By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt

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.