When protesters gathered last week at People’s Park, facing law enforcement officials in riot gear, Lev Marcus’s voice was one of the loudest in the crowd.
As a Berkeley kid, Marcus grew up with People’s Park as part of his cultural identity. “People’s Park is definitely a special place,” the 28-year-old said.
Nearly a dozen activists protesting a yearslong effort to build new student housing there were arrested last week as law enforcement cleared the site and crews walled it off with a barricade of shipping containers.
It’s only the latest flashpoint for a historic park that has been the site of controversy for over 50 years.
The University of California bought the lot where the park now sits in the late ’60s, knocked down a few buildings, then ran out of money for development. The land became a dump, full of trash and abandoned cars.
In 1969, residents turned it into a park. They planted trees, made artwork and held anti-war protests. Marcus’s parents were among them.
“It was a place I heard about growing up. It was where my parents’ generation did a lot of their protesting,” he said.
When the University fought to reclaim the land, a confrontation between protestors and law enforcement broke out that came to be known as Bloody Thursday.
Sheriff’s deputies killed one man, another was blinded. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency in Berkeley and sent in 2,000 National Guard troops, who stayed more than two weeks. A curfew was imposed and tear gas filled the streets.
In the decades since tensions over control of the park have continued. The park has recently been home to a community garden and kitchen. Unhoused people have long camped in the park, and it’s been a hub for homeless services. University officials say there’s been an increase in criminal activity. Still, it’s remained an important gathering place for Berkeleyites like Lev Marcus.
“It’s a place where I’ve met a lot of really cool, interesting people that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise,” he said. It’s where he started playing chess during the pandemic, a hobby he keeps up. “The park has always been a place for outsiders,” he said.
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People’s Park is now on the National Register of Historic Places. But California has a dire housing shortage, and students aren’t immune.
A recent survey from the California Student Aid Commission found over half of college students who applied for financial aid don’t have secure housing.
UC Berkeley’s response to the crisis calls for adding more than 9,000 new beds for students, said Kyle Gibson, director of communications for the university.
As part of that effort, the university has been trying to build a student housing complex on People’s Park since 2018.
“We’re looking at taking more than just 1,100 students with this project alone out of the private Berkeley rental market,” Gibson said. “So that not only helps our students but helps free up over a thousand units of housing for the broader Berkeley community.”
There will also be permanent supportive housing for about 100 unhoused people.
UC Berkeley third-year Nick Grosh thinks a lot about his classmates’ housing needs as chair of the student government’s Housing Commission. But he has reservations about this project.
“Just because I’m in support of student housing…it doesn’t mean that all student housing, no matter the context, is good,” he said.
Grosh says he would have liked to see the university do more to include community input in the process. And he’s concerned that the new student housing might not wind up being affordable.
“I think that there is a future where there could be housing on People’s Park if it’s done right,” he said. “But the way the university is going about it is, I think it’s the wrong way to do it.”
The university’s Gibson counters that extensive community outreach informed the final shape of the housing project and said all school housing is below market rate.
They plan to keep two-thirds of the site as a public park. But objectors say it won’t be the same.
While the university prepares the lot for development, it’s blocked from beginning construction by an ongoing lawsuit in the state Supreme Court.
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