All posts by discowk7

Uncategorized

Fall of the Third Street Promenade, Illegal hostels, and more

By Steven Sharp : la.urbanize.city – excerpt

L.A. real estate, architecture, and urban planning news from the past week…

Newsom Promised 1,200 Tiny Homes For Unhoused Californians. A Year Later, None Have Opened…
‘Shocking’: The fall of Third Street Promenade, Calif.’s once-vibrant outdoor mall…
Improving safety on the system: Metro launches TAP to exit pilot at North Hollywood B Line station beginning May 28…
Why Silicon Beach didn’t live up to the hype as an L.A. tech powerhouse…
City Repaved Coronado Street Without Measure HLA-Required Bikeway…
Opinion: California will force Malibu and other towns to add housing. Here’s why that’s not nearly enough…
Eyes on the Street: El Monte’s Merced Ave Linear Park…
Ex-Metro security chief says police patrols were so lax, they didn’t notice a dead man at station…
Consulting Firm Armanino Secures 45K SF of SoCal Office Space With Irvine Company…
Neighbors complain about illegal hostels…(more)

Uncategorized

Fall of the Third Street Promenade, Illegal hostels, and more

By Steven Sharp : la.urbanize.city – excerpt

L.A. real estate, architecture, and urban planning news from the past week…

Newsom Promised 1,200 Tiny Homes For Unhoused Californians. A Year Later, None Have Opened…
‘Shocking’: The fall of Third Street Promenade, Calif.’s once-vibrant outdoor mall…
Improving safety on the system: Metro launches TAP to exit pilot at North Hollywood B Line station beginning May 28…
Why Silicon Beach didn’t live up to the hype as an L.A. tech powerhouse…
City Repaved Coronado Street Without Measure HLA-Required Bikeway…
Opinion: California will force Malibu and other towns to add housing. Here’s why that’s not nearly enough…
Eyes on the Street: El Monte’s Merced Ave Linear Park…
Ex-Metro security chief says police patrols were so lax, they didn’t notice a dead man at station…
Consulting Firm Armanino Secures 45K SF of SoCal Office Space With Irvine Company…
Neighbors complain about illegal hostels…(more)

Uncategorized

Do-or-die week wraps for bills in California Legislature

By Alan Riquelmy : courthousenews – excerpt

Golden State lawmakers had until Friday to pass bills out of their house of origin.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — After spending the past few days in a rush to meet a crucial end-of-week deadline, California lawmakers eased into the holiday weekend with hundreds of bills advanced.

Bills had to pass out of their house of origin by Friday to stay alive. Both the Assembly and Senate held marathon sessions each day starting Monday, voting on hundreds of bills before the gavel fell Friday.

Assembly leadership, anxious to keep on schedule, expressed frustration at times when a quorum failed to appear each morning.

“Thank you to the 18 members today of the on-time caucus,” quipped Assembly Speaker pro Tempore Jim Wood, a Healdsburg Democrat, on Wednesday. Forty-one members are needed for a quorum.

The Senate and Assembly had packed schedules throughout the week — passing legislation on campus protests, book bans and voter ID — in anticipation of holding quick Friday sessions, which both achieved…(more)

Follow the actions going forward here: https://www.livablecalifornia.org/

Housing, Politics

Real estate investors snatching up record share of affordable homes, report finds

By FOX TV Digital Team : livenowfox – excerpt (includes video)

U.S. Mortgage rates jump above 7%

Homeownership has slipped out of reach for millions of Americans amid an astronomical rise in mortgage rates and an ongoing inventory shortage.

Adding to the list of challenges for potential homebuyers in the United States: Investors and hedge funds are also snatching up properties.

In fact, new findings from Redfin suggest it has been happening at the fastest pace in nearly two years.

Real-estate investors bought about 44,000 homes in the first quarter of 2024, up half a percent from the previous year – the first increase since 2022. The gain was primarily driven by an uptick in purchases of single-family homes…

Investors buying record share of most affordable homes, too…(more)

Planning

‘Shocking’: The fall of Third Street Promenade, Calif’s once-vibrant outdoor mall

By Paula Mejía : sfgate – excerpt

A unique confluence of factors has stymied the Third Street Promenade, a car-free outdoor mall by the iconic Santa Monica Pier

On a recent Sunday, the glittering coastline buffeting the Santa Monica Pier teemed with throngs of tourists. Visitors tried their hand at carnival games and rides on the waterfront, stopping to snap photos backdropped by the city’s arching blue-and-white sign. Others took in the sunshine while moseying around shops and dive bars around Ocean Avenue, which overlooks the vast azure expanse of the Pacific.

Yet that same liveliness evaporated a mere three blocks over at the city of Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. Although the shopping and dining enclave is a car-free, open-air mall not unlike other heavily visited sites including Universal CityWalk and the Grove, only a small handful of people venture over to the outdoor esplanade these days. An estimated 10 million people visit the pier yearly; only a tiny fraction of them appear to be interested in the promenade. The leisurely Adirondack chairs lining the sidewalks sit vacant, the once-plentiful street performers have mostly vanished, and it’s not unusual to spot back-to-back-to-back retail vacancies along each nearly empty block.

It’s all one giant missed opportunity for Santa Monica, the standalone Los Angeles County city with the multimillion-dollar coastline. For decades, the promenade was seen as a masterful reimagining of public space, a rare pedestrian-only area in a region with underperforming public transit and too many cars…(more)

Housing

Joint Legislative Audit Committee to audit HCD Procedures and Oversight

via email from Livablecalifornia

Yesterday, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee approved a request by Senator Glazer to audit HCD related to Housing Element Reviews, Procedures and Oversight.

Audit scope  It was recommended the State Auditor select no fewer than 10 cities that are diverse in population and geography, and select an equal proportion of cities whose housing elements are in compliance with HCD’s standards, and cities whose housing elements are not in compliance. Adhering to those selection criteria will ensure the audit has a wide breath of data, and the results will better capture the experiences of all cities.

The audit’s scope will include, but is not limited to, the following:

  1. Review and evaluate the laws, rules, and regulations pertinent to the audit’s objectives
  2. Scrutinize how clear HCD’s standards and regulations are for housing elements to begin with. Are HCD’s standards and regulations detailed enough for local governments to apply to their housing elements? Is HCD available for assistance when local governments are completing their initial draft and, if so, what is the median amount of time local governments must wait for assistance?
  3. Assess how responsive HCD has been to local governments. What is the median amount of time and full range of time it takes for HCD to return a set of comments to a jurisdiction? What is the median amount of time and full range of time it takes for HCD to approve a housing element? How do these lengths of time compare to the fifth cycle review period? What is the median amount of occasions a jurisdiction can meet with their reviewer to ask questions?
  4. Measure how many different reviewers evaluate a jurisdiction’s housing element. What is the median number and full range of reviewers
  5. Determine the consistency of HCD’s comments and reviews. How consistent is the feedback between all reviewers assigned to one jurisdiction? How consistent is the feedback on similar topics across multiple jurisdictions?
  6. Evaluate the clarity of HCD’s feedback. Are the reviewer’s comments precise and measurable? Do the comments follow any specific criteria?
  7. Focus on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing standards and site analysis. In terms of clarity, do the comments related to these standards differ? Are the comments for these new standards precise, measurable, and following specific criteria?
  8. Assess how HCD communicated housing element submission deadlines to local governments. Is there a documented and clear line of communication from HCD on when a local government must submit its housing element for review? How far in advance of the deadline did HCD communicate this, and is it different than past cycles?
  9. Evaluate HCD staffing levels and the turnover rate. Compared to the fifth cycle review period, how many housing element reviewers does HCD have? What is the median amount of time that reviewers work at HCD and how does that compared to the fifth cycle? What is the median amount of time one reviewer stays assigned to the same local government to review their housing element, and how does that compare to the fifth cycle?
  10. Analyze how HCD trains its new and existing staff assigned to review housing elements. How long is a new employee’s initial training and what procedures does training consist of? Does HCD offer additional training to existing staff and, if so, how often? What does the additional training consist of? Does HCD’s training set reviewers up to adequately review housing elements and provide clear comments to local governments?
  11. Review and assess any other issues pertinent to the audit.

Now that the Senator’s request has been approved, it will move to the State Auditor’s Office to conduct the audit and report back to the Legislature. The timing for the audit will be based on the State Auditor’s currently workload, as well as the depth and breadth of the audit request. Currently, the State Auditor is still working on audit requests that were made by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee last year, so it will likely be early 2025 before the audit is complete. In the coming weeks, the State Auditor will update their website and provide an estimated completion date.

Uncategorized

Battle Over San Francisco’s Coastal Development Sparks Statewide Concerns

By Ezra David Romero : kqed – excerpt

A feud over balancing housing needs and preserving the California coast as seas rise is brewing along the western shores of San Francisco.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill — Senate Bill 951 — in mid-January that aims to remove urban San Francisco from the protections of the California Coastal Commission. He said his bill would “aid cities’ efforts to meet state housing goals by refining the commission’s role in housing approvals and permitting. Removing San Francisco from the commission’s tight regulations is about making it easier to build affordable housing in the city when dealing with a housing crisis.”

The agency regulates land and water use in the coastal zone — the boundary varies, but in San Francisco, it rides the coast and extends a few blocks into the city — including developing and preparing this area for rising sea levels…

The Precedent is dangerous and scary : Members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on the other hand, have ridiculed the plan, saying the bill is shortsighted, favors developers and would limit the commission’s power to prepare the city for future sea-level rise. The Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee approved a resolution opposing Wieners’ bill, and the Board of Supervisors voted by a veto-proof majority to support it.

Board President Aaron Peskin said Wiener overstepped and didn’t have “any idea that there would be this kind of a backlash.”

“The danger here goes far beyond a boundary adjustment in San Francisco County,” he said. “It just signals to developers that they can go to their state senator and start chopping apart one of California’s most cherished pieces of law. The precedent is dangerous and scary, and it’s got to be stopped now.”…(more)

The selling of the state lands is out of control. What will they sell off after the coast? Offshore oil? When do the Democrats stop feeding the gold rush frenzy and get back to governing by the people for the people? See more information on state bills in the works and information on how to fight them: https://discoveryink.wordpress.com/ca-legislative-process/

Sign the petition to stop the non-sense like SB 951 and write the senator to tell him to back off our Pacific coast: https://www.discoveryink.net/?page_id=144

Let Senator Wiener know who you feel about his bills: senator.wiener and consider voting him out of office by supporting his opponent.

Uncategorized

South Bay’s VTA Says It Can’t Back Regional Transit Tax Measure

By Dan Brekke : kqed – excerpt

The South Bay’s main transit agency has come out against a state Senate bill that would pave the way for a 2026 regional tax measure to raise money for the Bay Area’s bus, train and ferry operators and other transportation needs.

In voting last week to oppose SB 1031, known as the Connect Bay Area Act, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority board cited the possibility that putting the measure on the ballot in 2026, which other transit agencies and legislators are pushing for to plug expected budget gaps, could undercut the county’s efforts to get voters to reauthorize existing transportation sales taxes, among other concerns.

Jim Lawson, the VTA’s chief of external affairs, said Santa Clara County sales taxes raise about $900 million a year for transit and transportation in the Bay Area’s most populous county.

“If we do not have the ability to say whether or not this is the right time to put something (new) on the ballot, we have a serious existential problem,” Lawson told the board.

Lawson did not clarify the district’s concerns about the potential election date, and a VTA representative said Monday that the agency “is not prepared to address an election date at this time.”… (more)

CEQA, Housing

SDC Specific Plan set aside by Superior Court for CEQA violations

By Sonoma Sun : sonomasun – excerpt

At the close of a court hearing on April 26, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo ordered that the SDC Specific Plan and EIR approvals be set aside.

In a Press Release, Local environmental groups Sonoma County Tomorrow and Sonoma Community Advocates for a Liveable Environment (SCALE), a coalition of Sonoma Mountain Preservation, Eldridge for All, the Glen Ellen Historical Society, and the Valley of the Moon Alliance, announced they have prevailed in their lawsuit challenging approvals of the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) Specific Plan and the related Environmental Impact Report (EIR) process…

The Court also addressed the lawsuit’s overarching challenge to the Plan regarding its questionable “self-mitigation” approach, ruling that “purported mitigation measures in the Plan are, as a whole, ineffective, vague, and devoid of any semblance of performance standards in violation of CEQA.”…(more)

Housing, Politics

Fees and Lawsuits Fueling California’s Housing Cost Crisis:

California Insider with Jennifer Hernandez 

“Housing is the top target of environmental lawsuits in California. Want to build housing, even put a prefabricated trailer home on your lot? $20,000 for traffic, $20,000 for sewer, $20,000 for electricity, $10,000 for transit, $5,000 for public art, just in fees. San Francisco got up to almost $300,000 per apartment before land, construction, and labor. And many jurisdictions are charging over $100,000”.

The cost of housing has skyrocketed in California. Siyamak sits down with Jennifer Hernandez, a land use, environmental, and civil attorney with 40 years of experience. Join us as we dive into all the components that make the cost of housing much higher in California than in the rest of the nation.

“People don’t believe it’s possible, that it’s legal. But in fact, it is. And it happens all the time. A piece of wood doesn’t need to cost more here than it does in Nevada.”… (more)