{"id":24442,"date":"2018-03-14T05:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T13:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/03\/14\/oakland-moves-to-stop-cannabis-displacement\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T13:02:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T21:02:47","slug":"oakland-moves-to-stop-cannabis-displacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/03\/14\/oakland-moves-to-stop-cannabis-displacement\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Moves to Stop Cannabis Displacement"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Oakland, California\u2019s city council has passed an ordinance protecting tenants from being evicted by cannabis businesses in the city\u2019s \u201cGreen Zone,\u201d keeping in line with the city\u2019s stated goal to promote \u201ccannabis equity.\u201d This highlights the dilemma of cannabis-fueled displacement \u2014 a phenomenon also reported from places like the more freewheeling Denver, which has been less committed than Oakland to principles of equity.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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On March 8, the city council in Oakland, California unanimously approved a measure that protects existing tenants from being evicted by cannabis businesses.<\/p>\n

Although the ordinance awaits a second reading before actually becoming law, this should prove no obstacle. The legislation was sparked by complaints from residents of one of the 25 \u201cwork\/live\u201d buildings \u2014 former industrial spaces opened up to artists and craft workers over the past two generations \u2014 within the city\u2019s \u201cGreen Zone<\/a>.\u201d This is a strip of mostly industrial areas following the city\u2019s waterfront that in May 2016 was officially designated for the burgeoning cannabis industry.<\/p>\n

A city council\u00a0staff report<\/a>\u00a0called to study the issue noted the vulnerability of artists in the Bay Area\u2019s harsh housing squeeze: \u201cThe lucrativeness of the cannabis industry poses a threat to other land uses in the designated Green Zone, particularly work\/live spaces that provide space for Oakland\u2019s small business, arts and maker communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two amendments passed by the council prohibit cannabis businesses from seeking to operate in spaces that are currently occupied by work\/live or residential uses, but also allow cannabis business to share a work\/live property with a residence, \u201cprovided each uses its own section of the property.\u201d The ordinance was introduced by council member Rebecca Kaplan and supported by Mayor Libby Schaaf.<\/p>\n

Speaking to KQED<\/a>, Kaplan hailed the measure as an example of \u201cresponsible regulation that both brings the cannabis industry into effective legal use while also protecting community needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The push for the measure came from residents and business owners at the Oakland Cannery, a converted factory in East Oakland that has been a work\/live space for artists since the 1970s. Cannery tenants urged officials to protect their spaces after a Denver-based canna-business purchased the building<\/a> and made clear its intent to evict them in order to turn it into a commercial cannabis facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfits do not require displacing people from their homes; there\u2019s plenty of other non-residential space available for cannabis investors,\u201d said Cannery resident Rebecca Firestone in city council testimony, as reported by the\u00a0East Bay Times<\/a>. \u201cThere is another way, and that is for us to co-exist peacefully together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislation may ultimately be in the enlightened self-interest of the cannabis companies in terms of winning good will from Oakland residents. The company in the Cannery case,\u00a0Green Sage<\/a>, had clearly aroused ire. Cannery tenant Alistair Monroe complained to San Francisco\u2019s\u00a0KPIX<\/a>\u00a0of \u201ccarpet-baggers from Colorado that are coming in and swooping up real estate left and right and bulldozing, and they just do not care.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t just out-of-state \u201ccarpet-baggers\u201d that have been accused of displacing artists. One former tenant at the Cannery, Brett Amory, says he was evicted from his ground-floor commercial studio last year by\u00a0Harborside \u2014 a renowned dispensary<\/a> in Oakland, which briefly owned the space as part of its ambitious expansion plans.\u00a0\u201cWe were being evicted through Harborside. Anyone with a commercial lease on the ground floor got served a notice,\u201d he told local CBS affiliate KPIX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oakland is officially committed to a policy of \u201ccannabis equity<\/a>,\u201d in which the new industry is to be shaped in the city following principles of social justice. But legal cannabis will pose the same social pressures as any other capitalist sector, and with a city facing a housing crisis<\/a>, this fight over displacement is mostly likely a long-term one.<\/p>\n

The Cannery case may also point to a cultural chasm between Northern California and Colorado. The specter of cannabis-fueled displacement is already causing concern in Denver.<\/p>\n

According to a 2017 report in City Lab<\/a>, the amount of gentrification caused by cannabis businesses in Denver is hard to quantify. But, because the state has awarded more than 300 licenses to Denver-based grow operations, it\u2019s certainly had an impact on the affordability of low-rent warehouse spaces that artists often occupy.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists who crave the raw square-footage and affordability of warehouse space for their studios have found that the same real estate also fits the needs of cannabis growers,\u201d City Lab reports. \u201cDustin Whistler, a broker and founder of Forte Commercial Real Estate, says rents for industrial spaces have risen 40 percent since 2012. Spaces that before legalization were all but unrentable are now going for $10 to $12 a square foot, he says.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully, the win-win solution that was approved in Oakland can provide an example for other areas of the country where the cannabis economy is booming.<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong> do you think cannabis businesses are pushing out local residents?<\/p>\n

The post Oakland Moves to Stop Cannabis Displacement<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: Oakland Moves to Stop Cannabis Displacement<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oakland, California\u2019s city council has passed an ordinance protecting tenants from being evicted by cannabis businesses in the city\u2019s \u201cGreen Zone,\u201d keeping in line with the city\u2019s stated goal to promote \u201ccannabis equity.\u201d This highlights the dilemma of cannabis-fueled displacement \u2014 a phenomenon also reported from places like the moreContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,80,72,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24443,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442\/revisions\/24443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}