BERKELEY \u2014 About two years after a developer selected for the supportive housing element of UC Berkeley\u2019s controversial student housing project at People\u2019s Park backed out, a new developer has been selected.<\/p>\n
Berkeley-based nonprofit Satellite Affordable Housing Associates will now be building and operating a roughly 100-unit apartment building meant to serve as affordable housing for former homeless and low-income people, officials with University of California, Berkeley, announced Thursday.<\/p>\n
The development is part of a larger UC Berkeley project to build more than 1,100 housing units of student housing on a 2.8-acre lot formerly home to People\u2019s Park, an open green space with a decades-long history of activism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are proud to bring six decades of affordable housing development and operating experience to our local community here in Berkeley,\u201d Satellite Affordable Housing Associates CEO Susan Friedland said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Since forming in 1966, the firm has built and managed thousands of homes from San Jose to Sacramento. The agency will replace Resources for Community Development, another Berkeley-based nonprofit that exited the project in 2023 amid legal challenges to the project.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons said the university was \u201cproud to welcome\u201d Satellite Affordable Housing Associates as a partner on the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur provision of this land for this project underscores the university\u2019s deep commitment to advance the greater good by expanding the supply of urgently needed housing for our community\u2019s most vulnerable residents. We look forward to continuing our extraordinary partnership with the City of Berkeley that has been so essential for this project,\u201d Lyons said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The university first acquired the People\u2019s Park site in 1967 with plans to build student housing, but after structures on the lot were bulldozed, the property sat vacant. Soon after, activists took over, turning it into an unofficial park and sparking a decadeslong, sometimes violent, push and pull over what to do with the land.<\/p>\n
Legal challenges aimed at stopping the project in recent years ultimately failed and the university began construction in the summer of 2024. Much of the student housing tower has since been erected.<\/p>\n
More than $31 million of city and state funding will go toward the supportive housing project, though additional dollars will be needed, the university said. Construction will begin once the student housing portion of the project is complete, which is expected to happen in 2027.<\/p>\n
Local officials, including Mayor Adena Ishii, former mayor and current state Sen. Jesse Arregu\u00edn and state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, lauded the selection of Satellite Affordable Housing Associates as an important step toward moving the project forward \u201cat a moment when follow-through really matters,\u201d Wicks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople\u2019s Park has long been at the center of Berkeley\u2019s housing conversation, and this next step demonstrates that we can honor the site\u2019s history while delivering permanent supportive housing and real stability for people who need it most,\u201d Wicks said in a statement. \u201cEnsuring previously secured state and local funding remains in place is exactly how the public sector should show up \u2014 by removing uncertainty and making sure good projects get built.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKELEY \u2014 About two years after a developer selected for the supportive housing element of UC Berkeley\u2019s controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,764,387,7,332,15,1337,181,100,143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-94756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-berkeley","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-east-bay","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-housing-development","16":"tag-latest-headlines","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-oakland","19":"tag-oakland-headlines","20":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}