Southern California is facing a major die-off of trees throughout parks, campuses and yards in both urban and rural areas, according to data from the U.S. Forest Service. For instance San Diego County’s Tijuana River Valley Regional Park has seen over 100,000 willows destroyed by the polyphagous shot hole borer beetle. Greg McPherson, a researcher with the US Forest Service, estimates the beetle could kill as many as 27 million trees, or 38 percent, in LA, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. These would be only losses from the beetle, but many of the trees in the area cannot tolerate stresses of drought, water restrictions, higher salinity levels in recycled water, wind and new pests that arrive almost daily because of global trade and tourism, local transportation systems, nurseries and the movement of infected firewood. The hardest-hit native species of urban trees are California sycamores, typically found along streams and used as shade and street trees.
Bay Area Cities Strengthen Rent Control
San Jose City Council approved a suite of measures, on a 6-5 vote, to strengthen renter protections, including a requirement that landlords must cite a reason for refusing to renew a lease. San Jose has had more than 2,400 evictions without cause since 2010. This was among several moves in recent weeks by Bay Area cities to strength rent control. City housing officials will also study tying rent increases in the city’s 43,000 rent-controlled units to inflation rather than the current 5 percent increase allowed annually. The council also approved Ellis Act protections that would require landlords of rent-controlled units to provide 120 days to a year of notice before they demolish, remodel or convert their buildings and provide displaced renters money to relocate. In Pacifica, the City Council voted, 3-2, to approve a temporary rent-and eviction-control ordinance. In early May, the Council will decide whether to put a rent and eviction control on the Nov. 7 ballot. In Santa Rosa, residents will vote on a broad rent-and eviction-control measure in the June 6 election. Union City City Council approved an eviction-control ordinance that would limit evictions to just causes allowed by law. (See prior CP&DR coverage.)
Nationwide Housing Crisis Costs Economy Up to $1.6 Billion
Analysis from economists Chang-Tai Hsieh of University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of UC Berkeley finds that the lack of affordable housing in "superstar cities" like New York, San Francisco, and San Jose have cost the US economy about $1.6 trillion a year in lost wages and productivity. The report is titled, “Why Cities Matter: Local Growth and Aggregate Growth.” The nation’s 380 metro areas generated $14.6 trillion in GDP in 2012, there is little research about factors that limit the growth of cities and metros. Hsieh and Moretti developed a statistical model that analyzed the contribution of each US city and metro to national economic growth. They analyzed 220 metros from 1964 to 2009 and looked at effects of housing on wages and productivity. The authors found that nearly 75 percent of the nation’s economic growth came from small group of Southern metros and 19 other larger metros. The superstar metros created wealth in finance and high-tech industries, but the gains were eaten up by the wages used to pay for higher housing costs. The authors also investigated whether workers are not flowing to the superstar metros because they have become too crowded, noisy and unpleasant, or whether it’s policies like zoning, building codes and NIMBYism. Improving transit is a large part of the solution, according to Hsieh and Moretti. (See prior CP&DR interviewwith Enrico Moretti.)
Santa Monica Releases Conservative Downtown Plan
The City of Santa Monica released the final draft of its Downtown Community Plan. The 300-page document lays out the future of development downtown through 2030, includes what some consider to be aggressively slow-growth rhetoric. The document has five major elements: density, building heights, housing, affordability and transportation. The plan projects less than 20 percent of downtown’s property area will change because it is largely built-out. The maximum height for buildings will be 84 feet (although some areas maximum will be 32 feet) and three exceptions exist already. The plan breaks up downtown into seven districts, with the tallest buildings planned for the area near the city’s light rail stop. City officials say the plan paves the way for the construction of 2,500 housing units over the next two decades. The plan regulates the number of studios and one-bedroom apartments and requires a certain percentage of new units be available for low and middle-income families. For transportation, the priorities are pedestrians, bicycles and public transit. The document still must go through public review at the Planning Commission and City Council, before officially becoming policy. (See prior CP&DR coverage.)
Lumber Companies May Challenge Spotted Owl Habitat Designation
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruledunanimously that a group of lumber companies, calling themselves the American Forest Resource Council, have legal standing to challenge the northern spotted owl’s designated “critical habitat.” Federal officials in 2012 designated more than 9.5 million acres in California, Oregon and Washington as essential to the owl’s survival. Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there is substantial probability that the critical habitat designation would cause a decrease in the supply of timber and the members would suffer economic harm as a result of the decrease in supply. The case moves back down to district court, and the trial judge may order the Fish and Wildlife Service to redraw the critical habitat maps.
Permits for Housing Construction Decline in Los Angeles
Permits for housing construction in LA area have declinedfrom 34,034 for 2015 to 32,008 last year or a six percent drop. The units that have been constructed have been primarily condominiums and apartments. This slowdown can most likely be attributed to pullback in bank lending, new land use regulations, and difficulty for developers to find available land. This is the first decline in six years, since permitted units hit a recession-era low of 7,281 in 2009. Most of the new construction is concentrated in downtown LA, where developers can build taller buildings and higher densities. These declines in housing construction may be a cyclical pause or a trend in the making. However, lower numbers of available units negatively impact the cost and availability of homes for buyers. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington in Texas had 55,618 units permitted last year, and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land had 44,643. Even New York and Atlanta’s metropolitan areas surpassed LA with 10,458 and 4,113 more units respectively.
Lancaster Does Away with Parking Requirements in Commercial Zones
The high desert city of Lancaster approved an ordinance that would delete parking requirements in commercial zones. The staff report contends that eliminating these requirements is one step towards reversing low-density, sprawling development patterns, and resulting fiscal liabilities. For development, parking spaces carry a high cost in terms of the land needed to build them but also the costs in maintenance. Planning Director Brian Ludicke said businesses can treat parking as a "business decision" rather than a regulatory requirement. A benefit is that city planning staff can save time spent on calculating, determining, and verifying compliance. To prevent extreme abuse, developers must determine the number of parking spaces sufficient for their project and provide justification to the Direct of Development Services and/or Planning Commission.
Quick Hits & Updates
According to analysis by Redfin, San Jose is the nation’s most competitive market for residential real estate with 69.6 percent of homes sold over the listing price. Second and third place were San Francisco and Oakland, respectively. Low supply has driven competition, which keeps pushing home prices up.
Los Angeles County will lose nearly 14,000 affordable rentals over the next five years according to analysis by the California Housing Partnership Corp. The group says these units, spread across 232 building,s are at “high” or “very high” risk of being converted to market rate units.
A report from the USC Price School of Public Policy, “The Affordable Housing Crisis in Los Angeles: An Employer Perspective,” contends that nearly 60 percent of leading employers have cited the region’s high cost of living as impacting employee retention. Seventy-five percent cite housing costs specifically. Nearly 64 percent report including cost of living when negotiating hiring packages for high-level employees.
Rohnert Park Mayor Jake Mackenzie was unanimously electedas the chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Mackenzie has served for the past two years as MTC’s vice chair and has represented Sonoma County on the Commission since 2008.
A controversial project proposed by Cadiz, Inc. to pump Mojave Desert groundwater to sell to urban Southern California has been given new life by the Trump administration. The existing documents said Cadiz could not use an existing federal railroad right-of-way for a new water pipeline, which meant the project would have to go through federal environmental review. Cadiz asked the BLM to reverse what it called a flawed decision. The new memo from the BLM, states that future right-of-way decisions will be made by the agency’s Washington office.
Anaheim’s $185 million ARTIC transit hub, will have to pay its operating deficit from the city’s general fund for the foreseeable future. For the past three fiscal years, the station has fallen far short of ridership projections and operated in the red, with a $2.5 million deficit for 2016-17. This year, because of television shows and commercials filmed there, is projected to generate $1.4 million in revenue.
Los Angeles real estate investor Leeor Maciborski faces fines of $17,000 after writing checks through more than a dozen companies to help elect City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell. Under city rules, each donor can only give $700 per election at the time, the company exceeded restrictions by $3,000.
The Elk Grove City Council approved, 4-0, $8 million worth of incentives to lure a Costco superstore. Construction will begin in June on a 17-acre site in the suburbs. The project includes 150,000-square foot store and up to 30 gas pumps.
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department and the City of San Bernardino challenging a plan to dramatically reduce water flows in the Santa Ana River. The project would cut water by 50 percent, hurting endangered wildlife and recreational opportunities for people.
The National Parks Services has added the Pan American Bank structure in East Los Angeles to the National Register of Historic Places. This structure is the headquarters of the oldest Latina-owned bank in California and was co-founded in 1964 by Romana Acosta Banuelos, who was also the first Latina Treasurer of the US.
Sacramento leaders have met with automakers and technology company representatives to become a national testing ground for driverless cars.The city is callings its efforts the Autonomous Transportation Open Standards Lab, or ATOS.
