By Tim Redmond
…The Planning Commission will hear an informal presentation on the latest draft of the Housing Element Thursday/3, and I have no idea what the planners can say that will make any sense at all. The Housing Element is largely a fantasy. It’s based on a premise of meeting the state’s housing (including affordable housing) mandates, but those are also a fantasy.
It’s as if the planners have no sense of economic reality. We know the city has approved more than 50,000 units of housing that haven’t broken ground. We know there are 60,000 empty units in the city. That’s more than the state mandate, by a lot. But nothing is happening to address either of those issues; it’s as if they commission can waive its hands and rezone the city and clear “red tape” and magically profit-seeking developers who need financing from international speculative capital are going to start building housing, instantly, that the workforce can afford.
They won’t even build housing that the workforce can’t afford. The only thing getting built is tiny micro-units for single people—but priced at more than $2,000 a month…(more)
Some assume that the only point of the RHNA operations is to assure failure so that state may step in and micromanage the local communities development schemes. There is a new program announced by the state NCD and whoever else is responsible for the RHNA counts called “Builders Remedy” that seems to be a punishment for cities that fail to meet their RHNA goals.\
According to Hollabd and Knight, “the Builder’s Remedy is a housing development streamlining tool that provides developers the option to file an application for a housing development project with at least 20 percent affordable housing that is not in conformance with a jurisdiction’s zoning or General Plan”…(more)
How they can further streamline a system that is as lean as the one they have now is quite a mystery. You can’t get too much more streamlined that to declare property options are allowable “by right.” There is not much more you can give developers than a free hand to develop without any oversight or public involvement.