Category Archives: CEQA

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

These 12 secret power players are shaping the Bay Area housing market

By Susie Neilson, Emma Stiefel, J.K. Dineen and Lauren Hepler : sfchronicle – excerpt (includes audio track)

Last year, The Chronicle obtained data on almost every property in the Bay Area — about 2.3 million unique records. We were hoping the data would be a treasure trove of information about real estate ownership in the region, allowing us to easily identify who owns what, and thus pinpoint the most powerful corporate owners of rental housing.

Quickly, we learned it wasn’t so simple. California doesn’t have hard-and-fast rules on how property owners identify themselves; large corporations, hedge funds and even wealthy families often purchase multiple homes through shell companies or trusts, shielding their names from ownership records. It’s only by carefully tracing networks of ownership that one can start to grasp how much property an entity actually has.

So we redoubled our efforts. During the past year, The Chronicle analyzed these property records, which were collected from county assessors’ offices, plus nearly 7 million unique business records. We used machine learning methods to parse the data and called on dozens of experts and additional data sources. This work yielded a list of 12 of the Bay Area’s largest, most influential ownership networks. We believe this is an unprecedented effort to uncover rental ownership and management networks across all nine counties in the region: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma…

We still aren’t sure we’ve captured all of the Bay Area’s largest owners, but we’re confident this list of 12 includes some of the region’s major power players in residential real estate, housing tens of thousands of families in nearly 7,000 assessor-defined properties from San Jose to Santa Rosa…

Even if the owner of your property isn’t on our list, you can learn more about who owns it by using our map of nearly 2.3 million Bay Area properties here. You may read more about our methodology here.

Read why transparency matters…

Navigate to our content

One company operates thousands of San Francisco apartments. Just don’t call them a landlord

This map reveals who owns every property in the S.F. Bay Area…

Invitation Homes
Michael Marr
Greystar
Woodmont / Tad Taube
Equity Residential
John Vidovich
Neill Sullivan / REO Homes
Essex
UDR, Inc.
Tricon Residential
AvalonBay
Ardenbrook / Ardenwood…(more)

RELATED:

This map reveals who owns every property in the S.F. Bay Area

By Emma Stiefel and Susie Neilson: sfchronicle – excerpt

This tool will help you investigate your landlord or anyone else’s

To our knowledge, there has never been a centralized database where someone could see who owns any property in the nine-county Bay Area region, making it difficult to investigate connections between the powerful forces that shape the housing market for all. So The Chronicle built one.

Type in your full address, or any Bay Area address, to see who officially owns nearly any building. The map contains data on almost 2.3 million properties registered across the Bay Area’s nine counties, which The Chronicle obtained in summer 2021…(more)

CEQA, Housing, Politics

My house or my beach? How California’s housing crisis could weaken its coastal protections

By Ben Christopher : Calmatters – excerpt (includes audio track)

For more stories on inequality in California, sign up for Inequality Insights, a weekly must-read on one of California’s most pressing issues.

California lawmakers have been busy over the last decade trying to make it easier to build homes across a housing-strapped state. But there’s an 840-mile-long exception.

In an undulating band that generally runs 1,000 yards from the shoreline, the 12 members of the California Coastal Commission have the final say over what gets built, where and how.

Voters empowered the commission to protect the state’s iconic beaches in 1972, responding to a crisis of despoiled seas and the prospect of the Miami-fication of the California coast.

But five decades later, the state faces a different crisis as millions of Californians struggle to find an affordable place to call home. Now, a growing number of legislators and housing advocates are trying to wrest away some of the commission’s power…(more)

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing

City Hall proposes a deal to regain control of Builders Remedy projects

by Matthew Hall : smdp – excerpt

Thirteen controversial oversized developments could be reined in if a proposed settlement goes through. The quid pro quo is the City will settle several lawsuits with the developer WS Communities. The City of Santa Monica wants to bring 13 Builders Remedy projects back into the regular development pipeline at their May 9 meeting through incentives created as part of a settlement with the developer.

City Hall has proposed settling several lawsuits with several companies related to WS Communities, the development company owned by Neil Shekhter that applied for 13 of the 16 Builder’s Remedy projects. While the cases being settled are entirely unrelated to the Builders Remedy projects, the terms include a clause that offers WS Communities incentives to drop the otherwise unstoppable projects.

WS Communities and its subsidiaries have been engaged in several lawsuits with the city over tenant harassment and the city’s leasing rules. At the May 9 meeting, Council will be presented with a settlement that covers those cases.

“The Settlement Agreement provides financial benefits for three recently displaced tenants of 1242 10th Street and guarantees them the right to return. The Settlement Agreement would also authorize the transfer of 20 deed-restricted affordable units from 1560 Lincoln Blvd to 1038-42 10th Street,” said the staff report.

However, the deal includes an additional clause independent of the leasing/harassment cases. The settlement offers WS several incentives to reenter the normal development process. It allows the developer to combine affordable housing requirements from individual projects into a single location while preserving State density bonuses that would otherwise be invalid if affordable housing were combined. It also offers increased allowable parking in their developments…

The Santa Monica Coalition for a Liveable City (SMCLC) opposes the deal saying the information presented so far lacks important details.

“This proposed settlement is essentially a mega development agreement – the biggest one in the city’s history,” said Diana Gorden on behalf or SMCLC in an email sent to Council. “Given this, there needs to be a high degree of disclosure as to what is being built and what the real-life benefits and burdens to the community will be if implemented. And there needs to be a more open and transparent process and sufficient notice than simply adding, almost as an afterthought, an administrative item to an already packed Council agenda.”…(more)

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

A 50-story housing proposal is shaking up planning officials in San Francisco

By Josh Niland : archinet – excerpt

A proposed new high-rise development in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district is standing out over its disputed manipulation of statewide density laws.

The LA Times is reporting on CH Planning‘s unlikely new proposal, which could add a Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed 50-story tower to the neighborhood via provisions in California’s Density Bonus Law — a regulation they say allows for permitted deviations from local building restrictions to provide options for affordable housing.

“It simply defies logic that a building in a 100-foot height district seeking a 50% bonus could somehow rise to 560 feet,” Daniel Sider, chief of staff for San Francisco’s Planning Department said in a rebuke published by the newspaper. “While we agree that this site is ripe for housing, and we hope to work with the developer to achieve that, there is no provision in state or local law to permit the downtown-style building that’s been proposed.”

“The proposed project is flat out inconsistent with local zoning rules and state density bonus laws,” Rich Hillis, the city’s planning director, added. “It sets back our efforts to appropriately add housing on the City’s west side and meet our Housing Element targets. Frankly, it’s a distraction.”

(He also told the San Francisco Chronicle that CH “misrepresents what’s allowed by the planning code and state density bonus.”)…(more)

On the other hand… Atherton residents are crying foul and threatening to sue. Could they join the growing number of outraged wealthy enclaves who may turn the tide? Parts of San Mateo County are in Wiener’s district and some of them have deep pockets of cash at their disposal.
This may not only hurt Wiener. D-6, Haney’s former density district are the least satisfied with city services. They live in the dense housing model planned for the rest of San Francisco neighborhoods and they are not happy with it. Many empty over-priced units are up for grabs there. Wait until the earth begins to shake under their feet.

RELATED: Two wealthy enclaves that might fight the state:

‘Ridiculous’: Atherton residents call for revolt over housing plan revisions

This exclusive island town might be California’s biggest violator of affordable housing law

CEQA, Housing

Home Breaking News Groups Believe that SB 423 Will Threaten Local Democracy

Special to the Vanguard : davisvanguard – excerpt

Recently Senator Scott Wiener introduced legislation that would make SB 35 permanent…

Sacramento, CA – A coalition of communities are pushing back on recent housing proposals, and warn that SB 423, a permanent extension of SB 35, “gives developers unlimited ability to develop nearly anything, anywhere in California.”…

But for some, that means it would “permanently strip local communities of nearly all important land use decisions.”

The group calls itself Our Neighborhood Voices and describes itself as a “non-partisan coalition of residents and elected officials from every corner of California who believe that land use decisions should be determined by local communities and their elected leaders – not one-size-fits-all laws from Sacramento and for-profit developers.”

Our Neighborhood Voices is organizing to qualify a citizen-led ballot initiative that they say would “protect the ability of local communities to adopt laws that shape local growth, preserve the character of neighborhoods, and require developers to produce more affordable housing and contribute to the costs associated with it.”

Opponents note that while “the legislation – SB 423 – is touted as a tool to solve our affordable housing crisis, local elected leaders say that the legislation undermines local democracy by removing the ability of communities to plan and prepare for what is built in their neighborhoods.”

They explain, “It also can accelerate damaging ‘Builders Remedy’ projects across the state that see massive projects built in residential neighborhoods without adequate planning for water, schools, transit, safety fire danger and other priorities.”…(more)

Is there such a think as too much? Some developers clearly think the sky’s the limit when “Builders Remedy” is concerned. They have decided to test that theory with a 50 tower next to Ocean Beach in a single family neighborhood that objects to anything over 4 stories.

RELATED:

Skyscraper Plans Revealed for San Francisco’s Ocean Beach: 712 Homes, 50 Stories

CEQA, Housing, Politics

Wiener bill would kick elected officials out of critical land-use and housing decisions

By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

Mitts-Off

If cities don’t meet the state’s impossible housing goals, unelected bureaucrats could be approving development projects with no oversight.

State Sen. Scott Wiener just introduced a new bill, SB 423, that extends the absurd provisions of his 2017 bill SB 35. That law forces cities to approve—that is, “streamline”—certain housing projects if the number of building permits they’ve issued halfway in the eight-year Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) cycle falls short of their respective allocations.

The mandate is absurd, because cities can approve projects, but they can’t compel developers to pull building permits on projects that have been approved. Builders are not going to build if they can’t make a profit; that’s why in San Francisco right now, tens of thousands of approved housing units are not getting built.

In a further absurdity, the allocations themselves, especially the low-income numbers, are so enormous as to be unrealizable. SB 35 sets up cities to fail.

Now comes SB 423. The mainstream press has focused on two controversial aspects of Wiener’s new bill: it adds Builder’s Remedy to SB 35’s penalties, and it loosens SB 35’s requirements for employing union labor.

My focus here is on another problematic aspect of SB 423…

Here’s the relevant passage in SB 423: Section 65913.4 of the Government Code is amended to read:

…. (c) (1) If a local government government’s planning director or any equivalent local government staff, including all relevant planning and permitting departments, determines that a development submitted pursuant to this section is consistent with the objective planning standards specified in subdivision (a) and pursuant to paragraph (3) of this subdivision, it shall approve the development. …(more)

Homeowners and would-be homeowners take exception to Wiener’s claims that single family homes are immoral. The more you know about the plans to limit your lifestyle the less you like it.

CEQA, deregulated housing bills, Housing

Tensions rise between Newsom, mayors over homelessness

By Emily Hoeven : calmatters – excerpt

As voters cast ballots in the last few days leading up to California’s Nov. 8 election, who will they blame for the state’s persistent housing and homelessness crises?

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s surprise Thursday announcement — that he’s withholding $1 billion in state homelessness funding until local governments and service providers come up with more ambitious plans to reduce the number of people living on the streets — seems to serve as an implicit reminder to Californians that he isn’t the only one responsible for the state’s ballooning homeless population, which grew by at least 22,500 during the pandemic.

Newsom said the local plans would reduce street homelessness by just 2% statewide by 2024 — a figure that is “simply unacceptable.” He also slammed some regions for estimating their homeless populations would grow by double digits in four years, and said he plans to meet with local leaders in mid-November to review the state’s approach to homelessness and identify more effective strategies…

Having heard the hint loud and clear, many of the mayors of California’s largest cities are pushing back:

  • San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told CalMatters housing reporter Manuela Tobias: “We need to put down the megaphones and pick up the shovels. … Let’s bring all the solutions in, but it’s not going to happen at a photo op. It’s not going to happen with 90 people in a room. You’ve got to have a lot of conversations with technocratic experts at the table, to try and understand exactly how you can get it done. That’s much harder work.”
  • San Francisco Mayor London Breed told Politico: Newsom is “creating more hoops for local governments to jump through without any clear explanation of what’s required.”
  • Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the San Francisco Chronicle: I’m “perplexed how delaying (these) funds advances our shared goals.”

The mayors also argued that their ability to address homelessness is constrained by a lack of ongoing state funding. Some have been calling on the state for years to create a multibillion-dollar permanent funding stream for homelessness, and have thrown their support behind Proposition 27 — a ballot measure that would legalize online sports betting and direct a sizable portion of tax revenue to homelessness and mental health services — for that reason. Newsom announced last week that he opposes Prop. 27…

But the state may first have to deal with a recent Superior Court decision that found state housing laws don’t apply to projects until after local agencies complete their environmental reviews under CEQA. This could allow a city to keep postponing its CEQA reviews and thus “impose an unreviewable death by delay on almost any housing project it wants to kill,” UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf argued in a Wednesday column in the San Francisco Chronicle..…(more)

CEQA

CEQA gets taken out of play in several ways:

How California plays the Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

1. First, there are a lot of things that are just not subject to CEQA.
2. Second, regulation and case law has taken out a lot of things.
3. Third, if no one objects, and takes the dispute to court — which
takes a lot of money — then the moving agency can get away with just about anything.
4. Even if there is a huge negative impact, if the moving agency has
properly described everything in the EIR and checked off all the right boxes, it is OK — all the moving agency has to do is a finding of
overriding considerations (as in, in our opinion, the good will outweigh the unmitigated bad, which is almost impossible to challenge), everything is OK.
5. Then, if the moving agency has enough juice in Sacramento, it can just get the Legislature to allow the project to proceed without any CEQA review – for example, the Sacramento basketball area for the Kings, which has become pretty common and keeps being expanded.

Remember, it is almost impossible to stop a project using CEQA.  Generally, the worst that can happen is that the project gets delayed while the EIR is revised — so, a very common situation is that someone who wants something files a claim in order to get some kind of settlement or agreement.  When there is a “victory” for the opponents, it is most commonly because the proponents were embarrassed to admit how bad the project was, so they made
the EIR look too much like a promotional brochure.  Bad mistake — if you actually say what will go on, then the opponents don’t have any legal leverage at all.

Tom Rubin

Quite a few cases are lost by marketing campaigns, some true and some false. Messages to investors are not for public consumption.

CEQA, Housing, Transportation

New State Amendment Announced

Californians for Community Planning Initiative
New site: https://www.communitiesforchoice.org/
A ballot measure to STOP Sacramento Centralized zoning like SB9, SB10 and AB1401.  By Californians, for Californians is

Actively looking for donors, supporters and volunteers.
Read all about it. https://www.communitiesforchoice.org/

The Community Choice Initiative will amend the State Constitution to make zoning and land-use municipal affairs, and bring a halt to the centralized land-use and zoning coming out of Sacramento. One size does not fit all.

We are working hard to appear on the Nov. 7th, 2022 ballot by submitting the initiative to the State Attorney General for title and summary, and gathering the required signatures from registered voters to appear on the ballot. This is a grassroots effort by regular residents like yourself to make this happen and we need your help…(more)

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