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State Ceases Effort to Recoup $4 Billion in Federal Funds for High Speed Rail
Henceforth, the state will no longer expect the federal government to help fund California High Speed Rail. This summer, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would renege on $4 billion in Federal Railroad Administration that had been promised for the under-construction Bakersfield-to-Merced segment. The FRA cited delays and cost overruns among its reasons for the cancellations. Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to recover the funds, asserting the the FRA had violated agreements with the state. The state recently dropped this lawsuit and will proceed using state funds, including $1 billion per year allocated from the state's cap-and-trade revenues. “This action reflects the State’s assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California," a spokesperson for the rail authority wrote in a statement, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. "As a result, the State has opted to move forward without the Trump administration. We regret that they will not share in California’s success."
State Awards $866 Million for Housing & Sustainability
The state is making more than $866 million in new investments to build affordable housing, expand transit, and protect communities from climate change. The awards include funding for new affordable housing in 17 communities across the state, thousands of new homes, and major sustainable transportation upgrades, with $185.6 million going to Los Angeles County as it rebuilds infrastructure after last year’s wildfires. The funding approved by SGC included more than $866 million in grant funding for 39 projects within three programs: 1. Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program – $835,318,208 for 21 affordable housing and green transportation projects(external link) in 17 jurisdictions through Round 9 grants; this round will support the creation of 2,393 new rent-restricted homes; 2. Transformative Climate Communities Program — $29,484,224 from the anticipated fiscal year 2026-2027 Proposition 4 (Climate Bond) to fully fund four Round 5 grants; 3. Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation(external link) Program — $2,051,490 for 14 capacity-building projects(external link) in 25 counties through Round 10 grants. This round of awards is the largest in SGC history, with total awards now exceeding $5 billion.
Report Describes Persistent Residential Segregation in California
A new report from UCLA, "The Impact of Residential Mobility on Segregation in California," leverages a new dataset — the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, which contains anonymized information for all adults with credit scores in California, including where they have lived — to explore patterns of residential mobility and their relationship to segregation in ways not previously possible. The analysis examines the characteristics of origin and destination neighborhoods for movers of different socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County as well as for the remainder of the state of California. Moves into neighborhoods in each opportunity map category (e.g., Highest Resource) and poverty category (e.g., 20-30% poverty) between 2011 and 2022 almost exactly matched substantially segregated pre-existing residential patterns by race/ethnicity. Moving and residential patterns for Asian/Pacific Islander people were similar to those for white people, and patterns for Latino people were more disadvantaged but not to the same degree as for Black people. Black movers were substantially more likely to make downward moves into high-poverty neighborhoods and were much less likely to move up into low-poverty neighborhoods, compared to other racial and ethnic groups. By contrast, white movers were the least likely to move into high-poverty neighborhoods across all regions, including only 4% of such moves in the Bay Area. The findings in this report point to the need for both housing supply- and demand-side interventions that show promise in inducing more equitable residential mobility patterns and achieving this vision of a more integrated and equitable society, as well as to the need for further research to identify the most effective strategies.
CP&DR Coverage: La Cañada Flintridge Approves Controversial Builder's Remedy Project
The court battle over a five-story mixed-use project on Foothill Boulevard in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of La Cañada-Flintridge once seemed likely to define the legal contours of housing element compliance. The dispute centered on whether compliance with housing element law required approval by the Department of Housing & Community Development or merely city approval. In April of 2024, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled in favor of the developer and ordered the city to process the builder’s remedy application. The city originally filed an appeal, but abandoned its pursuit of the lawsuit last spring. By dropping the appeal, the city allowed the builder’s remedy project to move forward.
Quick Hits & Updates
A judge sided with environmental activists in a lawsuit over Dublin's Measure II ballot measure, which opened up protected spaces to potential development, ruling that the city had an obligation to conduct an environmental review of possible development before placing the question on the ballot. In November 2024, Measure II passed with 53% of the vote, giving the city power to start commercial development in the Doolan and Collier canyons, which were placed beyond an urban limit line in 2014.
New data shows that rents are rising in San Francisco, the Peninsula, and East Bay. The median rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in San Fransisco was $3,090, and the 12% increase from the 2024 median was the highest of any city in the data collected by Apartment List. While rents in the much of the Bay Area sunk during and after COVID and remain below 2019 levels, the new data suggests this trend is reversing, with rents in Berkley and Oakland rising 10% and 3% year over year respectively.
The Menlo Park City council will place the Downtown Parking Plazas Ordinance on the ballot next November. The ordinance would require voter approval for the city to change the use of, sell, or lease eight parking plazas in downtown Menlo Park that have been at the center of a right over a city plan to use them for affordable housing.
Hard Rock Casino Tejon, the new $600 million casino and entertainment resort, opened in November in a largely undeveloped part of Kern County near Tejon Ranch. The casino, a joint bet by Hard Rock International and the Tejon Indian Tribe, promises 1,100 regional jobs, with future plans for a 400-room hotel and a concert venue. (See related CP&DR coverage.)
