Court Upholds Broad Use of Housing Funds

When redevelopment was first introduced in California, it included no provisions for affordable housing and instead focused solely on fighting blight. Introduced in 1976, the affordable housing set-aside � amounting to 20% of an agency's annual tax increment � was intended to mollify critics who contended that redevelopment amounting to nothing more than a boondoggle for developers. With the governor's successful dissolution of redevelopment, affordable housing now counts among the most lamented collateral damage. 

The Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District affirmed a judgment following a jury verdict that found that a homeowners association complied with the California Solar Rights Act (Civ. Code, § 714) when it denied the application of property owners to install solar panels on a slope adjacent to their residence.

Among the roughly 400 redevelopment agencies that will shut down tomorrow, the vast majority have effectively elected to dig their own graves. That was one of the stipulations of AB X1 26, that cities may serve as their own successor agencies, which will oversee the wind-down of operations, liquidation of assets, and payment of outstanding obligations. 

A notable feature of California land use law, when compared to the overall body of civil law, is the relatively short filing period for bringing legal challenges. This constraint came into full view in Haro v. City of Solano Beach, in which the would-be builder of a mixed use development claimed that the city violated the terms of its own housing element.  

In order to avoid having your takings claim dismissed, your timing must be just right. Unfortunately for Colony Cove Properties, LLC, the timing was off, and its multifaceted takings claim was rejected by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal for being both too late to challenge a rent control ordinance and too early to challenge how a city applied its ordinance. 

As with so many trends, the use of tax-increment financing for redevelopment began in California. Since being created here in 1952, this vital aspect of redevelopment has spread to 48 other states. And yet if Gov. Jerry Brown's current budget proposal passes, it may very well die in the state where it was born.

It is not going quietly.

In the two weeks since Brown announced his intention to eliminate redevelopment in California as part of his proposal to cut the state's $24 billion deficit, what used to be a relatively obscure system intended to eradicate blight has been thrust into tumultuous debate.

In a pair of decisions issued on the same day, the Second District Court of Appeal, Division Four, has addressed the scope of permitted regulation when a mobile home park owner elects to convert a park into a residential subdivision and sell individual spaces. In cases from the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, the court ruled that local government may apply state law and local considerations to restrict mobile home park conversions.

A unanimous California Supreme Court has upheld a trial court's decision to reject a challenge to a Proposition 218 election for a storm drainage fee, thus reversing a decision by First District Court of Appeal. 

The state high court ruled the Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District maintained the requisite level of voting secrecy in accordance with the 1996 "Right to Vote on Taxes Initiative," which requires voter approval for certain local fees.

 By Morris Newman

Dammit, it's not fair! Residents of affordable housing get all the lucky breaks. Just look at all the money they're getting from all directions: local government, the local power company, the feds, the green-building lobby. Case in point: the Casa Dominguez development in East Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles County, even has a child care center and a medical clinic, on site.

The difference between California and, sadly, many other states is that our decline is taking place by choice.

Boundless as cyberspace may be, the companies that rule the internet still have to take up real estate. And their employees still have to put their heads down somewhere at night. For whatever reason, the mysterious forces of the "innovation economy" have lured an outside share of those companies, and their employees, to Silicon Valley. 

With all those likes, stock options, and organic cafeteria items comes, of course, a housing crisis. As absolutely no one is unaware, rents in Silicon Valley have gone up like Pets.com stock over the past few years. 

Last week Facebook announced that it was going to make an investment in the crisis. Not an investment in housing, mind you. Just an investment in the crisis. >>read more

A couple of weeks ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion reported that the City of San Francisco was looking to relocate because its current location had become too expensive. Funny though this was, I expected the follow-up story to focus on the economic development incentive package being put together to keep San Francisco where it is. >>read more

A week or so later, Gabriel Metcalfe - head of the respected San Francisco urban planning organization SPUR - published a provocative piece in CityLab blaming the city's affordability crisis on progressive politics - especially progressive politics of the no-growth kind. Progressive San Francisco, he argued, "had a fatal, Shakespearean flaw that would prove to be its undoing: It decided early on to be against new buildings. It decided that new development, with the exception of publicly subsidized affordable housing, was not welcome."

All up and down California - especially in the expensive coastal enclaves around San Francisco and Los Angeles - community activists have been lately decrying how the rising cost of housing is making it impossible for normal people with normal incomes to live in these towns. Yet, as Metcalf points out, most of the time these same community activists are arguing that the trend toward high housing cost must be countered with... less housing construction. Or at least less market-rate housing construction.