Category Archives: Housing

Housing

Hands Off the Houses: Can We Stop Speculative Land Grabs?

By Corey McDonald : shelterforce – excerpt (includes audio track)

What began in earnest during the 2008 financial crisis has been exacerbated by COVID-19: large companies, often backed by powerful private equity firms, swept into the single- and multi-family housing market hoping for a big return on their investment. More than a decade later, they’re not only reaping the rewards — they’re increasing their market share.

“They just bought in bulk,” says Oscar Valdés Viera, a research manager at Americans for Financial Reform. “As people were losing their homes, they were taking advantage of that, and they’re doing that again — they’ve expanded during the pandemic.”…

Two laws specifically address auction sales of distressed properties, or properties that are risk of or have gone through foreclosure. California Senate Bill 1079, which was signed into law in September 2020, modifies the foreclosure auction process to give owner-occupants, tenants, local governments, and housing nonprofits the first right to purchase after a foreclosure sale.

Another bill, the foreclosure intervention housing preservation program, or FIHPP, provides funding in the form of loans or grants for nonprofits, community land trusts, and other eligible buyers to purchase properties available through SB 1079, as well as properties that are delinquent on their mortgage and have gone through a short sale…

The FIHPP process is still being worked out by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development…(more)

I might be nice to have someone less developer-friendly representing us in Washington to take advantage of federal opportunities to protect homeowners and potential purchasers. Who might that be?

deregulated housing bills, Housing

Are yimbys the new progressives? Only in a bizarre Wonderland

By Calvin Welch : 48hills – excerpt

The supporters of the ‘build-at-all-costs’ position ignore a half-century of history and the realities of the modern housing market

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

–The Queen of Hearts, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

San Francisco yimbys have now declared themselves “as progressive as it gets” in the welcoming pages of the San Francisco Chronicle.  Claiming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as one of their own, they are now, the article claims, engaged in “fighting inequality to protect the most vulnerable.”

Well, not really, actually, fighting but certainly “advancing progressive …policy goals.” The piece, by Bilal Mahmood, who ran for state Assembly in 2022 and lost, explains that in the future will protect the most vulnerable that remain.

What are these yimby “policy goals” and just how progressive are they?..(more)

The more you look under the covers the more obvious it becomes that the entire YIMBY plot traces its linage to the deepest darkest least transparent source of deceptive promulgation of untruths, baked into an insidious plot to spin a web of confusion around the facts. We have the documentation to prove it, but, who wants to see?

Housing

‘Rotten to the Core’: San Francisco Could Get Sued Over Housing Gridlock, Says Legislator

by Annie Gaus : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco’s inability to agree on housing policy is nothing new. But with a state mandate looming, the city’s parochial squabbles over new housing development may do more than just frustrate pro-housing activists. They could also land the city in legal trouble.

That’s according to State Sen. Scott Wiener, who called the Board of Supervisors’ recent actions on housing policy “frustrating.” In June, the board passed a fourplex bill so laden with caveats that Mayor London Breed vetoed it on grounds that it could actually hurt, not help housing development. Last week, the board voted to send a charter amendment to the ballot that Wiener described as a “Trojan horse”—designed to confuse voters and sabotage another, more viable plan to build housing…(more)

If SF is sued by the state, we might consider joining the lawsuit against SB9 that eliminated single family housing, making home ownership more difficult and the state less family friendly.

Senator Wiener admits there is nothing illegal about the four-plex law. He claims SF is not doing what it needs to do to get things built. What does he expect them to do when selling entitlements is more profitable than building? Given the high cost of construction and financing, and the flight from cities, now is not a good time to invest in an overpriced city.

If our state representatives really want to house people they should figure out how to balance salaries with the cost of housing. Suing cities is a good way to anger the SF voters who are in a recall mood right now.

Housing

The Case for Suburbia

Urban Reform Institute on Youtube

A conversation with Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox, Judge Glock, and Jennifer Hernandez moderated by Manhattan Institute’s Brandon Fuller. The panel was sponsored by The Cicero Institute, The Breakthrough Institute, and Urban Reform Institute.
deregulated housing bills, Housing

The State’s RHNA Housing Quota days are numbered

By Bob Silvestri : marinpost – excerpt

The State’s unrealistic, dysfunctional housing regulations demand that cities and counties “build” more housing, even though 98% of California’s cities and counties don’t build any housing: never have/never will. But, for all the anti-NIMBY, gavel pounding, and stomping of feet the state’s “trickle-down-the market will solve everything” approach has been an utter failure.

Let me repeat that. The state’s approach to increasing affordable housing has been an utter failure.

New ideas have been suggested but the state continues to double down on failure. A day of reckoning is approaching.

Over the past 15 years that the state has added regulations on top of regulations, penalties on top of penalties, and even resorted to having a special task force suing municipalities for Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) compliance, California housing production today (about 1 new house for every 656 people with a population of 39.4 million) is worse, on a per capita basis, than it was when all this started with the passage of SB 375 in 2008 (about 1 new home built for every 610 people in 2008 with a population of 36.3 million). And it’s a lot less than we were building 40 years ago (about 1 new home per 265 people with a population 23.8 million).

In other words, we’re building less housing today than 40 years ago…(more)

Housing

Auditor cheers critics of edicts to add housing

By Richard Halstead : marinij – excerpt

Marin critics of housing mandates handed down by the state say a new report by Cali- fornia’s auditor validates their objections.

“I applaud the audit,” said Mill Valley resident Susan Kirsch, founder of Catalysts for Local Control. “It is one of the greatest contributions we’ve had to try to get accurate numbers that jurisdictions can rely on.”

The auditor’s report, re- leased last month, supports analysis by the Palo Alto-based Embarcadero Institute that the state mandates are based on inflated estimates of future housing needs, Kirsch said.

“Overall, our audit determined that the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) does not en- sure that its needs assessments are accurate and adequately supported,” wrote Michael Tilden, acting California state au- ditor, in a letter to the governor and the Legislature accompanying the report.

“I firmly believe that the auditor’s report raises enough questions that the state Legislature should look into this and possibly consider eliminating the penalties for not achieving the Regional Housing Needs Assessment mandates, especially if we might need to go back and redo them,” said Novato Council- woman Pat Eklund, a member of the California Alliance of Local Electeds, which pushed for the audit… (attached)

Comments via email:

First of all the RHNA numbers have been proven wrong after a recent state audit. What are we doing about this?

second: we all know that the problem is affordable housing not just housing.
third: Look at who benefits from the building of the housing…. developers etc. Who is buying the properties to turn around and create rentals?
fourth: local control continues to be eroded. What are we the people doing about it ?
Housing

‘Housing First’ policy needs an adjustment

Guest Commentary : calmatters – excerpt

In summary: A Sacramento homeless shelter for mothers and their children is ineligible for millions of dollars in state homeless funds because it requires its residents to stay clean and sober. Assembly Bill 2623 could change that…

California’s “Housing First” mandate, adopted in 2016, provides that “the use of alcohol or drugs in and of itself … is not a reason for eviction” from state-supported homeless shelters. I support that policy. Many of the people sleeping on our sidewalks, under freeways or on park benches are addicts. They need secure housing before they can begin to address their addiction.

Assembly Bill 2623, authored by Assembly Member Carlos Villapudua, offers a narrow but sensible exception to the state’s overly rigid Housing First policy. It would allow a housing provider to prohibit the use of alcohol or drugs in facilities where children are present and the tenant is under a court order to refrain from the use of alcohol or drugs as a condition of reunification with their child.

Incredibly and unfortunately, the Assembly Housing Committee is refusing to allow the bill even to be heard — they want to silence this problem...(more)

Housing

California State Auditor releases scathing report on RHNA process

The California Alliance of Local Electeds (CALE) has just released the following, supporting the findings of the Office of the California State Auditor. The State Auditor says the state’s “housing goals are not supported by evidence.”

Local community organizations throughout the state have been doing independent studies and arguing this for almost a decade…(more)

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?