State law has lots of definitions of infill and transit-oriented locations. As local governments increasingly use the infill exemption to get around environmental review, this is becoming a problem.
The second Trump Administration is likely to back off of zoning reform, environmental protection, and transit funding. Will the state's own laws and policies serve as a firewall against these changes?
Fallout from Supreme Court case on is still unclear, but there's no question that cities and counties will have to make "individualized determinations" more often, bulletproof their nexus studies, and allow more appeals.
The governor has a new infill housing initiative that includes a proposal to use housing as CEQA mitigation. But this play is only partly about housing. It's mostly about getting transportation projects adequately mitigated under SB 743.
Patterns since the beginning of the pandemic suggest that there might be a slight rebalancing of population and housing in California. But persisently high prices seem to show that other factors are at work.
The U.S. Supreme Court's exactions ruling left a lot of things up in the air. Most important: Does California's typical "fair share" methodology for general plan-level exactions meet the court's "rough proportionality" rule?
Recent rulings from the high-profile cities of Berkeley and Beverly Hills got a lot of publicity. But less publicized settlement agreements from Davis and Clovis show just how scared cities are getting about housing litigation.
The state's action on housing has focused on making entitlements easier to get. But housing production hasn't gone up. Maybe there aren't enough developers and planners left in the state to get the job done.
They could simply box in California cities on nexus and proportionality. Or, led by Thomas and Alito, they could throw the bomb and say development is a right and not a privilege
After a review, HCD has told San Francisco it must start reforming its entitlement process by Thanksgiving or else. Will the state start investigating other cities' entitlement processes as well?
Some important bills passed this year. But unless the Legislature is willing to take on CEQA directly, there may not be a whole lot more to do on the land use front to encourage more housing production.
