California Supreme Court hears arguments on UC Berkeley’s plans for housing at People’s Park

A drone view of People’s Park in Berkeley, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. UC Berkeley has surrounded the park with shipping containers and hired full-time security to keep people out while waiting for court approval to build student housing there.

Last year, an appellate court sided with the activists 3-0. Fearing the decision would indefinitely delay its master plan, including any future student housing, UC Berkeley appealed to the state Supreme Court to overturn that decision., amending the California Environmental Quality Act to clarify that noise generated by a housing project’s occupants can’t be considered a significant impact on the environment.

The attorney for the People’s Park activists, Thomas Lippe, argued that, while AB 1037 may have rendered moot their argument around social noise regarding the People’s Park project, such noise should still be taken into account by environmental reviews of the university’s more broad long-range plan, which includes both residential and non-residential components.

“Having CEQA require social noise analysis of the long-range plan simply doesn’t interfere with the actual decisions to construct housing,” Lippe said.

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