BERKELEY — The fog lifted early Friday over the flatlands of Berkeley where a diverse mix of homeowners and renters had gathered for a block party the night before to watch Kamala Harris on the big screen accepting the Democratic nomination for president and delivering a shout-out to her childhood neighborhood. “We lived in the flats, a beautiful, working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers — all who tended their lawns with pride,” Harris said from the convention stage in Chicago on Thursday night. This is the kind of middle class neighborhood and people, she said, that she would fight for if she defeats former President Donald Trump in November.
Yet much has changed in this pocket of the Bay Area since the 1970s when Harris’s mother, a UC Berkeley grad student, raised her two daughters for eight years in an upstairs apartment on Bancroft Way. Vice President Kamala Harris’s childhood home is seen on Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Berkeley, Calif.
(Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) A byciclist passes by Vice President Kamala Harris’s childhood home, center in yellow, on Friday, Aug. 23, 2024, in Berkeley, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) Vice President Kamala Harris’s childhood home is seen on Friday, Aug.
23, 2024, in Berkeley, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) Nurses and firefighters, even those who earn more than $100,000 a year, would be unlikely to afford the average $1.2 million homes here, including the sizeable down.