Berkeley’s newest affordable housing development was hailed at an opening celebration Wednesday as a community hub that pays tribute to a towering figure in local activism.
Some 9,000 people applied for the 87 apartments that make up the Maudelle Miller Shirek Community, which stands at the intersection of Adeline Street and Ashby Avenue in South Berkeley and began welcoming residents in February.
“It’s a celebration of resilience, vision and community,” said Nicole Brown, a senior project manager at Resources for Community Development, the affordable housing builder that led the project.
City officials, members of several community groups, affordable housing advocates and residents gathered in the six-story building’s courtyard — standing among planters filled with flowers and tree saplings, and along walkways chalked with hopscotch courses — to give speeches and cut a ribbon on Wednesday.
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They were joined by several members of Shirek’s family, who recalled her decades of public service and community organizing on behalf of South Berkeley. Shirek represented the area for 20 years on the City Council, and Berkeley’s Old City Hall was named after her in 2005. When Shirek died at 101 in 2013, then-U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee hailed her as “the heart and soul of the progressive movement” and said she inspired Lee to run for office.
“It is so, so fitting that this building is named after her,” said Ayanna Davis of the South Berkeley nonprofit Healthy Black Families, which has an office in the new complex. “I cannot tell you all the wonderful things she has done for this community, and [how she] helped raise up so many of us to continue her stalwart level of leadership.”
Construction of the building, which replaced a branch of Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union, cost $60.3 million, Brown wrote in an email. The city provided $17.5 million, which came from money raised by the 2018 parcel tax Measure O.
The building includes 18 studio apartments, 21 one-bedrooms, 26 two-bedrooms and 22 three-bedrooms, as well as parking areas for cars and bicycles.
Speakers on Wednesday called the project a step to fight displacement in South Berkeley, a hub of the city’s Black community where decades of soaring housing costs have pushed many longtime residents out. Berkeley’s Black population has declined by two-thirds over the past 50 years.
Several of the new building’s residents lived in Berkeley before being priced out to less-expensive cities, officials said. They had a leg up in the application process for the Shirek Community’s apartments thanks to a city policy approved in 2023 that makes displaced former residents a priority for Berkeley’s new affordable housing.
Monique Allen, who lived in Berkeley for 13 years before she moved to Pittsburg in search of a more affordable home, told the audience at Wednesday’s ribbon cutting that she is one of those residents. Returning to Berkeley has meant being closer to her community, Allen said, and has allowed her daughter — who stayed in local schools — to take part in extracurricular activities and spend more time with friends, now that she doesn’t have to make the long commute back to eastern Contra Costa County.
“I’m so happy that we have been given the opportunity to thrive,” Allen said.
