Dear Mayor, Vice Mayor, staff, City Clerk Judi Fans, neighbors, and members of the public:
My name is Jenny Michel, from the Coleman Place Neighborhood Block, long time renting resident on Willow Road next to the VA, white parent of an IEP student at Laurel, a recovering homeless teacher, and by trade a commercial property manager. Because of my obligation to life safety, I bear difficult news with my suggestions to cure!
I’ve spoken to this Dais on several occasions; in turn, you have commanded my attention, inquiry, support, and admiration. You know my passionate and emotional message, but allow me to summarize for our priorities:
Labor is in devastatingly terrible shape. We are incapacitated with no relief in sight. The system of demand, the consumption on our people relative to compensation and unmet needs, has failed. I can’t count how many people we have lost in the last few months from work and housing casualties. I hurt inside and am not having a good time. If there is a conveyance of enjoyment on my part, it is a pretense.
We need to; we literally have to stabilize labor in order to stabilize our economy, our investments, and ultimately meet the goal of sustaining our own needs, goods and services to people or markets who need them. In order to do that, we need housing, housing of every single kind, for literally all income levels. Again our problems compound in this City, because we house and employ the entire scale of all labor, from all cash under the table to infamous Billionaires.
Our priorities are to make our City, region, State, a place where people can work, live, and BE healthy. That is a tall order for anyone or a collected body. We are tasked with the tallest order - because our climate is collapsing.
Professionally, an aspect of my scope is to assess a building condition or circumstance and provide analysis to remedy at what options, cost, and timeline. I’ve been responsible for buildings of all types, with different kinds of building systems. I’m tasked with overseeing the health of each building system and therefore each component. If I were to be tasked with managing the earth’s systems and related components, I would be screaming from the rooftops red hot fire emergency alerts each moment! I wouldve been fired by life itself. Life is failing across all species. Life is on the brink. This is expletive scary. This is an era of failure and resilience.
Labor is the key - we are the key. Each person you see is the key. If each person does not has the ability to work, live, and be healthy then what is the point? Call it what you want, but leveraged labor, compromised labor is in NO ones interest except to a few handful people living in our backyard. It’s disgusting and I am over it. Why live? Why further allow us to be taken advantage of? Why is there this leverage over us? It is manufactured and I call it out as a system in which people make massive profits off our backs. It isn’t a sound business approach.
If labor, families, people with hearts beating, have the ability to meet our own needs, we would literally live cleaner, more in line with the cyclical nature of the earth’s systems, and we might be able to delay our imminent climate collapse. Dig further: Who is behind this stability? Women. We need to trust women. We need to listen to the hard truth that women have to tell. We hold the keys and know what powerful men have done; how the climate collapse has been historically driven. We know precisely the pain, the toll that is held.
The issue is appetite. I suggest in the land of Venture Capitalists, the land of opportunists and speculators, that we are cowards hiding behind a facade and lack true grit or tedious courage lived on a moment to moment basis. We are soft and lack street grit.
So the remedy is perspective for calibration. We get uncomfortable, we get real, we integrate. We figure out how to live and work with no vehicles, no food supply, no electricity, no potable water, no toilet paper, and no internet. Will HAM radio license sales increase? Will there be a run on FRS radios and bikes? Will we use water sparingly? Will we grow our own food? I hope so. We cannot fathom the magnitude of issues we collectively face. We must abandon our tumor sized egos and experience fear and safety together. We innovate for the oncoming tsunami of historic emergencies headed right this way. This City can help us with perspective and calibration.
We just had a healthy dose of perspective with our three months of atmospheric rivers. It’s been a healthy exercise for me, a first responder, to go without power and internet. I’ve had to dig in and tough it out. It sucks. I could not respond in which I am obligated to for life safety. I don’t like these constraints but they exist and unfortunately, it’s trending to be exponentially worse in the next few decades. We are in the weeds and need any oxygen we can get while carrying this load. Help us to collectively breathe - pun intended!
So the message is: Just Do It:
Listen and invest in our historically marginalized neighbors who are the oxen of our society. Just stop shaming those of us who have been marginalized. Just try being marginalized instead.
Just build and protect housing, primarily comparable to and outside of District 1.
Just plant trees, everyday, everywhere, all at once, never ending.
Just provide emergency resources/options for all walks of life, while making adjustments on a frequent basis.
Just ban gas. Just source and use electricity, including from our own beating hearts or adding turbines in our water supply.
Just provide robust public transportation. Just close streets to cars. Just get out of your car. Or...
Just try living outside in your car or on the streets to replicate what your labor provider knows. Just do it to change your perspective. It’s okay I promise.
Just live so we don’t kill ourselves on our exhaust and waste.
Just feel good because you lived so someone else could be healthier.
Without stabilized labor concentrated within our backyard, we cannot provide for our own needs which will feel even more uncomfortable as climate collapse intensifies. Our frontline workers don’t live but three hours away. In a catastrophic emergency, we are on our own. The ratio is 10 responders to 70,000 residents depending on the municipality. Ever heard of MPC Ready or CERT?
We need to correct our assumptions: these days with depleted labor, if we pay for C level service, we will get D service. No more are we paying for B and to squeeze for A service. Don’t worry folks: There is money to be made from stabilized happy labor. Employers need to hire Menlo Park workers to address the shortfall and support a 15 minute neighborhood.
Top it off, we have our scale wrong for housing to jobs: the ratio is 1 to 4 in terms of office/tech/lab (white collar) labor to service/construction/maintenance (blue Collar) labor. Where is the ratio of 4 blue collar workers in our backyard? That delta is sobering when viewed from the last forty years. Have we even kept up with the 1 to 1 ratio? Shaking head hard no! Hey - We can start today, right?
Untapped resources and remedies: I love trash or waste in all its beauty and abilities. It tells the story nothing else can. It is the physical manifestation of how we chose to live. It’s access to life giving resources. Look at Cuba who uses all available raw materials to its advantage. Where is our grit and innovation like the people of Cuba? Where is our grit to use our trash in a resilient manner? You feel me? Are we lazy and/or complacent? Lets change that today.
I’m down to hold your hand as we go through this era of failure and resilience together. Let’s show ourselves what we are made of this year.
Thank you,
--
Jenny Michel
DRE #01900228
Cell: 650.400.8299
E-mail: restorativeeco@gmail.com
