? Let’s see.

 

CA/ SoCo 2024 AMI is $102,500 for 2-people

-140% AMI is $143,500 in 2024 for a two-person household

-two people at 140% AMI can afford a home of up to $550,000 with a monthly payment of $3,300 and $50,000 down

https://www.ccu.com/learn/calculators/home-affordability-calculator/ 

 

-$167,000 is 160% AMI and this is in the top 10% of US earners which is nowhere near the “middle” (“missing middle” and missing middle income as a subset of Above Mod are a SUBJECTIVE TERMS ISSUE!)

-nevertheless, a 160% AMI couple will not be able to compete with a wealthy cash buyer in a bidding war, and Sonoma needs many mid to high level professionals to be able to live here…

-the top 5% and top 1% is killing the top 10%

 

-owner occupied units cost over $800,000 in Sonoma in 2021

 

-for “MMI” earners making more than the AMI, 85.5% are not cost burdened, only 10% use 30-50% of annual income on housing (as per 2021 Sonoma-ABAG staff report); MMI housing is in some respects a solution in search of a problem

-top MMI earners have money, they maybe just can’t buy a house, as compared to Mod, L and VL renters who don’t have the money to pay Sonoma prices at 30% of their annual income

 

Conclusion:

-For FSE, 140% AMI will not be able to afford an 850 sf condo unless the price point is $550,000. -160% AMI needs a price point they can afford to buy a home

-neither 140% or 160% can be termed “middle” when the real middle is totally left in the dust for housing. Calling Above Mod levels of income “middle” is like Starbucks calling a small cup of coffee a “tall”

-deed restricting ABD units and missing middle units is the only way to stop local missing middle people looking to buy a house from being outbid by wealthier people

 

25% 6/21 inclusionary ordinance loophole

-I hope the PC and council are keyed in that the 25% ordinance has a loophole that allows the main intent of the ordinance to be evaded

-without the 850 sf exemption there would be eight inclusionary units, not just two

- in two 4/21 meetings, the PC never discussed the potential consequences of this 850 sf exemption, the focus was all on VL, L, and Mod, and MM (“missing middle”) inclusionary units; none of these were discussed as an affordable by design or ABD strategy

-ABD and the 850 sf exemption sat as an unnoticed Trojan Horse loophole

-the prime intent of 25% was to cover a long-term city underproduction of VL and L units

-in 2021, Sheila was cognizant that developers game the rules, in a cat and mouse game; with FSE we have a case of that, the loophole needs to be shut for future projects, no one on PC or council called out or saw the implications for abuse of the 850 sf exemption, that it could actually run counter to the prime intent of the ordinance

 

2021 Background meetings of PC, Council, and PC/ Council ad hoc committee that set table for 25% inclusionary ordinance, notes and comments

-Code ad hoc committee : Mayor Logan Harvey, Council Member Kelso Barnett, PC Chair Ron Wellander, PC members Larry Barnett, Bob Felder

 

4/8/21 PC meeting

Mayor Harvey wanted ad hoc recommendation to be not baked, but 850 sf and ADU exemptions slid by with no change and no discussion, it was a Trojan Horse

 

Kristina: “trying to address the (25% ordinance) holes we have now, we have very few VL and L units”

-a non-deed restricted Mod unit is an ADU

-Kristina: “zoning code implements the GP and HE”, but Kristina told me that land use map controls zoning and that land use map is contingent on GP, and that is why there was no upzoning in Sonoma 6^th cycle HE, because land use map had not been changed yet…

-over and over it is claimed how city RHNA has been met and exceeded, never an assessment of 2000- 2020 RHNA underperformance, like failing to disclose to your doctor you smoked for 20 years

 

Willers: “relate density to affordability”, tie higher density to most affordability and lower density to the least

 

Storer: Harvey wanted category for 140% AMI/ MM

 

-don’t see any ad hoc recommendation for ABD, only “discussions on size and affordability”; Harvey for 140% missing middle

 

-“affordable” for the city is an AH unit; consistent with the most recent policies of city of Sonoma

 

-Larry Barnett, limited number of significant sized parcels to be developed in Sonoma, a land rush by developers, securing options, looking to move on applications

-intent of 25% is to get ahead of developers looking to max their advantages, 25% will push projects into greater diversity of pricing and levels of affordability

-“get a dollar amount”, what are market prices of units?

-we are out of balance with market rate, 25% intent is to beef up deficit of VL and L, “a rebalancing effort”; Felder agrees

 

Sheila: people manipulate the system really well, game the system, savvy people will find a way around desired city goals

 

Patri and Aftergut: reward ownership units as highest priority, (even as rental is greatest need)

 

4/22/21 PC meeting

-a Sonoma ABAG study produced by staff confirms need for VL and L units

-39% of households in Sonoma subject to displacement

-Above Mod RHNA overproduction by a lot

 

-city has few similar size chunks of land to Alta Madrone on Broadway, and no 100% AH projects in the works

-fact is, past RHNA performance was bad and looks to stay bad, but now there are at least a few teeth like SB-330 streamlining after four years if RHNA not met

 

Storer: Healdsburg, added middle income definition 121-160% AMI; he says missing middle and middle income are synonymous, interchangeable terms (The middle between poor and rich? Not the actual middle or median?)

-MM for ownership sale price for between 140 and 160% AMI is related to current mortgage prices, “if the related max housing price, as computed by the city, would require a mortgage exceeds that SoCo amount of a conforming mortgage loan”

 

CDC has no MI or MM category, these are individual city categories

 

(If 25% intent was to open up an MI category, FSE overproduces it and counts on a putative ABD as justification; this is out of balance, and price point will likely be far over what 140% AMI can afford anyway_

 

(Note, PC is on record with recent Cooperage project as saying it is not PC’s job to consider the developer’s economics; what is important to PC is that city rules and policy intents get followed, in the case of FSE the application is by the rules but uses an unexamined/ untested loophole to evade the prime sense of the 25% ordinance)

 

The overwhelming time here was spent on AH requirements, not the exemptions which were not discussed for possible gaming

 

Storer, for 25%. AH requirements “eliminate developers’ choice”, so as to get more VL and L units

 

(As far as constraining development, 25% is not constraining development now, it is the city being picayune with Montaldo, city has a reputation of being hard for developers to deal with)

 

Sheila, “I know that developers are gamers”

 

Kristina, costs of rent/ sale based on # of BRs more than sf total

 

Felder does not want to see smaller units trend to market rate prices like on Broadway project; as Kelso seems to be doing; “don’t give a developer a chance to do what was done on Broadway again”

-sizing issue relates to developer gaming of process, 850 sf exemption is a loophole that needs closing

 

Sheila, Broadway auto lot proposed project AH units at 453 sf were way too small, “750 sf is being sold for market rate”

 

5/21 Council meeting

Not one mention of 850 sf exemption the whole time

 

Wellander, MM unit can be $1.2 million

Does not support size limits, we don’t need to live in huge homes, give developer a range of sizes none less than 1,200 sf and not more than 1650 sf, if smaller allows for greater number of units overall, cluster units with less personal space each so as to get another unit

 

Logan, MM is very close to market rate, having a deed-restriction at MM levels allows MI people to compete with market rate second home buyers, intent is to try to make sure locals can buy in to a house

(-ABD Is not in 25% as an AMI level, only implied

-for FSE 850 sf units, will prices get jacked up like at Mockingbird? This exemption is showing now to not meet the goals of the 25%)

 

Kelso, “under impression that Mod is very close to market rate”

-“anytime you have a policy like this there will be unintended consequences”

-back up unit costs and income ranges with real data and price points

-Kelso is lone No vote in 255 ordinance based on lack of specificity on tagging income  ranges to unit prices  

 

Kristina, consider alternate methods of limiting size, asks if anyone has any issues with exemptions in the 25%ordinance? None.

-Kristina: one goal of this is to help city comply with RHNA, VL and L are primary goals (but many PC and council see current RHNA and AFFH as illegitimate)

 

Amy does nice job of negotiating the 25% split for rentals and ownership

 

A House Divided

Short movie by Norman Lear; very clear points on US systemic segregation.

https://americadividedseries.com/a-house-divided/

-Milton Friedman, government’s job is to act as a backstop to market excesses; people who see segregation is a problem will seek to do something about it; AFFH is a strong lever…

 

Acronyms

TCAC CA Tax Credit Allocation Committee

RHNA Regional Housing Needs Assessment

sf square feet

AH affordable housing

PC Planning Commission

AMI area median income

VL Very Low-income

L Low-income

Mod Moderate-income

Above Mod Above-moderate income

MM “missing middle”, a vague descriptor of housing unit type or a level of Above Mod income

MMI “missing middle income” between 120% and 160% AMI

FSE First Street East project

AFFH Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

ABD affordable by design

ADU accessory dwelling unit

BAU business as usual

BRs bedrooms

GP General Plan

HE Housing Element

CDC Sonoma County Community Development Commission

IMO in my opinion

SDC Sonoma Developmental Center

 

How to get to a local ceasefire resolution? Parse the issues

 

Read these two articles and then my take. 

 

Thomas L. Friedman NYT 5/8/24

"This is not a time for exclusionary thinking. It is a time for complexity thinking and pragmatic thinking: How do we get to two nation-states for two indigenous people?"

 

"My problem is not that the protests in general are “antisemitic” — I would not use that word to describe them, and indeed, I am deeply uncomfortable as a Jew with how the charge of antisemitism is thrown about on the Israel-Palestine issue."

 

I also like this Jerry Nadler article. Good perspectives to put stuff in context. 

Fred’s take

Good on Friedman to throw cold water on the antisemitic line. Students are overwhelmingly not that. IMO he’s right, that’s not even close to the primary issue here. I also agree with Friedman that Hamas is not an organization I would ever support, that even before their brutal Oct 7th attack.

I stand by my I-T opinion editorial, that to get to a Sonoma ceasefire resolution, blame and side taking has to be dropped. This is too complex and hot to unpack in a council debate on a Ceasefire Resolution, which needs to be simple to pass. We aren’t getting to a resolution because local advocates are pouring gas on the fire from each side with partisan inflammatory comments. Issues get cross-conflated and the water gets muddy fast. 

A general US and world antisemitic claim is reasonable given the backdrop of recent synagogue attacks and Zoom bombing and of Shir Shalom receiving aid to fortify their buildings against attack from Trumpist Christian nationalist forces. These types of attacks don’t come from generally liberal college kids.    

One part of the Gaza-Israeli student protest narrative that may fuel resistance to a Sonoma city council ceasefire resolution is that of the larger power struggle between Iran, Shiites, Sunnis, and Iran's alliance with Hamas, Russia, and China has to be factored in. This opens up further partisan divides over what is an accurate view of US history? 

Friedman, while saying he is a pragmatist, also has his line standing in service of US patriotism. He’s on the US team and tribe. In this drama, Iran is the enemy. 

 

IMO, while I don't back Iran's religious autocracy, I understand how it came about. Iranian people were oppressed by the brutal US-backed Shah, in a previous iteration of US Cold War alliances against the USSR where the US backed extreme right wing dictators (Pinochet/ CIA assassinations for example) so that communists would not take over, domino theory and all that.

People like me would have been jailed in the McCarthy era, for being a realist about US history. My 1960s elders were jailed and beaten for standing up to be counted in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War  movements. 

Because I see US corruption does not mean I support communist oppression. Because I see the US as in many ways corrupt does not mean it can’t stand for good things as well. I’m with Friedman, the Netanyahu extreme right wing government and Hamas are locked in a codependent, downward spiral race to the bottom. What needs to be opposed here is this whole dynamic, not just the Israeli side of it. Being for peace means disengaging from the partisan heat that makes war, yet fighting over stuff is what people do best.  

One big part of unpacking all this is that the Israel-Gaza war hits on all the basic moral pillars that all people have: liberation, purity, loyalty, harm, fairness, and respect for authority. See moral foundation theory. All people have these same moral pillars but the content differs, especially depending on what team we are on, as with in-group, out-group dynamics. Why is the Israel-Gaza issue hard to unpack? Because all have different ideas about  loyalty, harm, fairness, purity, liberation, and authority and act is if their own views were the only center of the universe. See Genesis 11:1-9 Tower of Babel metaphor. 

Past US Cold War support for right wing, autocratic dictators on the world stage has poisoned the water against the US and for this many in the world, including US citizens, see the US as a hypocritical force calling for freedom and democracy. Especially since the US's own internal history and policies vis-a-vis segregation, Jim Crow, slavery, genocide, nativism, racism etc. is hardly a beacon of freedom and democracy.

The US Right has reduced the views I see as realistic to one word, “woke.”

 

This objective view of history, as compared to a patriotic view that justifies US moral and ethical failings, can at least say the US lost its moral compass in Cold War power politics by recapping western colonialism with US imperialism. There is a tension in historical analysis between realists, pragmatists, idealists, moralists, and patriots as to what would have been and what is the right course of action and why? It pays, IMO, to draw from each of these buckets when trying to figure out what is going on and why. 

 

What we have then on the world stage is a large fractalian fued, a feud writ large, with US imperialistic excesses as fuel for all manner of resistance by former colonized peoples, and for great power competition with China and Russia. Peoples and nations ruined by world power politics are forced to make Faustian Bargains with one pole or the other, and then become a new form of a subject colony.

Why do the nations so furiously rage together? Let us break their bonds asunder! 

In this post WW2, post Cold War international landscape came the creation of the state of Israel, in the wake of one of the greatest tragedies of humanity ever, the Holocaust, that piggy-backed on a 2000 year history of Christians vilifying Jews in an intimate enemy fight for the ages. See the works of Elaine Pagels, great reading. 

The Jews, like all peoples and like Rodney KIng just want to get along. I agree with Friedman that the two-state solution is a worthy goal because it puts self determination as a top value. It is non-representative governments, ones that represent only the top 1%, the top 10%, the moneyed interests, that drag us all into these endless struggles for power and control. 

The irony of the Jewish state is that the world’s greatest underdogs turned into oppressors themselves with the 1967 War and the occupied territories. In this they are really no different than any other peoples. See the Bantu expansion. 

Israel has recapped the exact same colonial patterns as its western colonial/ imperial patrons, (British Empire, US Empire.) In a patriotic view, this is OK because this is how pragmatists and realists do business. Might is right. The Anglo West sees itself as smarter, more hard-working, manifestly destined, ,morally justified by a Christian God or justified by Social Darwinism.   

Who’s land was it for Great Britain to give away? What and why was the post-colonial landscape and how did it get there? People who can analyze history from a non-US patriotic view are free to see power politics for what they are, a near Hobbesian struggle in a war of all against all where morals and ethics are mere window dressing for our inner apes. Only in-groups matter; patriotism (loyalty) plays well to the crowd; liberation is the breaking of the bonds asunder… 

Basically this whole current world stage, and human history itself has been one big fight and one big war over the control of territory. That’s the take-home point I got from my history degree. Any of us who have had neighbor issues or struggled with local politics knows that people are exceptionally good at fighting and not getting along; this is a property of humanity, not of any single person or people. Want to blame? Look in the mirror, evil cuts through all our hearts.      

 

So, the allegation that student protestors are "siding with Iran and Hamas" is to an extent true, but the siding is not from naive support for brutal religious autocrats like the Ayatollahs and Hamas, it’s rather a siding with an underdog faction that has autocratic dictators as their perhaps unwanted representatives.

For a 196o9s throwback, don't forget the Who’s great lyric, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” It’s much easier to go for power and control than it is to go for peace, and the peace advocates end up dead and jailed because a peaceful protest is an oxymoron. The powers that be, like the city council, end up not listening, not responding. So how long to protest peacefully until you have to force the issue to be heard and get a response?  Then the response is mass oppression, like with the Arab Spring, and like it will be with Trump if elected.    

You wouldn’t expect students to have a seasoned perspective. Students and the young are also not fully indoctrinated and can see right from wrong patterns in the world in a more acute way. They may not necessarily have developed a full context for why this is all unfolding as it is, with Gaza/ Israel as a flashpoint indicator of all that is wrong with us as a race, but they do see that the US is a big part of the problem, especially with other corollary factors like western profligate consumption-caused  climate change, financialization, AI, no good jobs, no housing, head in the sand wine drinking and partying while the world goes to hell etc., so that the US comes off as one huge corrupt entity.

So, asking the Sonoma city council to resolve for peace, a ceasefire, humanitarian aid etc. should not in and of itself be a hard ask but given that the council has a diverse make up and has patriots on it, this makes all the objective analysis of history like mine fall on deaf ears. 

Statist patriots will be tempted to take the side of US interests and of its ally Israel. That’s at the state level, not an ethnic or religious level. Champions of underdogs take sides as well. I’m an underdog guy. Is this a battle of the corrupt colonial entities, autocratic dictators, and religious zealots? What side to take?  Where to come out when as Frank Zappa said, we are dumb all over? 

If students et al want a local ceasefire resolution they need to deal, as in all politics. They need get their speech under control to win patriot votes and Israeli-supporter votes. They have to make it clear they are not supporting Hamas tactics equally as to not supporting Netanyahu tactics.    

 

 

Sonoma vulnerbale to working class far-right shift

 

News Analysis

Roger Cohen, NYT 5/5/24

(with comparison to Sonoma politics by Fred Allebach 5/5/24)

Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right?

Anti-immigration parties with fascist roots — and an uncertain commitment to democracy — are now mainstream.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/world/europe/europe-far-right.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pk0.7gb_.b78Lp8V6lG72&smid=url-share

 

Cohen points

Cell phone and social media are inherently polarizing

-everyone has a platform, the sheer volume of social noise is anxiety-provoking

-comments and analysis no longer as heavily filtered by editors

-ability to create social media echo chambers and cancel/ vilify alternative views

-tribal/ nationalistic tendencies magnified by technology

-trolls, aliases, and high volume of nasty, snotty comments create enmity

 

Far-right Nationalism: Trump, Netanyahu, Orban, Bolosonaro

-global vs national; a knowledge economy “somewhere” vs. rural rust belt “nowhere”

-plays off excesses of individual rights and actualization

-a mythic tribal/ national traditionalism is hoped for

-global economy, mechanization, AI etc. have resulted in major loss of decent paying jobs, alienating working class and pushing them Right bc Left is mealy mouthed and out of touch with labor roots

 

Frame a simple view of decadent urban elites

-modernization, individualism are assaults on “tradition”

-strict father morality and male dominance feels under attack

-look to idealized past and not future, a past where men rule and God justifies them

-vilify trajectory of individualism and individual rights, vilify gender rights, keep women down, anti-birth control

-put in new system of groupthink to counter post-War Western liberal consensus

-this is part of concerted pushback to New Deal, Great Society, 1960s counter culture, feminism, environmentalism, civil rights, post-War labor gains

-youth don’t know lessons of history, loss of context, history gets repeated by the ignorant 

 

Aging populations put tremendous strain on social safety net

-demographic shift to aging First World populations

-aging Boomers et al don’t want immigrants to get a free ride but overlook benefit of immigrants to shrinking tax base and labor pool

-expel undocumented immigrants

 

What do we see in Sonoma as a reflection of these trends?

-demographic shift, Latino majority school district, white flight to private/ charter schools

-don’t expel immigrants but keep them in a noblesse oblige, indentured servitude

-“decadent suburban elites” are single family/ low density-zoned stasis protectors drinking wine, hot tubs, living the dream in a bubble

-xenophobia, draw bridge mentality, look to past segregeted social order not future, isolationism/ fantasy island hopes of dominant suburban class

-a claim that suburban values are those of “the community”, immigrants are not members

-a local “normalization of the right” under guise of pragmatism, a rightward shift of “business democrats”, the left is centered on environmental issues and national politics

-a trend to single party rule as potential working class opponents are socioeconomically excluded

-trend to local control of dominant class, urban growth boundary, Sonoma Mtn Community Services District, anti-Springs annexation, marginalizes immigrants and BIPOC residents

-a hyper-local media focused on elite, privileged issues with local elite cronyism

-social media echo chambers that cancel/ vilify alternative views

-a body politic where center left and center right are indistinguishable

-justification of “local control” suburban-values tribalism over the rule of law/ state housing laws

-strong pushback to idea of including immigrant political power in One Valley through annexation

-exclusive: rejection of including working class interests, neo-feudalism

-domination of local government and gaming rules and laws to favor traditional popwer in-groups

 

It wouldn’t be surprising that through lack of benefits, inclusion, and agency, that the local working class and immigrant cohort rejects liberal values as any salvation and shifts to a Trumpist/ nationalist right-wing allegiance. This right-ward shift to a past-looking social order is not inevitable but it will take active resistance to bring more democratic, progressive values to the table.

 

The landed class has money and power to field candidates to uphold the current order in Valley, City, and School District politics. Union and labor cohorts now strategically back green interests. Will need to get labor on side of local working class-interests in any political contests. Labor interests did not field a candidate in the recent 1^st District Supervisor race. Labor does not seem to see any payday in sticking up for human rights if they have no pollical gain to make from it. Latino residents massively under-registered to vote.   

 

Sonoma County is not as liberal as one might suspect from a deep blue Bay Area map, yet Blake Hooper came with just hundreds of votes of unseating David Rabbitt, and Sonoma City has had brief flurries of being more liberal/ progressive.

 

Is the Sonoma suburban power structure analogous to the far right? Not one-to-one but similar in the respect of using ideology to maintain the overall BIPOC community as an underclass. Local Sonoma elites have with an uncertain commitment to democracy, with an unabashed pursuit of political power to maintain a past idealized stasis. The exclusive Sonoma lifestyle puts local elites here in same position to working class interests as western democracies find themselves to the far right disenfranchised. This risks a working class shift to far-right values bc of lack of local powers that be to share the wealth. Indeed, 25+% of Latinos favor Trump.

 

 

 

The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism (Parallels with Sonoma Valley)

May 4, 2024

Dr. Steven Hahn

 

Free NYT article link

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/opinion/trump-second-term-illiberalism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU0.5SoY._RCWZbCl-PcU&smid=url-share

 

US illiberalism

“Illiberalism is generally seen as a backlash against modern liberal and progressive ideas and policies, especially those meant to protect the rights and advance the aspirations of groups long pushed to the margins of American political life. But in the United States, illiberalism is better understood as coherent sets of ideas that are related but also change over time.”

 

“This illiberalism celebrates hierarchies of gender, race and nationality; cultural homogeneity; Christian religious faith; the marking of internal as well as external enemies; patriarchal families; heterosexuality; the will of the community over the rule of law; and the use of political violence to achieve or maintain power. This illiberalism sank roots from the time of European settlement and spread out from villages and towns to the highest levels of government. In one form or another, it has shaped much of our history. Illiberalism has frequently been a stalking horse, if not in the winner’s circle. Hardly ever has it been roundly defeated.

 

Fred Allebach 5/4/24

Parallels with Sonoma Valley

Here in Sonoma Valley, white heterogeneity rules and a clear history of segregation is roundly ignored and denied. This is a northern Jim Crow pattern where all the same features of segregation are preserved, under coded terms and historical inertia.

 

Since Republicans don’t win in the Bay Area, they change to what’s called business democrats. It is near impossible to get an actual liberal or progressive majority in Sonoma County or Sonoma City.  Governmental majorities on councils, boards and commissions have the power and votes to keep control of the territory from serious liberal/ progressive reform because enough conservative business democrats always win. The support is there to keep the status quo and protect the stakes the rulers have.  

 

LBGTQ rights can be supported because this passes as mostly a virtue signaling exercise that demands no structural change from the local powers that be.  

 

Status quo folks have to listen to the dissonance of class and race-critical views like mine, but never really address them. I am “divisive” for calling things as I see them even as my views are based on solid research from reputable authors like Isabel Wilkerson, Ta-Nehisi Coates,  Richard Rothstein and Richard Walker.  

 

There is no transformative accounting for unjustly accumulated privilege. Inconvenient truths are sidestepped. In Sonoma Valley, neo feudalism (see Hahn NYT article) is on clear display with a captive immigrant Latino workforce, near equal in size to the population of Sonoma. A concomitant noblesse oblige trickle-down charity system in place along with drastic disparities of wealth and well-being.

 

Feed them just enough bread so they don’t revolt even as the masters have accumulated way more than their fair share of labor’s value.

 

Share power and control with the underdog races and classes aligned with those who came to America for liberation and freedom, with those who came against their will, and with those dispossessed? No way. The classic American mythology of liberation from oppression rings hollow, as Hahn notes in his NYT piece. The Who had it, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”     

 

A striking parallel to American illiberalisn and Sonoma Valley is what Hahn calls “the will of the community over the rule of law.” This is called “local control” in Sonoma. Locals concerned with preserving the status quo openly subvert state housing laws with policy chess moves and ignore as much as possible laws like AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) which are designed to foster integration of near solid white, low-density neighborhoods. Only the bare minimum gets done, and then with subterfuge and lack of brio.

 

Local control has endless socio-economic narcissistic energy to look in the mirror of local character and assiduously manage local appearances and stases like an oppressive HOA, while those who serve the whole enterprise are struggling to barely get by in the Latino Springs. Who are the home cleaners, the home healthcare workers, the nannies, the yard crews, the construction crews, the hotel, hospitality, and restaurant workers? Near 100% Latino. Neo feudalism indeed.     

 

When it comes to any plans to actually integrate, local controllers say well, we are for it but we just don’t have the money, sorry. Then life goes back to everything but addressing social inequities. The political will is not there to prioritize seeking a just and equitable society. How long have you not had the money?

 

Myths of the American Dream and a search for freedom and liberation live on, falsely, against a larger backdrop of American illiberalism oof which Sonoma County and Sonoma Valley is clearly a part.

 

Demographic studies show that areas of predominant white, high wealth, higher education, higher home value, and single-family zoning are the very ones that fight hardest against change. The nominal enemy is capitalism and greedy developers and the tactics center around preserving small town and rural character. Protecting the natural and social environment against bigger capitalist fish is the rallying point. Smaller fish become collateral damage. What gets ignored is that all this character protection adds up to preserving segregation. This is never admitted.

 

Very low on the totem pole and never pursued seriously is to “protect the rights and advance the aspirations of groups long pushed to the margins of American political life.” The castle gates of Sonoma and SoCo remain firmly pulled up. Any sense of divestment from this asymmetrical status quo can’t be supported by the silent majority who bend the ears of power brokers out of sight and earshot of any public comments.

 

It is here that we see the intersection of Bay Area landed liberals land use politics and Trump’s rejection of AFFH as “destroying the suburbs.” “Liberals” have a strong illiberal undercurrent.

 

So, what to do to actually have the justice and equity promised by the higher ideals of American mythology? We need to keep up a level of magical thinking that the good can prevail, and maybe in one day all the magical-thinking aspirations of all good-hearted people with conscience will intersect and we’ll get there.

 

In my way of thinking, grappling with injustice should result in reflection and a determination to transform and change. This should transfer into pollical will. However, as historian Barbara Tuchman said, “people don’t change until the sewage is coming in the front door.” And if that’s the case, then those with all the cards now who keep the Sonoma Valley castle gates up so nice and tight should remember, as Allen Toussaint wrote. “the same people you mistreat on your way up, you might meet again on your way down.”

 

And for world peace as a magical remedy to endless war, strife, and exploitation, we can only hope that in the end, forgiveness and redemption will be stronger than blame and revenge. Dream on.