Category Archives: Politics

CEQA, Politics, Transportation

State Attorney General’s Office Joins the Fight Against the Pro-Parking Group ‘Citizens for a Better Eureka’

We will be targeting all coastal towns in CA with Wiener’s SB951 crazy ass law. So yes we will try to send to these folks too!

On 02/02/2024 11:31 AM PST zrants <zrants@gmail.com> wrote:

By Ray Burns : lostcoastoutpost – excerpt
The State of California wants in on the City of Eureka’s fight against the Security National-funded Citizens for a Better Eureka.

The Office of Attorney General Rob Bonta today submitted a request to file amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs in support of the City of Eureka and the Eureka City Council, and it says the court should reject the Citizens for a Better Eureka’s efforts to thwart affordable housing developments downtown.

Last month, Citizens for a Better Eureka filed a series of motions seeking preliminary injunctions that would immediately block the city and its partners, including Linc Housing and the Wiyot Tribe’s Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust, from breaking ground on affordable housing and transportation projects slated for development on municipal parking lots downtown.

The motions – five, in all – allege violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), arguing that the city failed to conduct legally required environmental review not only for the elimination of public parking spaces but also for the various planned redevelopment projects, which the group says will impact traffic and air quality…(more)

RELATED:

Eureka Planning Commission Chair Jeff Ragan Abruptly Resigns, Citing ‘Grave Concerns’ Over City’s Approval of Housing Projects on Three City-Owned Parking Lots

We keep warning the Democrats that they are risking losing support in communities that are barely on their side to begin with and these efforts to reign them is is stupid and irresponsible. They stand the possibly of losing seats in the House if they continue to attack the less urban communities. Where are the jobs and where is the need for housing in Eureka? Must contact them regarding ourneighborhoodvoices.com and other state organizations who are fighting their battles with them.

CEQA, Politics

Is this the end of CEQA as a tool to challenge housing projects that damage communities?

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

A dramatic change in the use of a longtime neighborhood and community planning process is about to happen; can the supes do anything about it?

Nothing is sacred to Senator Wiener.
If re-elected he will continue the land grab.

When the Board of Supes considers an appeal of a housing development on Sacramento Street Feb. 6, the main issue at hand whether turning a former medical library into housing will damage an historic resource.

But what’s really at issue here is a much bigger question.

For decades, San Francisco environmental and community activists have used the California Environmental Quality Act to challenge development that was damaging to the community. Some of the most important cases in city development history, including one that set new law around the requirement for the analysis of cumulative impacts of multiple projects, involved CEQA…

The statute the city is citing is Government Code Section 15183, which is part of CEQA. It states: “ CEQA mandates that projects which are consistent with the development density established by existing zoning, community plan, or general plan policies for which an EIR was certified shall not require additional environmental review, except as might be necessary to examine whether there are project-specific significant effects which are peculiar to the project or its site. This streamlines the review of such projects and reduces the need to prepare repetitive environmental studies.’”…

So this could mean the end of CEQA review for potentially hundreds of projects.

As I said in my first story on this, that’s a Yimby dream—but it’s also a huge policy change.

It gets worse: If the supes go along with this appeal, on a project that predates the Housing Element EIR, the developer can just come back and say: State law has changed. I can make this even worse.

San Franciscans need to be ready for what Sen. Wiener and his allies have wrought: destruction of historic resources, large-scale demolitions of existing housing, and a profound limitation on what the community can do on a local level to fight back.

All in the name of more market-rate housing, that won’t do anything at all to solve the current crisis, which is entirely a crisis of affordable housing…(more)

Please read the rest of the article, comment where you can, and send your concerns to your supervisors and whoever else you feel should take actions on this appeal.

CEQA, Housing, Planning, Politics

Letter to the editor: Yes, a taxpayer can sue over the state’s housing laws

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Retired real estate lawyer weighs in on state law.

I love letters to the editor. Here’s one from someone who actually knows the answer to a question I raised:

In “Peskin, Chan want to know if SF can sue the state over impossible housing rules,” Tim Redmond asks, “Could a San Francisco citizen, or organization [as distinguished from San Francisco itself], sue? ‘That,’ said Peskin, ‘is a very good question.’”

The answer is that any citizen who has paid taxes to the state can sue the state (or an agency thereof) to restrain illegal, injurious, or wasteful expenditures under section 526a of the Code of Civil Procedure. Any such lawsuit needs to be brought in state court because federal courts have strict standing requirements…

The portion of SB 423 singling out San Francisco is illegal because it violates the California Constitution, Article IV, Section 16(b): “A local or special statute is invalid in any case if a general statute can be made applicable.” A taxpayer action could seek a declaration that this portion of SB 423 is an invalid special statute. Notably, there isn’t even language in the bill, as there is in other special statutes, purporting to justify it as addressing a problem unique to San Francisco.

A taxpayer action could also seek a broader declaration that the state housing laws do not take precedence over San Francisco zoning laws, because as a charter city, San Francisco has a right to home rule protected by the California Constitution. This power includes zoning. A conflicting state law, even on a matter of statewide concern, only prevails over home rule if the law is reasonably related to resolution of a matter of statewide concern and narrowly tailored to avoid unnecessary interference in local governance.

The state housing laws fail this test for numerous reasons. Studies by the Terner Center show the laws have failed to achieve their goals and scholars have described them as “ad hoc and not model based.”

Nick Waranoff

Nick Waranoff is a retired real estate lawyer.

CEQA, Housing, Politics

The year in housing policy: State forced SF into a no-win situation (and Breed went along)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Photo shot from the year that the voters stopped SB50 from going through. Since then Wiener and company have gotten better at ignoring the will of the public. There might be enough pissed off voters to take him out this year. We finally have some opponents running with other ideas of how to do his job so voters have a chance to take him out and show the other Sacramento legislators that there are other ways to govern that do not involve forcing unwanted changes on the public.

The supes did what they had to do, although a lot of them didn’t like it—but it’s not going to matter anyway.

It was a crazy year for housing in San Francisco, with the state forcing to city to adopt new rules for “constraint reduction” to comply with a new construction mandate that nobody, even housing developers, thinks is remotely possible.

The Regional Housing Needs Assessment calls for 82,000 new housing units in San Francisco, 46,000 of them affordable. (I love that terminology; it means the state wants to see 36,000 new units in the city that nobody but the very rich can afford.)

The city has six more years to reach that goal…

So now Sen. Scott Wiener, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the folks at the state Department of Housing and Community Development are going to have to deal with a basic problem:

They are asking cities like San Francisco to approve housing that doesn’t meet community needs and that developers don’t want to build…

What’s the state going to do? Penalize San Francisco for something completely out of the city’s control?

Or admit that this whole RHNA gambit was a fraud?.…(more)

RELATED:

Letter to the editor: Yes, a taxpayer can sue over the state’s housing laws by Nick Waranoff, retired real estate lawyer

deregulated housing bills, Housing, Politics

Did one of California’s biggest new housing reforms go too far?

By Chris Elmendorf : sfchronicle – excerpt

The state desperately needs changes to its housing laws. But did a recent fix create more problems than it solved?

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a package of more than 50 housing bills. Most seemed inconspicuous, but sometimes changing just a few words in a statute makes a world of difference.

AB1287 is a case in point. It makes a small tweak to a state law that gives developers “bonuses” for building low-income housing.

On the books since the 1970s, the Density Bonus Law has a simple idea at its core: If a developer agrees to dedicate some units in a project to affordable housing, it should be allowed to make its project a little larger than a city’s rules otherwise allow. For example, if a builder dedicates 10% of the units to low-income housing, it receives a size bonus of 20%. This allows a site zoned for 40 units to be developed with 48.

AB1287 makes a seemingly minor change allowing developers to base their number-of-units calculation on what is allowed by a city’s general plan for land use rather than a city’s zoning. 

This might sound like a hair-splitting distinction. It is not…

Continue reading Did one of California’s biggest new housing reforms go too far? →

CEQA, Housing, Politics

Mission ‘group housing’ moves forward, likely to cut some affordable homes

By ANNIKA HOM : missionlocal – excerpt

It could be one of the first projects to utilize a
dial-back of inclusionary units

The long game may just be starting to pan out for the developer brothers Chris and Brian Elsey.

After four years, a 149-unit group housing project at 401 South Van Ness Ave. near 15th Street moved one step closer to development on Thursday, when the Planning Commission unanimously approved a special permit the project needed.

The four-year process, however, also means the project can incidentally abandon its previous 25 percent affordability requirement and slash it to just over 15 percent, thanks to city legislation that took effect approximately two weeks ago…(more)

People are looking for proof that the state developer bills are decreasing affordable housing in the state and this is one of the first projects to take advantage of those bills. This is also proof that there is no incentive to build on these lots since the longer they wait, the better the deal gets for the owners. They started with a 20% affordable, now they are down to ten. If they wait another year, the incentives to build any will diminish along with the fees to pay for the infrastructure. Those are shifting from developers to the taxpayers. Say goodbye to your city or wait to be screwed by the state.

CEQA, Politics

Once it was hailed as a drought fix — but now California’s moving to restrict synthetic turf over health concerns

By Shreya  Agrawal  : Calmatters – excerpt (includes audio track)

IN SUMMARY: California cities can ban synthetic turf under a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed. He rejected a bill to ban PFAS in fake lawns.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week passed on a chance to limit the use of the so-called “forever chemicals” in legions of plastic products when he vetoed a bill that would have banned them in synthetic lawns.

His veto of an environmental bill that overwhelmingly passed the Legislature underscores California’s convoluted guidance on the plastic turf that some homeowners, schools and businesses use in place of grass in a state accustomed to drought.

Less than a decade ago then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law prohibiting cities and counties from banning synthetic grass. At the time, the state was in the middle of a crippling drought and fake lawns were thought to be helpful in saving water…(more)

Housing, Politics

San Jose Says Its ‘Tiny Homes’ Are Reducing Homelessness. More Are on the Way

By Calmatters :sfstandard – excerpt

It was the bathrooms that convinced Darlene Pizarro to accept an offer of shelter at a lot of “tiny homes” in San Jose last month…

“Tiny home” describes a specific type of housing more permanent than a tent or disaster shelter, but less than a single-family home, townhouse, apartment or something else thought of as permanent housing. The structures—smaller than 400 square feet, often lacking either a kitchen or private bathroom—have become increasingly common in California’s response to homelessness over the past five years, though opinions are split on how much to rely on them in years to come.

Pizarro’s unit boasts all the fixings of what homeless advocates say are best practices for temporary housing: Individualized case management allowing residents to stay as long as they need to get permanent housing

  • Laundry and kitchen facilities
  • The privacy of individual rooms that lock, with personal bathrooms
  • Other elements that emphasize residents’ dignity, like dog runs and weekly community events

Tiny homes are sometimes called modular homes or, in the case of San Jose, “emergency interim housing.” The city is all in, operating more than 600 such beds across six sites and building more. Mayor Matt Mahan credits them with a recent 10% decline in the city’s unsheltered population and notes that of the 1,500 people the city has sheltered in its tiny home sites, 48% moved to permanent housing. That’s compared to an average rate of 34% across Santa Clara County’s shelters over the past three years…

RELATED: Building Tiny Homes a Gigantic Task in Broken San Francisco…

A sense of privacy

Also making the sites attractive are a host of modular housing companies springing up to offer tiny homes that are more livable.

Compared to flimsier and less fireproof prior models that evoked disaster zones, many tiny homes now include double-pane windows that can open, individual thermostats and doorbells. In San Jose, one site where the city broke ground this year will include some tiny homes that have private kitchenettes.

Though not all cities use them, many companies build modular units with en suite bathrooms, which residents say provide significantly more privacy and dignity…(more)

Housing, Politics

Newsom signed 60 housing bills in 2023

Newsom signed 60 housing bills in 2023

Download the pdf or read the article in the Chronicle: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/newsom-california-housing-bills-18442548.php

Unfortunately, the real elephant in the room in SF is not the lack of housing projects being entitled. The problem is that they are not being built thanks to the the DBI holding back on processing buildings and then one must run the gauntlet of the inspections department, but, have been heavily mired in corruption and are years behind schedule, unless you are a big corporate developer.

 

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)