The Democratic nominee has made “ending America’s housing shortage” a key pillar of her campaign. That pledge is light on details but heavy on vibes.
Amid a worsening housing and homelessness crisis, the defining political fight in San Francisco for more than a decade has been between pro-development YIMBYs and slow-growth NIMBYs.
Now, with a Bay Area politician as a major party nominee, Kamala Harris may become the first YIMBY president of the United States.
Tucked inside her newly unveiled economic agenda last week was a proclamation that housing activists never thought they’d hear from a presidential candidate.
“There’s a serious housing shortage,” Harris said to an enthusiastic audience of supporters in Raleigh, N.C. “In many places, it is too difficult to build, and it’s driving prices up.”
She followed the statement with a pledge that wouldn’t feel out of place at a YIMBY rally.
“We will take down barriers and cut down red tape, including at the state and local levels,” she said. “And by the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing shortage by building 3 million new homes and rentals that are affordable for the middle class.” …(more)
Houston faces choices confronting many US cities. Billions of federal dollars available for them to upgrade rail and bike transit, but some are balking.
“Houston – This epicenter of the oil and gas industry was ready to shed its reputation of being a car-centric city. Bicycle infrastructure projects were underway and the city had secured federal funding to expand public transit. Voters in Harris County, home to Houston, had approved billions of dollars to improve public transportation.
But after Mayor John Whitmire took office in January, everything changed. The city’s chief transportation planner left, bike infrastructure projects were stalled, and the region’s transit authority — largely appointed by the mayor — delayed parts of a $7.5 billion public transit expansion.
Advocates for transit and “safer streets” in Houston say they now suffer from whiplash, and fear the city is turning the clock back on transportation alternatives. It comes at a critical time for many U.S. cities that want to be part of the climate solution and make a meaningful shift away from reliance on the automobile. Whether America can make this shift could depend on the outcome of city-by-city battles.”… (more)behind a paywall
Houston is at the epicenter of the rising tides and frequently floods. The mayor knows how important a hasty retreat out of some areas is and the best way to evacuate is by private vehicle. People can take care of themselves when they have that option. The mayor may have witnessed streams of people driving away during one of their many disasters and figured that there is no way the public transit systems can handle this. People need their cars.
By Hanna King : ocregister – excerpt (audio track)
Beginning next year, local government contracts that aim to provide shelters and services to people experiencing homelessness will be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, thanks to legislation signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom this week.
CEQA is a state law that requires state and local governments to consider, and avoid, potential environmental impacts of proposed projects and activities.
Under the new law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, CEQA will exempt homeless service providers contracted by local governments, preventing their services from potentially being held up or blocked by legal challenges under the environmental law…(more)
Where is the money to pay for these projects going to come from? Will this apply to Charter cities? The jury is out of that one.
Nine years ago, tenants of the Pigeon Palace at 2840–2848 Folsom Street in San Francisco faced a dilemma. Their aging landlord, who had long rented at affordable rates, was unable to continue overseeing the place. Instead, a court-appointed conservator took steps to auction off the building.
Because Pigeon Palace is in the popular and increasingly expensive Mission neighborhood, the residents feared a new owner might dramatically raise their rents — or kick them out altogether. So they crowdfunded $300,000 and gave it to a nonprofit called the San Francisco Community Land Trust, which combined it with loans from a bank and the city to place the winning bid of more than $3 million. The trust then rented units back to the tenants at affordable rates.
Much of the political debate about California’s housing crisis has focused on building new units. However, community land trusts, a method of preserving existing affordable housing that dates back to the Civil Rights Movement, have quietly been gaining steam.
The number of community land trusts — nonprofits that buy up land and then sell or rent the buildings on top of it to residents with low-income — has tripled in California since 2014, according to the California Community Land Trust Network…(more)
By Cynthia Dizikes : sfchronicle – excerpt (includes graphics and maps)
Senator Wiener at one of his many pubic announcements of a new bill that strips away the rights of voters to determine how they live. For the first time in a long time some voters will choose a Republican over him for State Senator.
During the past five years, the San Francisco Planning Department granted or considered environmental review exemptions prohibited under state law for at least a dozen developments on old gas stations, vehicle repair shops and parking garages where toxic substances leaked into the soil and groundwater. The 12 projects analyzed by The Chronicle involve more than 250 current and future housing units around the city, in the Mission, Sunset, Cow Hollow, Nob Hill and other neighborhoods.
Exemptions can help speed development by reducing legal hangups and costs, and city officials say that all polluted sites are cleaned up to state and regional standards, regardless of whether they are exempted.
But exemptions also mean less public scrutiny of the environmental and health impacts of development, including digging up large quantities of potentially contaminated soil… (more)
RELATED: Senator Wiener removed exemptions for Coastal zones, fire, flood and toxic zones. I hesitate to think what is left, lest he go after it. (SB 591 and SB 610 among others)
Building in high fire hazard zones: Wiener’s plans don’t stop with allowing the degradation of California’s coastal zone. Wiener is now working to permit developers to build in other environmentally risky areas—Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones…Cal Fire (the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) is the state agency charged with “safeguarding California through fire prevention and protection, emergency response, and stewardship of natural resource systems.” The agency produces maps of fire hazard zones…In the California Planning and Development Review interview, Wiener was dismissive of the fire risks mapped by Cal Fire:.. (more)
How do we find more information on the unlisted Cortese sites? Must we check the history of each site that comes up as a done deal after entitlements are rubber-stamped according to the robust “permitting” process being forced on us by our Senator Wiener” and accepted by the city administration? How safe is the public when the environmental guardrails are dismantled?
When funds dry up and insurance companies flee an area, the only way housing will get built is with government dollars. Taxpayers are on the hook for some overly expensive, highly dangerous projects that may backfire. Who wants to live in an uninsurable property in a fire for flood zone? Evidently the Senator and his developer friends think poor people should be grateful for whatever they can get.
Not only have the Sacramento Politicians approved building in dangerous zones, they are trying to convince the taxpayers to finance them. Regional Measure 4 is a 9-county, SF Bay Area $20 billion bond measure that will set the taxpayers back an estimated $50 in property tax increases to build housing. And it is administered through the Municipal Transportation Committee. The transportation agencies that can’t manage their own public transportation systems are trying to break into the housing development business with the support of the taxpaying public.
Removal of CEQA guidelines is cause for alarm by many environmental groups as it bypasses due process and environmental reviews that were put into place by Ronald Regan when he was Governor and have provided some source of trust within the public. This is not a Republican party dismantling the environmental protections. This is the California State Democrats who run the show in Sacramento along with Governor Newsom who are removing the environmental protections under the guise of the state housing crisis.
For more than 75 years America has been dispersing away from dense urban cores, with nearly all population growth in neighborhoods with a suburban form, whether inside urban core cities (Note 1) or within. This trend could well be accelerating and is now extending into counties that the Census Bureau determined had no urbanization at all in 2020. The trend toward suburbanization has long been opposed by urban planning orthodoxy, and increasingly state governments in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and the city of Minneapolis. Public officials and key political figures such as California’s last two Governors, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom have endorsed policies to increase urban density. The dispersion occurring represents a rejection of that agenda.
In just the first three years of the decade, nearly five million US residents have migrated across county borders, according to US Census Bureau population estimates from July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2023. Each year, the Census Bureau estimates net domestic migration (migrating in minus migrating out), which is measured at the lowest level between counties. Only total net domestic migration is estimated by the Census Bureau, not other characteristics, such as income or race. Further, there are no data for areas within counties, such as cities (except where cities and counties have the same geographic boundaries, such as in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, St. Louis and, of course New York, which consists of five complete counties)…
Urban Areas: The Census Bureau defines urban areas after each census. Urban density is calculated by dividing the total urban population by the urban land area. In 2020, the average US overall population density was 94 per square mile (including both urban and rural areas). Among counties, the highest urban density is 74,800 in New York County (Manhattan). Of the nation’s about 3,100 counties and county equivalents, more than 1,000 had no urbanization in 2020. Urban density is a useful measure of urban influence at the county level.
It is notable that this net domestic migration has been overwhelmingly away from more intense urbanization — that is from counties with larger urban densities to counties with lower urban densities. Counties with higher urban population densities are often in or near the urban cores of the largest metropolitan areas.
Urban Density Weighted Net Domestic Migration…(more)
In a highly controversial decision, the Supreme Court on June 28 reversed a 40-year old ruling known as Chevron deference, reclaiming the Court’s role as interpreter of statutory law as it applies to a massive body of regulations imposed by federal agencies in such areas as the environment, workplace safety, public health and more. …
The “administrative state” had modest beginnings during George Washington’s presidency, with the formation of the Defense, State, Treasury and Justice Departments. Today it has mushroomed into more than 400 agencies. For the 178 laws passed by Congress in 2020 alone, federal agencies issued an average of 19 rules and regulations for each law passed, for a total of 3,382 such rules. The Federal Register, a common measure of regulatory action, hit an all-time high 95,894 pages in 2016. That’s 75 timesThe Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which contains 1280 pages.
The issues raised by the Chevron doctrine go back to the founding of the country and make for an interesting lesson in civics. But first a look at the fishing case that reversed it.
With state and federal funds drying up, banks lending less, and more cities facing budget deficits, tens of thousands of newly proposed affordable homes have been stuck in limbo, unable to get off the ground.
So come this November, Bay Area voters will not only be weighing in on the next U.S. President, but also, whether or not they should step in and loan the nine-county region a total of $20 billion to move those efforts along.
Last week, the commissioners of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority—a first-of-its kind agency created in 2020—voted unanimously to put the bond measure on ballots to fund new subsidized housing projects, buy up existing homes to make or keep them affordable, and support housing-related infrastructure.
The bond would be funded by property tax increases, with an estimated tax of $19 per $100,000 of assessed value, which shakes out to about $190 per year for a home assessed at $1 million.
If voters approve this IOU, each city would receive a cut of the proceeds based on how much its jurisdiction pays in taxes. San Francisco, for example, would get about $2.4 billion to invest, while the city of Oakland would get over $720 million. The funds would be dispersed in the form of low-cost loans. …(more)
Is anyone following this story, or should I say media spin on the ballot initiative that has so far been called a Tax, and Bond, and now it is a loan. Which is the most accurate way to describe this? Are any of the titles right or are they all correct? Are the words, tax, bond and loan synonyms?
As someone who has had the honor of representing the city of Santa Cruz in a variety of public offices over several decades, I feel called to wade into the current debate over housing production in the coastal zone.
But California doesn’t need to sacrifice coastal protection for new housing. That’s a false choice. We can increase density in coastal cities in a way that’s also environmentally responsible.
Santa Cruz is already doing it…
All it takes is imagination and political will.
Fred Keeley is the mayor of Santa Cruz. He has previously served as a state assemblymember, Santa Cruz County treasurer and county supervisor.
This op-ed is part of California Voices, a commentary forum aiming to broaden understanding of the state and spotlight Californians directly impacted by policy or its absence.… (more)
The right-wing tech barons and plutocrats are now the party’s biggest donor base.
The San Francisco Democratic Party held its annual gala tonight at the Palace Hotel. These posh events raise funds for the party, which is fine—but this year, the major sponsors, who gave more than $25,000, read like a list of the most conservative, almost Republican, big tech donors in the city:…(more)
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