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The Torrance City Council voted 7-0 during a regularly scheduled Council meeting to discontinue its membership with the League of California Cities effective January 1, 2023. The vote followed a lengthy discussion amongst Councilmembers, comments from Cal Cities representatives and City staff.

City leaders made their decision on what they described as a failure by the League of California Cities to support its primary mission of advocating for local control of land-use and zoning. Torrance Councilmember Mike Griffiths who spearheaded this discussion says, “After nearly 2 years of expressing our concerns to Cal Cities about their dismal record on protecting local control, land-use and zoning, they’ve yet to show any significant effort to uphold their own mission statement. We cannot continue to be a member of an organization that does not advocate or protect cities like ours. We needed to take a stand and send a message.” Torrance has been a member of the League of California Cities since its incorporation in 1921.

By Sarah Writght : sfstandard – excerpt

California’s nice list of cities that are “pro-housing” just got updated, and so far, Oakland is the only Bay Area city to make the cut.

The East Bay city joins Citrus Heights, Fontana, West Sacramento, San Diego and Roseville—plus Sacramento, which was added in February—to the list of jurisdictions that can get priority for state housing and transportation funding because of their housing-friendly policies.

“We are thrilled for the State’s recognition of Oakland’s leadership in pushing forward pro-housing policies,” said Christina Mun, interim director of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department. “This designation, in partnership with the state, will allow our robust pipeline of affordable housing to move forward at the time we need the units most.”…

San Francisco, meanwhile, is on the state’s naughty list. In early August, California opened an investigation into San Francisco over its policies and practices, like its extra long permitting timelines that may be the result of practices like discretionary review, which gives anyone the power to appeal each new project. The first results of the investigation are expected in January.

San Francisco also applied for the pro-housing designation in the fall, but its application is still under review. Other Bay Area jurisdictions that have applied include San Mateo County, Sonoma County and the cities of Sunnyvale, El Cerrito and Larkspur…(more)

RELATED:

https://sfstandard.com/housing-development/san-francisco-looks-headed-for-state-housing-approvals-if-city-leaders-sign-off-on-new-plan/

By Dan Walters :calmatters – excerpt

A department store parking lot in downtown San Francisco is the battleground for a titanic political struggle between rival factions of the city’s dominant Democratic Party.

The lot at 469 Stevenson Street, just off Market Street, would become a 27-story residential high-rise, if Mayor London Breed and other housing advocates have their way. But San Francisco’s legislative body, the Board of Supervisors, refused last year to approve the project, siding with those who oppose packing more housing and people into the densely populated city.

It was a win for Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO), a coalition of project opponents. But the action angered Lou Vazquez, one of the project’s developers, who said, “This is the right project for the right place. It’s close to jobs and transit, it’s providing transit for residents at all levels of income in the middle of a greater center.”…

However, project proponents apparently didn’t know that two days earlier, very quietly, a Superior Court judge had ruled against them (Case # CPF-22-517661) in the Yes in My Backyard lawsuit. Judge Cynthia Ming-Mei Lee declared, in essence, that none of the violations alleged in the suit can be applied until the Board of Supervisors “completes adequate environmental review under CEQA.”

Pro-housing groups see her ruling as an invitation to local bodies such as the Board of Supervisors to stall CEQA reviews of projects they oppose and thereby stall legal action to push projects forward.

“This CEQA ruling on the Stevenson St. housing project is every bit as outrageous as the UC Berkeley ‘students-are-pollution’ CEQA ruling,” Senator Wiener tweeted. “We must clarify CEQA doesn’t give cities the power to ignore state housing law. Better yet, let’s remove infill housing from CEQA entirely.”

A bill to counteract what the supervisors did to stall the project died in the Legislature this year. But the court’s decision and Wiener’s remarks indicate that the conflict over 469 Stevenson Street may become a statewide issue when the Legislature reconvenes…(more)

RELATED:

More on the YIMBY case.

https://sfist.com/2022/10/31/judge-pretty-much-shoots-down-yimby-lawsuit-against-sf-over-rejected-high-rise-at-nordstrom-parking-lot/

This link to twitter includes the case number: and details. I’m surprised that i have to go through twitter to get this.

Case # CPF-22-517661

Judge: HO. Cynmthia Ming-mei-Lee

Register of Actions:

https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?CaseNum=CPF22517661&SessionID=21648AE7F94DF1920DD4FC06E1D0A3112C666401

By Annie Gaus :sfstandard – excerpt

After posting a massive budget surplus earlier this year, California’s fortunes may be about to drastically change.

California is facing a $25 billion dollar deficit in the next fiscal year, according to the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst. And that’s the beginning of what may become an ongoing, multiyear deficit in the billions driven by inflation, high interest rates and the threat of a recession.

That all adds up to a big “budget problem”—legislative parlance for a deficit—that California lawmakers need to fix in order to write a balanced statewide budget, the analysts wrote.

“California has enjoyed a good economic run, before and even during the pandemic, but we also know that the state’s budget has been built on a little bit of a risky platform,” said Rufus Jeffris, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Council…

It remains to be seen what budget cuts may materialize before the state finalizes a spending plan next June, but subsidies for affordable housing, transportation or other local initiatives could be on the chopping block, Jeffris added.…(more)

by Anna Tong : sfstandard – excerpt

Two dozen of San Francisco’s top YIMBYs gathered in a spacious Bernal Heights backyard in September to discuss the movement founder’s latest venture: a $1 million cash reserve to take San Francisco to court should it stymie any new housing projects.

YIMBY founder Sonja Trauss, who led a group discussion about the annals of housing policy while soothing her newborn baby, likened the Sue San Francisco Fund to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the city, referring to a type of cyber strike that paralyzes its target by blitzing it with an overwhelming number of requests…

To borrow a phrase from tech, their cause has been in hyper-growth mode. In about a decade, Trauss went from a lone dissenter facing off against neighborhood activists in San Francisco Planning Commission meetings to the figurehead for a sprawling movement with 140 groups in 29 states that goes toe-to-toe with local politicians and homeowners over housing construction.

But on their home turf, YIMBYs have watched their goals slip seemingly further and further out of reach. Last year, the city authorized 43% fewer units than its 10-year average. The Board of Supervisors has recently thwarted projects like a high-rise on an empty parking lot, drawing protests. In comparison, California as a whole has nearly tripled the number of annual housing permits issued in the last decade, according to the Census Bureau…(more)

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.