All posts by discowk7

Housing

State demands SF figure out how to fund enough affordable housing

If their plan is inadequate, the city could lose local control and funds
If you think approving a project in San Francisco is difficult, try approving a plan encompassing 82,000 units. That’s how much the state is mandating San Francisco to build within eight years, and city planners are attempting to meet the 2031 goal while balancing the interests of marginalized communities. One major problem looms: Money.

“The resources aren’t there to get to what we are being asked to do by the state,” said Planning Director Rich Hillis at a Planning Commission meeting Thursday.

That’s a problem. Thanks to new laws, localities that fail to submit plans that meet the state’s requirements could lose local control on projects and affordable housing funding…(more)

Even the SF Planning Commissioners are feeling pinched now. Too much demand on cities to grow beyond our capacity.
Too many questions remain unanswered and we are getting tired of the constant stress and pressures. Are we to understand that not only is the city required to entitle thousands of new units of housing (This somewhat depends on property owners bringing projects to be entitled) but, cities must now pay to build the housing, or sell bonds to pay? Does this mean that to live in this state we must agree to rising taxes, housing costs, gas prices, food and utility prices? When do the voters revolt and what does that look like?
Housing

Lawsuits filed to protect single family homes from Constitutional Overreach

Join Our Neighborhood Voices to help us fight the bad bills and

Four Southern California cities filed a Lawsuit to overturn SB9 and protect the single family homes that most American families want to live in from being phased out of California by urban density zealots.

Read all about it. https://www.livablecalifornia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SB9-03.29.2022-RB-Lawsuit-re-SB-9.pdf
In enacting Senate Bill 9 (“SB 9”) in 2021, the State of California eviscerated a city’s local control over land use decisions and a community-tailored zoning process.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation Files Lawsuit Against Controversial Housing Bill: https://kfiam640.iheart.com/content/2021-09-23-aids-healthcare-foundation-files-lawsuit-against-controversial-housing-bill/

 

Housing

The Next California Migration

Conversations with Dr. Jorge De La Roca, Joel Kotkin, and Marshal Toplansky about the future of business in California.

Capital investments are moving out of California. Young people may come and build new businesses from scratch, but as they mature, California does not meet their needs so they move out.  Maturing people houses and car and good schools to raise children. There are some thoughts about building new cities in less crowded areas of the state and possibly some factories to keep people in the state.

In summary: Regulatory and administrative programs are the main reason many businesses prefer to expand in other states. They do not appreciate the anti-business climate in Sacramento or the constant changes in labor relations legislation either.

There is some interest in preserving existing housing and converting some under utilized commercial spaces to housing and opening up opportunities to move to the less developed non-coastal regions.

Address reality instead of denying it.

Housing

Perspective: California Cities Have Plenty of Room and There’s No Reason to Build New Ones from Scratch

by : sfstandard – excerpt

Hayden Clarkin is the CEO and founder of TransitCon and a transportation engineer who has worked on large-scale transit projects in California.

“It’s been 84 years,” an older and wiser Rose says at the end of Titanic, referring to the time that elapsed between the ship’s sinking and its rediscovery. There’s no better sentiment that embodies the state of capital-transit projects in California. This Friday, the Van Ness Ave Bus Rapid Transit in San Francisco will finally see riders board after a ribbon-cutting that’s now decades in the making…

Nathan J. Robinson’s recent Current Affairs article “Why Doesn’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis by Building Some New Cities?” does just that. It’s a cacophony of competing realities whose central aim is that “the people of California simply need to approve a plan to build some more cities, perhaps in the largely uninhabited northern third of the state.” …

Hayden Clarkin is the CEO and founder of TransitCon and a transportation engineer who has worked on large-scale transit projects in California

 

“It’s been 84 years,” an older and wiser Rose says at the end of Titanic, referring to the time that elapsed between the ship’s sinking and its rediscovery. There’s no better sentiment that embodies the state of capital-transit projects in California. This Friday, the Van Ness Ave Bus Rapid Transit in San Francisco will finally see riders board after a ribbon-cutting that’s now decades in the making.

If a project to put red paint down a street was started at the same time Gmail was created, what makes anyone think that California can meet its monumental housing needs by building new cities from scratch?

Nathan J. Robinson’s recent Current Affairs article “Why Doesn’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis by Building Some New Cities?” does just that. It’s a cacophony of competing realities whose central aim is that “the people of California simply need to approve a plan to build some more cities, perhaps in the largely uninhabited northern third of the state.”

The task is anything but simple. The fatal irony in Robinson’s conclusion is that while he laments the YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) movement, he acknowledges that the state urgently needs more housing, somewhere.

I’ve visited the dense redwood forests with thousand-year-old trees some 96 feet in circumference and removing them is a non-starter in the land of CEQA and common sense. It’s probably best to build housing on the copious amounts of land already connected to the state’s transportation grid, which is primed for infill development.

Robinson’s piece reads like that of a disgruntled architectural critic, surmising that the suburban “wastelands” of many California cities can be corrected by building new ones. But while his characterizations of the suburban built environment are accurate, he doesn’t believe in actually changing them much…(more)

Housing

Catalysts Call w/Tom Campbell talking about the Common Sense Party

Zoom call with Tom Campbell
Monday, February 28, 2022
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Are you fed up with the top-down, one-size-fits-all housing legislation coming out of Sacramento? Are you longing for an alternative to government as usual? Want to hear about an alternative?

Join me in conversation with Tom Campbell, founder of the Common Sense Party. Tom is the former 5-term legislator in the US Congress. He represented the 15th District, which includes eastern and southwestern Alameda County as well as part of Contra Costa County.

In addition, Tom has a track record of success using . . . yes, common sense. A partial list of his service includes:

  • Two years in the CA State Senate
  • Finance Director of CA Federal Trade Commission
  • PhD in Economics, University of Chicago
  • J.D. magna cum laude, Harvard
  • White House Fellow and U.S. Supreme Court law clerk
  • Professor of law and economics, Chapman University

The Common Sense Party is committed to enabling all Californians to achieve their highest personal, educational, and economic success, and rely on fact-based decision-making in our state and local governments.

Receive the Zoom link after registering for the Monday night Catalysts Call.

Zoom “doors” will open about 4:55 for starting promptly at 5:00 pm, and the session will be recorded and posted on the Catalysts website.

Uncategorized

Young Turks host AOC re: NY politicians engineering foreclosures for profit.

https://twitter.com/ValerieRoss14/status/1492200995442495491

You don’t get too much more obvious that the parties are out of line when the Young Turks and AOC are talking about NY land grabs by local politicians.

We are betting on a state constitutional amendment to bring back local control to reverse upzoning that is escalating costs in California but we need a lot of help to get this done.
Go to https://ourneighborhoodvoices.com to find out what you can do.

deregulated housing bills, Housing

Court upholds density bonus law

By Bob Egelko Court Reporter : sfchronicle – excerpt

Court upholds density bonus law that exempts certain housing projects from local restrictions

A state appeals court says developers who agree to include affordable housing in their projects can be exempted from zoning rules, height limits and other local restrictions on neighborhood construction. The ruling, in a case from San Diego, has potential statewide impact as tensions over local control and the state’s housing crisis continue to escalate.

California’s 1979 density bonus law “incentivizes the construction of affordable housing,” the Fourth District Court of Appeal said in a decision it certified Wednesday as a precedent for future cases.

Once the developer commits to making a specified portion of the project affordable to lower-income households, “local government must allow increased building density, grant permits, and waive any conflicting local development standards unless certain limited exceptions apply,” Justice Judith Haller said in the 3-0 ruling.

Those exceptions include threats to public health or safety, harm to a historic resource, or conflicts with state or federal laws. None applied to the proposed 20-story project overlooking Balboa Park in San Diego, so it can be built despite opposition from some community organizations, Haller said… (more)

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