The 3 story ‘mansion’ on the western edge of the Bulb is no more - the City of Albany removed it a couple of days ago. The couple who lived in it are still camped on the site among their belongings; the picture above shows a portion of the site.
This sad story encapsulates the story of the Bulb as a whole since 2007. We collectively turned a blind eye to the construction of a large building that would almost certainly collapse on its occupants in the event of an earthquake. Perhaps we were too busy arguing at City Council and Planning & Zoning meetings over commercial development and the finest details of our neighbors’ remodeling projects. By the time we got around to dealing with this dangerous situation, the occupants had come to think of the deathtrap as their home, and they are traumatized by its loss.
The typical tent on the Bulb is less directly hazardous to its occupants than was the mansion. But in most cases that tent is ultimately corrosive to physical and mental health of its inhabitants, fostering isolation and severe self-neglect.
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We can be glad of the City’s current effort to help the mansion occupants, and all of the Bulb campers, to find safe places to live in appropriate settings - whether homeless shelters, permanent supportive housing, rehab facilities, or independent living. But we should also feel some shame at having allowed all this to happen in the first place.
Let’s redeem this sad situation by by making sure that we are doing our share to house the homeless AND by taking the steps necessary to assure this will end soon - and can never recur - in the waterfront park.
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Yesterday was the day of the hearing in the case of SPRAWLDEF v. EBRPD – the case in which a small environmental group led by Norman LaForce is suing to invalidate the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) the park district relied upon to approve the improvements to be constructed at the Albany Beach. (Note to those who blame CESP for everything negative that happens in Albany: neither CESP nor the Sierra Club has joined SPRAWLDEF in this action.)
At the hearing, the judge showed a strong interest in one of the arguments of SPRAWLDEF: that the EIR made no distinction between on-leash and off-leash dog walking. Interestingly, this was also one of the concerns of dog-walking advocates anxious to continue playing on the beach with their canine friends, who so love to fetch objects thrown into the waves. The park district argues that IF it made an error, it was harmless: that the EIR analyzed the ‘worst case’ scenario in which the impacts of each additional dog that will result from the project are the impacts of an UN-leashed dog, so that the environmental impacts have been adequately analyzed in any case.
Local dog walking groups (ALDOG and PIDO) commented on this EIR, but like CESP and the Sierra Club they decided to live with the park district’s approach and did not file suit. So any potential recreational impacts - of requiring the current park users to either leash up or head over to Point Isabel - are not at issue.
