By David Garrick : sandiegouniontribune – excerpt

The litigation argues that the city failed to analyze the new policy’s potential environmental impacts, and that the rule update will encourage sprawl and damage neighborhoods.

SAN DIEGO —

Local groups that advocate for single-family homeowners are suing San Diego in an effort to block a new city effort to jump-start production of high-rise housing and backyard apartments.

A lawsuit filed Friday by the groups seeks to overturn a 5-4 City Council vote in February to soften rules allowing taller apartment buildings and more backyard units when a property is near mass transit.

Developers of dense projects have been required to find sites within half a mile of mass transit, but the new rules double that distance to one mile — making thousands more acres eligible for projects that critics argue may change neighborhood character…

The two groups that filed the suit, Livable San Diego and Neighbors for a Better San Diego, contend the city policy will encourage dense projects too far away from transit for most residents to be willing to use it…(more)

By Alan Mallach : shelterforce – excerpt

Some say yes. But simply making it easier to build will not reach those who are unhoused.

It takes some serious chutzpah to assert that the answer to homelessness is obvious, as a piece published earlier in this year in The Atlantic does. If only “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness” actually had offered the answer, obvious or otherwise. Sadly, it didn’t. And even more sadly, it perpetuated a narrow and misleading—and ideologically charged—view of the homelessness crisis. The more this view is propagated, the more it gets in the way of thinking clearly about a problem that should be solvable, but is far from simple.

The article, authored by journalist Jerusalem Demsas, does get a couple of things right. Yes, the homelessness problem is much worse in the “superstar cities” like Seattle, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C. And no, people do not go to these cities to become homeless, or because of their mild climate or liberal politics. But to conclude that the answer is (drumroll, please) to get rid of burdensome regulations so that developers can build more housing in those superstar cities, is to seriously misinterpret a number of facts on the ground. In fact, eliminating regulations would hardly make a dent in the problem. Regulation is a red herring that directs attention away from finding real solutions.

I’m not saying we don’t need more housing supply. Yes, we do. Since the Great Recession, we have under-produced housing relative to the growth in the number of households and the need to replace old units. In the last couple of years, the number of new households being formed and looking for a place to live has spiked, and housing production has not kept up. This is one of a host of reasons why prices and rents have skyrocketed in the last two or three years. There is little doubt that if we built more housing, particularly plain vanilla housing like the small single-family homes and modest garden apartments that relieved the post-World War II housing crisis, we would make a big dent in the needs of the millions of young people, middle-income families, and others for decent, affordable housing. I have been saying this since long before the idea became the solution du jour. But there are some big catches…(more)

by Kevin Truong : sfstandard – excerpt

Bonita Cohn moved into her three-bedroom Nob Hill flat in 1982, and it remained her residence for the next 40 years, through marriage, divorce and her long career as a local artist specializing in clay pots and stoneware.

Over her time living in the apartment at 1538 Jones St., 76-year-old Cohn estimates that she had more than 70 boarders and housemates who lived in the space over the years.

But last October, she said she was forced to leave her longtime home because of a problem tenant named Loyd Hernandez, who drove her and other roommates out through what they described as a sustained pattern of intimidation and harassment, all while refusing to pay rent for more than a year.

“I never had a problem before meeting Loyd,” she said from her sister’s home in Long Island, where she lives today. “He was supposed to be temporary, but just he never left.”

In expensive San Francisco, there is no shortage of shared living situations and roommate disputes. But Cohn and others say the situation at 1538 Jones St. was beyond the pale…(more)

We have heard a lot of horror stories about housemates and tenants from hell. What will it take for someone to step in and solve this problem? How many more rental units would go on the market if the laws that protect landlords from nightmare tenants were not curtailed? There has to be a way for people to protect themselves from predators. Which our of supervisors will solve this problem?

By Gennady Sheyner : paloaltoonline – excerpt (includes video)

Mayor suggests ambitious targets make it impossible for cities to achieve affordable-housing goals

Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou took a swing on Wednesday at state housing mandates during her “State of the City” address and warned that recent laws could render the council helpless to prevent an onrush of large developments.

Speaking in front of about 100 residents at the Palo Alto Art Center, Kou sharply criticized recent state laws like Senate Bill 35, which created a streamlined approval process for residential projects in cities that fail to meet their housing quotas, and Senate Bill 330, which limits a council’s ability to revise design standards while reviewing a project and limits the length of the approval process. While state lawmakers are hoping these laws will address California’s housing shortage, Kou characterized the recent legislation as a “‘Build, baby, build” machine that will do little to lower the cost of housing.

Kou’s comments came at a time when Palo Alto is awaiting the state Department of Housing and Community Development’s feedback on and approval of its new Housing Element, a document that lays out the city’s plans to allocate sites for the state-mandated 6,086 new housing units between 2023 and 2031. The city submitted its draft Housing Element to the state agency last December and is expecting a response this week…(more)

By Kyung Lah : msn – excerpt

Allene Jue used to vote in a simple, rapid manner – scan the names on the ballot and pick the Asian sounding names.

That was before 2020.

“Something turned on during the pandemic and lit a fire,” said Jue, a Chinese American mother of two girls, ages 3 and 5, living on the west side of San Francisco. Throughout the pandemic, Jue watched as violent hate crimes against Asian Americans brought fear to the community with not enough response from local law enforcement or prosecutors. As the school closures wore on and on in California, Jue saw her local school board discuss progressive policy issues like renaming schools ahead of focusing on simply returning students to the classroom…

Jue, who generally considers herself a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” she said. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”…

Progressive backlash

Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who by most national standards is a liberal, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive.”…

Erosion among Asian and Latino voters, said Kanishka Cheng of grassroots community building organization Together SF, is explained by Democrats forgetting the core values for immigrant communities…(more)

Op-Ed submitted by John Mirisch, Beverly Hills City Council Member : propublica – excerpt

California State Senator Scott Wiener, representing the real estate industry and developers, once declared: “California isn’t Texas.”

And yet it seems, consarnit, at least in one respect, Wiener’s Yimby (more appropriately labelled Wimby) gang wants the Golden State to be more like the Lone Star State.

In its anti-choice zeal, the lawmakers of Texas looked to private citizens to enforce the state’s stringent anti-abortion statutes. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote about the law that in effect, Texas lawmakers have deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”

Instead of rejecting the principle of legal vigilantism outright, California quickly followed suit, adopting the Texas bounty strategy to enforce anti-gun laws within the state. In addition to letting self-deputizing posses sue to enforce gun laws, the state also passed legislation that allows third-parties to sue cities to allow developers to build whatever the heck they want, which naturally would be based on what’s good for their own bottom-lines rather than for the communities in which they build. (Unsurprisingly, the groups attacking and suing cities are almost all AstroTurf groups funded by the real estate industry).

Evidently not wanting to leave all the old-Western and militaristic jargon to Texas, the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, came up with a term more suited to Navy Seal commandos than the Old West, and has even created his own housing strike force to eliminate any local community decision-making of the kind that developers feel stands in the way of their own ability to make profits.

All this talk of bounties, and strike forces, and John Wayne seems to have inspired CAYimby, one of the state’s leading AstroTurf Wimby groups; it looks like they’re trying to keep up with their alt-right-adjacent collaborators from Montana’s Frontier Institute in pursuing the “spirit of the West” (after all, California is west of Montana). California is also west of Texas, and following the Texas model, CAYimby’s director of “research,” the Wimbys’ own good ole boy, M. Nolan Gray, announced his organization’s institution of a bounty program, with rewards of up to $5,000 to engage in “research” for CAYimby…(more)

By Vanessa Rancaño : kqed – excerpt

During the pandemic, Alameda County supervisors approved some of the strongest protections in California for tenants facing evictions. But last month, the board abruptly changed course — rejecting a slate of proposals designed to keep renters in their homes.

The turn comes amid backlash from property owners that could signal future resistance statewide, some tenant and landlord advocates say.

‘What it feels like is really a turning back of a lot of work and conversations, a lot of hope and trust.’Leo Esclamado, organizer, My Eden Voice

“What it feels like is really a turning back of a lot of work and conversations, a lot of hope and trust,” said Leo Esclamado, an organizer with the community group My Eden Voice, which lobbied hard to extend renter protections in the county.

The measures would have banned landlords from doing criminal background checks on potential tenants, created a rental registry meant to help the county enforce code violations and rent-control laws, and only allowed “just cause” evictions for things like not paying rent or violating lease terms.

The supervisors also voted to cut off funding for the county’s Housing Secure program, which has provided legal services to both tenants and homeowners since 2018…

For Chris Moore, who owns property in Oakland and unincorporated parts of Alameda County, and who sits on the board of the East Bay Rental Housing Association, the Board of Supervisors’ shift on the issue is a refreshing change.

Board President Nate Miley argues that supervisors helped create the conditions for a backlash by refusing to ease the eviction ban months ago.

Centro Legal de la Raza Executive Director Monique Berlanga said she was particularly surprised by the supervisors’ decision to defund the tenant and homeowner legal services program.

There are now 27 attorneys in the county who provide free eviction defense and other housing-centered legal services to tenants and homeowners in under-resourced communities, up from just six in 2017, before the Housing Secure program was funded, according to Centro Legal de la Raza, which administers it. Since the program’s inception, the program has served nearly 3,000 residents…(more)

RELATED:

As Bay Area Eviction Moratoriums Expire, Local Lawmakers Scramble

George Wu is willing to die to end Alameda County’s eviction ban.

The San Leandro property owner launched a hunger strike Sunday to protest the moratorium, which he blames for $120,000 and counting in unpaid rent. Wu plans to camp out in front of the county administration building day and night, through cold and rain, until lawmakers lift the ban…(more)

By Emily Hoeven :sfchronicle – excerpt

Sausalito, desperate to avoid the “builder’s remedy,” proposed constructing housing underwater. Its housing element is the subject of a YIMBY lawsuit…(more)

RELATED:

YIMBY Law Set to Sue Sausalito Over Allegedly Out-of-Compliance Housing Element
By Joe Kukura : sfist – excerpt

The YIMBY crowd is unleashing their lawsuits on cities whose Housing Elements are not yet approved by the state, and in the case of an impending Marin County lawsuit, claiming that some proposed housing sites are literally “in the water.”

Here in San Francisco, the year-plus drama over passing the state-mandated Housing Element — a long-range planning document related to housing — was finally resolved in late January with a successfully approved plan that the state OK’ed at the deadline’s 11th hour. That state required that SF submit a plan to build 82,000 new housing units by the year 2031, and had we not gotten the plan approved in time, we’d have been subject to potentially losing billions in state funding, a range of other legal and financial consequences, plus the much-discussed “builder’s remedy” that would have allowed developers to just build whatever they pleased without regard for zoning or city approvals…

this lawsuit story seems to be fed to the Chronicle as an exclusive, with knowledge its claims would generate supportive, uncritical coverage for the plaintiffs. The article’s author has been retweeting YIMBY tweets all day since the piece was published.

There may be some credible claims in this still-unfiled lawsuit. It quotes one resident as saying their property was included as a potential development site “without any contact with me, and without any notice period or hearing.” But the claim that some sites are “mostly underwater” deserves a little scrutiny.…(more)

This sounds like a joke, and it may be one. How can a city built on a steep hill with little undeveloped buildable land expect to build a lot of anything without tearing out and replacing a lot of what is alraedy built? Given the famous houseboat community, buildng underwater is not too far-fetched. Perhaps one solution is to dredge the bay enough to bring in a large decommissioned ship to fullfill the housing goals.