Wiener Gets Jump-Start on Housing Legislation for 2021
Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Robert Rivas co-introduced legislation that would allow local governments to upzone neighborhoods to 10-unit apartment buildings in an expedited process, as long as the upzoned areas are not sprawl. Senate Bill 10 is intended to help ease California's housing affordability crisis and climate crisis, spurred by a statewide shortage of 3.5 million homes. The bill allows cities to upzone areas that are close to job centers, transit, and areas that are in existing urbanized locations, thus reducing vehicle usage and long commutes. An earlier version of the bill was introduced in 2020 and passed the Senate and the Assembly Local Government Committee. It was killed in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Chiu to Introduce Legislation to Stave Off Pandemic-Related Evictions
Assemblymember David Chiu plans to introduce two bills to protect homeowners and renters in light of economic pressures from the pandemic. One would extend the eviction protections afforded under AB 3088 into 2021, heading off lawsuits landlords have preemptively filed to take those behind in rent to court. A second bill would provide an "eventual framework for how rental assistance would be dispersed in California," in part to protect renters and in part to protect small property owners by extending foreclosure protections. According to research conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles, an additional 10,700 Covid-19 related deaths and 433,700 cases were reported in states that lifted eviction moratoriums.
Trump Administration Seeks Last-Minute Sale of Drilling Rights
The Trump administration plans to hold the first oil lease sale in California in eight years, part of a last-minute rush to auction off as much federal land as possible before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in. The Bureau of Land Management said the sale would encompass just over 4,100 acres of federal land and mineral estate in Kern County, where the majority of drilling in the state takes place. In theory, as many as 10 new wells could be drilled on the land, but even if the leases sell, the owners would almost certainly face numerous lawsuits from the incoming Biden administration. Under Biden, the Bureau of Land Management could cancel the leases by finding them "improperly issued" and in violation of environmental laws and regulations, even months after the leases are sold. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen Xavier Becerra have come out against the lease sale, nearly guaranteeing that California would sue as well.
Embarcadero Institute Responds to CP&DR Criticism
Recently, the Bay Area-based Embarcadero Institute released a report, authored by Executive Director Gab Layton, contending that that the Department of Housing and Community Development had vastly over-counted the number of housing units California needs in the coming years. CP&DR’s Bill Fulton and Josh Stephens both offered critiques and analyses of the report. The institute responded, making CP&DR’s commentary the focus of its recent newslettter article by Layton. Among other points, Layton contends that Fulton’s analysis misunderstands the relationship between Senate Bill 828 and HCD’s calculations and muddled Embarcadero’s position on market-rate versus affordable housing. Layton further offers a perspective on the relationship between overcrowding and housing need. Responding to Stephens’s claim that whatever the housing need is, it’s huge (and therefore specific, finely calculated numbers are almost beside the point), Layton notes that unduly high housing allocations (based on HCD numbers) that are difficult to zone for can result loss of state funds for cities that fail to comply.
CP&DR Coverage: Fulton on 50 Years California's Most "Confounding" Land Use Law
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the California Environmental Quality Act, Bill Fulton writes about its many eras of litigation, interpretation, and attempted reforms. CEQA is not technically a land-use law, but it has probably had as much impact on California land use as any statute on the books. It’s confounding in many ways – confoundingly complicated, confoundingly resistant to reform, and indeed confoundingly resistant to any rational assessment of whether it has “worked,” whatever “worked” means. Business leaders and developers blame it for every economic downturn in California whether CEQA deserves the rap or not, and environmentalists and labor unions cling to it as the only way to extract what they want from developers.
Quick Hits & Updates
The San Jose Sharks NHL team are pleading with the public to help save SAP Center, home to the NHL team's games and soon-to-be neighbor of Google's new Diridion Station campus. In an open letter, the Sharks said the ongoing construction, lack of parking, and street closures within the neighborhood could jeopardize access to the SAP Center and force the Sharks out of San Jose.
San Francisco's subway line that would shuttle passengers between downtown San Francisco to Chinatown will delay its opening, pushing the timeline back to spring of 2022 at the earliest. The route was supposed to begin in 2018 until it was rescheduled for mid-2021, but the coronavirus is at least in part to blame for slowed progress on the subway. Three separate coronavirus outbreaks among the construction crew and supply chain interruptions factored into the delays.
Anaheim will join a handful of California cities with a program that allows them to reduce rent on 1,000 apartments in an attempt to provide affordable options to middle-income families. The new state program allows cities to borrow money without an obligation to repay. But cities agree to waive property taxes on apartment buildings, and the developers pay expenses by taking out bonds that are repaid by tenants' rents.
The Novato City Council has declared a climate emergency and made plans to develop new strategies on how to reduce greenhouse emissions. Novato's vote makes it the third municipality in Marin to adopt a climate emergency declaration. After adopting a climate action plan in 2009, Novato reduced emissions by 24 percent over 10 years. The council hopes to set more aggressive goals by inviting community input.
Indio adopted a Downtown Specific Plan that sets the city on a course for rapid and diverse development. Some of the goals outlined for the area include a nightlife and entertainment district, just over a thousand housing units, and 2.5 million square-feet of mixed commercial and retail space. The city has entered into an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with an LLC to retain exclusive negotiating rights for 23 city-owned parcels in the downtown area.
The Housing and Community Development Department is withdrawing its 2020-21 fiscal year funding availability calendar. In an announcement, HCD explained that it will wait until its sister agencies resolve conflicting scoring criteria and definitions before reissuing the Notice of Funding Availability calendar. Also paused until further notice are Multifamily Housing Program (MHP) guidelines, Infill Infrastructure Grant (IIG) guidelines, and AHSC guidelines.
Nine California cities are at high risk for serious financial distress in the next several years according to a state audit, largely due to their lack of rainy-day funds and heavy debt loads. Compton in Los Angeles County topped the list of high-risk cities for the second year, followed by Blythe, Calexico, Atwater, Richmond, El Cerrito, San Fernando, Lindsay, West Covina, and Torrance.
Oakland will expand a pilot program that city leaders hope will attract and retain talent in the public school teaching ranks by subsidizing their housing. In addition to paying the bulk of six teachers' rent, the pilot this year will grant a $1,500 a month subsidy for 1 additional teacher's rent and offer $500 stipends to five new teachers in the district. Officials said they hope to use the program to recruit and retain more than 100 teachers over the next nine years, particularly in STEM fields. (See related CP&DR coverage.)
A plan to open up more than 130 miles of San Gabriel Valley Waterways to bicyclists and pedestrians is expected to be completed by fall of next year, followed by an environmental review that would culminate in 2022. Though the SGV Greenway Strategic Implementation Plan is still a few years out from being finalized, 13 projects are already in development, and a steering committee of 13 organizations have convened monthly since April to provide input and guidance.
In a letter to the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the Palo Alto City Council challenged its housing allocation as unrealistic. One councilman charged the organization with setting standards that are "impossible to meet," without opening up the Baylands to development. ABAG has called for Bay Area cities to provide more than over 441,000 homes over the next decade. Palo Alto, as a "high opportunity area," was assigned a disproportionately high construction target.
Santa Cruz County released a 24-page document that outlines the county's plans to reduce the county's overall homeless population by 30 percent and its unsheltered population by 50 percent by 2024. The roadmap's core goals including taking steps toward adding 160 year-round emergency shelter beds, 350 new rapid rehousing options and 100 new permanent housing options with supportive services for homeless adults. The plan will go before local jurisdictions and community members for feedback.
