SGC Announces Urban Greening Grants

Following the recommendations of its staff, the Strategic Growth Council formally approved $122 million in grants for 28 projects designed to provide affordable housing and reduce carbon emissions throughout the state.

The Strategic Growth Council has given the green light to 54 potential projects to prepare full applications for funding under the newly created Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program. The 54 projects are seeking $301 million in funding -- about 2 1/2 times as much as the $120 million program has to dole out.

Final applications must be completed by April 20 and SGC plans to select the winners by July. Only the 54 applicants on the finalists' list will be given access to the online application.

Of the 54 applications going forward, 44 (worth $235 million) have affordable housing setasides and 37 (worth $229 million) are located in disadvantaged Census tracts -- the definition of which was the subject of considerable debate last year.The finalists represent a diverse array of communities in 22 counties.

LOS ANGELES--State-level policymakers have engaged in more than their share of debates over the future of smart grown in California this year. They've debated level of service vs. vehicle miles traveled. They've debated the neediness and definition of disadvantaged communities. They've clamored for cap-and-trade funds. They've tried to reform CEQA and get rid of CEQA (well, not quite). 

With funding for planning growing ever more scarce around the state, some localities received a windfall last week from the Strategic Growth Council. SGC announced recommendations for its second round of Sustainable Communities Planning Grants. If the recommendations are adopted, a total of $24 million would be disbursed for 43 projects around the state.  

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed state budget will do more than merely plug a $24 billion deficit. According to some, it will also lead to shuttered factories, recidivism among ex-convicts, and the flight of companies and jobs to rival states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Faltering clothing manufacturer American Apparel could be pushed closer to the brink of bankruptcy. 

At least if Brown's proposal to do away with Enterprise Zones is adopted along with the proposed elimination of the redevelopment program.

When Proposition 84 passed in 2006, it reflected a booming economy. Providing $5.4 billion for clean water, parks, and open space the measure was seen as an important way to protect the state's natural resources at a time before many were worried about $28 billion deficits or maxing out the state's bonding capacity. 

Prop. 84's primary focus is on waterways and water management. However, it also includes a relatively tiny set-aside for innovative planning that is proving to be a godsend to planning departments that are suffering unprecedented budget cuts (see CP&DR Insight Vol. 25, No. 5, March 2010). 

The management of the Planning Grants and Incentives Team at the Department of Conservation announced today its recommendations for the next round of Prop. 84 Sustainable Communities Planning Grants (see CP&DR Insight Vol. 25, Nos. 5-6, March 2010) which is administered by the Strategic Growth Council to support the climate change goals of AB 32 and SB 375. The council received 189 applications and has recommended 44 awards totaling roughly $23 million in funding. 

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

In his new book, Josh Stephens plumbs the depths of California's good and bad -- and tries to find the reason why urban life there is so oddly compelling.

Inland areas are still growing. But what does the trend mean for the state's long-term prosperity?

Whereas a Berkeley resident can cross from exuberance of Telegraph Avenue into the heart of the Cal campus in a few steps, UCLA is an auto-oriented campus surrounded by a moat of driveways, green space, and city streets. Its neighbors are some of the wealthiest and orneriest an institution could ever have the misfortune to live next to. The university, for all its academic heft, retreats from the city, and the city from it.

UCLA was an ironically illustrative venue for a talk by Michael Storper, lead author of "The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies," that I attended recently. Contrary to its expansive title, Storper's study concerns only Los Angeles and San Francisco. Given that both are booming Pacific Rim metropolises, it may be hard to figure out which is the "rise" and which is the "fall." >>read more

The February 9 Legislative Analyst Office report on California "serious housing shortage" ends on a decidedly depressing note: "Bringing about more private home building - would be no easy task, requiring state and local policy makers to confront very challenging issues and taking many years to come to fruition." The report, which focuses on low-income housing, follows a a March 2015 companion that officially - if obviously - summarized the state's skyrocketing housing costs. >>read more