Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats want to place high-rise, high-density housing in the cities of Lafayette, Orinda, and Moraga, a property-rights advocate said Tuesday night (Oct. 23) in Lafayette. Ms. Heather Gass, a Bay Area realtor and supporter of private-property rights, said that traditional “horizontal sprawl” in suburbia is about to be replaced with “vertical sprawl.”
Gass said that Bay Area regional organizations like the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) want to force communities like Lafayette, Orinda, and Moraga — the three cities are collectively called Lamorinda — to construct tall buildings for low-income people.
Gass spoke at the Lafayette Veterans Memorial Building. Her speech was sponsored by individual citizens.
Gass said that unelected bureaucrats at MTC and ABAG want to put “stack and pack” housing in Lamorinda, transforming Lamorinda from its current housing pattern in which most residents live in single, detached family homes.
“We don’t need regional, unelected boards,” Gass said.
Gass said that communities that do not want high-rise housing are being threatened with a cut-off of money for road maintenance.
Gass was particularly critical of Ms. Amy Worth, a member of the Orinda City Council. Worth is also vice chairperson of the MTC. Worth is a supporter of the construction of subsidized, low-income housing in downtown Orinda — housing that is scheduled to be built in late 2012.
Gass criticized the MTC’s recent proposal to impose a vehicle mileage tax on Bay Area drivers.
MTC and ABAG, according to Gass, want to force drivers out of their cars and into high-rise buildings near public transit centers like BART stations.
Bill Gram-Reefer is Editor & Publisher of Halfway To Concord, founded in 2004. Halfway To Concord is the leading online source for community-driven political news, events, and opinion for Contra Costa County and the San Francisco East Bay.
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The MTC is a group of unelected officials who don’t care about communities. They are forcing communities to change their fundamental character in order to satisfy a faceless bureaucrats idea of “fairness”. Who is asking for “low income” housing in Lafayette? Who in our own community wants this change? No one. It’s tyranny, basically.
I see something ugly happening. Development of crime is what I see. Big cities that can control your every move, your food supply, everything. It is ungodly.
In my suburban city not far away from this area, is growing these monstrous buildings, that are not fit for anyone to live in. No human should have to live in them.
My thought is the government will be immigrating third world people here, putting them into these horrible living quarters. This is a part of Agenda 21, the U.N. sponsored project.
Who can afford to ride BART? Only those who have good jobs can can afford the steep rates . . . certainly not those who live in low-income housing.
http://www.halfwaytoconcord.com/bart-celebrates-40-years-of-bad-planning/
Free Obama Phones, Free DeSaulnier BART passes.
I once asked a developer who was looking at the Walnut Creek site as to what percentage of the people living next to a BART station actually used BART. His figure was 15%.
Putting a low-income housing development next to a BART station is just plain silly. The people who qualify for low income housing will go where the housing is and they are not necessarily going to use BART.
Such structures in Chicago, Detroit, and New York became crime-ridden and in many cases were later demolished. Aside from being an invitation to crime, they are an attack on the very idea of the human family. You cannot raise kids decently in places like that.
In Pgh PA they were known as “Da Projects”