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.  Note the new report's use of "would," not "will." Experts agree that California suffers from a chronic underproduction of new housing that stretches back several decades: an estimated 180,000 to 210,000 additional units would be required in Los Angeles County alone, and 170,000 additional units in the Bay Area, to restore some semblance of a balanced housing market in the State's major urbanized areas. In a well functioning market, this kind of shortage would make new home production a foregone conclusion -- future tense -- not something to be hoped for in the conditional tense. Among the key challenges is the lack of incentive for cities to achieve their Regional Housing Need Allocations, the amount of new housing that cities would need to build to accommodate anticipated growth. Currently, there are no penalties for non-compliance with RHNA targets. For many cities, new residential uses are seen as a fiscal drag: capped by Proposition 13, property taxes increases do not keep pace with the cost of providing services to new residents. As a result, many cities are loath to approve the housing they need. In the absence of penalties, one logical solution would be to reward cities that achieve their RHNAs. It turns out that the state experimented with this elegantly simple approach through a pilot program launched in 2001.   Administered by Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the  Jobs Housing Balance Incentive Grant Program  (JHB) provided modest financial incentives to jurisdictions that voluntarily increased their permitting activity. To qualify for funding, cities were required to achieve a 12 percent increase over a baseline average in permitting activity from the previous 36-month period. If, say, an average of 1,000 units had been permitted annually over the prior 36 months and a given city that issued permits for at least 1,120 units during the pilot period would qualify for incentives. The pilot produced near-term, cost-effective results. A follow-up report on the JHB Program, issued in 2006 to the Legislature, estimates that participating cities permitted an additional 24,624 units of housing in 2001 compared to their rolling 3-year average. Eighty-six percent, or just over 21,000, of those permitted housing units had been built and occupied five years later. Critically, many coastal communities permitted more housing as a result of the JHB program. The per-unit grant incentives were relatively low - ranging from $500 to $1,300 per unit ($670 to $1,740 in 2015 dollars), with high-density employment counties receiving higher per-unit incentives. The total award pool was $25 million; the largest award of $3.5 million went to the City of Los Angeles. The JHB program allowed award recipients to spend the funds on new housing-related infrastructure and amenities, creating a virtuous cycle of investment in growing neighborhoods. We should put these numbers in the context of both the current depth of the state's housing need and the relative effectiveness of other housing subsidy programs: Proposition 46 of 2002 and Proposition 1C of 2006 together provided $4.95 billion for the construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of 57,220 affordable apartments, at a cost of over $86,000 per unit. Prior to their elimination in 2011, community redevelopment agencies produced only 10,000 affordable housing units over their multi-decade existence. The Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program spent $122 million last year to subsidize the construction of 1,924 units statewide, at an approximate cost of $63,400 per unit. The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has produced around 7,000 new rental units annually, at an average cost of $165,000  per unit in coastal communities.   Assemblymember David Chiu's (Dist. 17 - San Francisco) proposed AB 35, to expand the California Low Income Housing Tax Credit, would have spent up to $100 million per year to leverage an estimated $1 billion in additional funds. The bill passed but was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. Since subsidized affordable housing projects often receive funding from multiple programs, the total per-unit subsidy is likely higher than the amount shown for any single program. By comparison, the average cost per unit for the JHB program was around $1,180 ($1,580 in 2015 dollars) -- less than the state incentive on some electric cars. On the one hand, it's kind of amazing that cities would be willing to do an about-face on housing approvals for so little money. On the other hand, if that's all it takes, it could be a wise, efficient investment for the state.  Let's address two obvious arguments with these comparisons: The HCD follow-up report can't quantify how many of these units would have been permitted anyway due to the real estate upcycle then occurring in 2001, and how many of these permits were directly attributable to the incentives . True, but even if only a fraction of the total unit production were directly attributable to the incentives, the JHB program is still dramatically more cost-effective than its next closest peer. It is also more transparent and simple to administer. This comparison is a case of "apples and oranges:" the cost of permitting a unit of market-rate housing and the cost of producing a unit of affordable housing are not directly comparable or equivalent in their social impact . The Feb. 9 LAO report provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Increased production of market-rate housing would have broad-based affordability benefits for households at all income levels. Strikingly, the LAO report found that cities with abundant market-rate housing production were far less likely to displace low-income residents than cities with slow growth policies. While targeted subsidies for very low- and low-income households will continue to be both morally and economically necessary, everyone wins with an increase in overall supply of housing. This premise is at the heart of the JHB Program.  Whether rooted in NIMBYism, environmentalism, or the fiscalization of land use wrought by Proposition 13, many local governments are reluctant to approve new housing. The JHB Program shows that this reluctance, at least in the near term, may be most easily overcome with cold hard cash. There might even be greater receptivity to such an incentive program now than there was in 2001. In an era of dwindling state and federal assistance to cities, many communities-whether coastal or inland, affluent or low-resource-are highly motivated to pursue every discretionary dollar out there. In resuscitating the JHB Program, or creating a new program like it, the state wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel - there is already a statutory mechanism in place; it would just need a dedicated, sustainable funding source. While many sources could be considered, there would be a strong policy justification for using a portion of cap and trade funds for this purpose. The construction of new housing in job-rich areas would directly support shorter commutes, a reduction in household VMT, and hence a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. And, of course, new units means more property tax monies going back to the state, even if taxes are constrained by Prop 13. Ideally, cities should not have to be bribed into approving new housing. But we are not living in an ideal world. Given the urgency of California's affordability crisis, a program with the potential to produce near-term, cost-effective results deserves to be resurrected from the state's policy graveyard. Adam Christian is a senior consultant in infrastructure funding and finance at HDR, Inc and the founder of Urban Insights.

SGC has announced its timeline for applications for the 2015-16 Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program and has scheduled six statewide workshops.The schedule for the AHSC program is as follows:  Release of Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA): Friday, January 29, 2016 Concept Applications Due: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Notification of Invite to Submit Full Application: Week of April 20, 2016 Full Applications Due: Monday, June 20, 2016 Awards Announced: September 2016 The workshop schedule is as follows:  Fresno: Tuesday, February 2 Sacramento: Wednesday, February 3 Oakland: Thursday, February 4 Riverside: Monday, February 8 Los Angeles: Tuesday, February 9 San Diego: Wednesday, February 10 The workshops will include a presentation regarding the AHSC Program Guidelines and requirements for Concept Application, with a question and answer session after the presentation.  Staff will be available on the afternoon of each workshop for small group or one-on-one consultations on a first come, first served basis. The consultations will be 20 minutes in length and will be used to focus on projects that are ready to apply for the 2015-2016 AHSC Program, discuss project eligibility, and answer questions specific to the applicant's project. For consultation times, AHSC Program Staff will follow-up to confirm the exact time of the appointment. Applicants with projects in or benefitting Disadvantaged Communities (as defined by CalEnviroscreen 2.0) will be given priority for consultations. However, our goal is to provide consultations to all who request an appointment. Further workshop information and signup is available here (pdf).  See CP&DR coverage of 2015 AHSC awards.

Now that comprehensive legislative reform of the California Environmental Quality Act seems unlikely, all eyes are turning to the California Supreme Court - if not for reform, then at least for clarity that will make the world of CEQA a little simpler, a little cleaner, and a little more understandable. Good luck. Although the Cal Supremes have a heavy CEQA docket - and the justices are clearly putting a lot of thought into CEQA cases - the result is not exactly clarity. When the Berkeley Hillside case went before the Cal Supremes, everybody hoped the result would be clarity about when the unusual circumstances exemption can be used. But the result was a complicated two-step test that actually may strengthen the exemption but requires a lot more effort to do so. And when the most recent Newhall Ranch case  went up to the court, everybody hoped there would be clarity about how practitioners might approach the question of what percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be an acceptable target in CEQA analysis. In that case, the justices was pretty clear about what wouldn't be acceptable - simply using the Air Resources Board's regional number - but they weren't very clear about what methodology should be used.  What's going on? Shouldn't we be able to count on the California Supreme Court to provide clear lines? CEQA is an unusually complicated, mostly procedural law that is deliberately designed to be enforced through litigation. It's so ubiquitous and complicated that every county's superior court has a designated CEQA judge. Since its passage 45 years ago, it has evolved far more through court rulings than legislation. And that's not likely to change soon. Despite a lot of rumblings about comprehensive CEQA reform in recent years, the moment appears to have passed . Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is working through a big backlog of CEQA cases . But there a couple of other things going on here. First, CEQA litigation issues are getting ever more complicated and arcane. When I first started writing about CEQA lawsuits back in the -80s, the issues seemed, in retrospect, pretty clear-cut: Who had standing? Was an environmental impact report required? What level of independent judgment did a lead agency have to apply if the draft EIR was done by the applicant? And, later, were specific mitigations feasible or not. Yes, there were often legal debates about adequacy of the analysis, but there was also a lot of deference given to lead agencies. Compare those kinds of questions to the issue that came up in Berkeley Hillside : Did the City of Berkeley put enough evidence on the record that a very large proposed house was not unusual within the context of the city, and therefore the city's use of two categorical exemptions was not overridden by the "unusual circumstances" rule contained in the CEQA Guidelines. That is a long, long way from, "Do you have to do an EIR"? But there's another factor at work here, as veteran CEQA attorney Tina Thomas pointed out at last week's 30th annual UCLA Land Use Law and Planning Conference last week. It's the way the California Supreme Court works these days. Since he re-election as governor in 2010, Jerry Brown has reshaped the court to some extent, appointing three of the seven justices: Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, Stanford law professor Mariano-Florentino Cu-llar; and former deputy attorney general Leondra Kruger. Unlike a lot of Brown's selections back in the -70s, they're all solid choices. Along with Wilson and Schwarzenegger holdovers - including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye - they represent a lot of intellectual horsepower. And, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, they apparently work hard to reach consensus and avoid a lot of concurring and dissenting opinions.  Which, apparently, is the problem. "The justices go to great length to avoid scathing dissent," Thomas told the crowd of 300 people at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. "So they go out of their way to compromise. The result is sometimes complicated, nuanced ways of spiltting standards of review that are difficult for lower court to apply. You may want clear answers, you may not get them." This problem became immediately apparent after the Berkeley Hillside ruling, when the Third District considered the case of a rodeo fundraiser at the Santa Cruz Fairgrounds in Watsonville . The Supreme Court had concluded the lead agency must first review the record to see whether unusual circumstances exist and if so courts must use the "substantial evidence" test in determining the validity of an exemption under those circumstances. The court ruled that a categorical exemption can be defeated by a "fair argument" that supports a reasonable possibility that significant environmental effects will result from the "unusual circumstances." But it also held that "a party may establish an unusual circumstance with evidence that the project will have a significant environmental effect."  In the Santa Cruz rodeo case, the Third District said the environmentalist plaintiffs didn't meet either test. The plaintiffs are appealing the case but the Supreme Court hasn't decided yet whether to take it. Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity, another panelist at the UCLA event, said he feared that the Supreme Court's ruling would lead others to conclude that merely qualifying for an exemption would be substantial evidence that unusual circumstances don't exist. "That reads unusual circumstances out of the law," he said.  In some ways the latest Newhall Ranch case is even more confusing, because the court rejected the idea that Los Angeles County could use the Air Resource Board's regional estimate for required greenhouse gas emissions reduction (29% by 2030) as the standard against which to measure an individual project. But does this mean less deference to lead agencies? "Courts need to look carefully at the record to make sure that the record really connects the dot," said Bundy, the winning lawyer in the case. "The record needed to show the quantitative link between those two assumptions and it did not." But Thomas, who was the losing lawyer in the case, had a different view. "In my personal opinion, I've always understood the standard to be, good faith effort for full disclosure," she said, "and I didn't understand it to be mathematical precision." In a way, the disagreement between Thomas and Bundy may simply be a traditional disagreement between an agency lawyer who wants the courts to give deference to the agency and an environmental lawyer who wants the courts to push agencies harder for environmental protection. Or it may be a generational thing. Thomas, like me, came to CEQA maturity in the -80s, while Bundy passed the bar 25 years later.  But it reinforced one thing for me: It's not just that CEQA never going to get any simpler. (We crossed that bridge a long time ago ). It's probably not going to get any clearer, either.

With the economy humming along, innovative ideas sprouting up around the state, and, of course, the occasional dispute, 2015 was as lively a year for land use as any other in recent memory. To mark the new year, CP&DR presents its most-read stories of 2015. Four of these ten articles, including the top two, center on housing. It is the slow-motion crisis that encompasses literally every element of urban planning, from economics to demographics to policy and does so at every level of government from the largest metro areas to the smallest hamlets across California. Innovation also caught CP&DR readers' attention, with coverage of the tech economy, progressive legislation, and one of the great urban innovators of our state and our time: Prof. Don Shoup. CEQA gets in a few words edgewise. Tellingly, an article on Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts from 2014 made 2015's most-read list, revealing a continuing thirst for, an uncertainty about, the next generation of redevelopment policy. Here are the top ten, in order of popularity: Los Angeles' Slow-Growthers Have Gotten What They Wanted 6 April 2015 "Constrained supply and ever increasing demand equals  insane housing prices . In a typical industry, supply would never become this constrained. Firms would produce more, or consumers would seek substitutes. Equilibrium would be restored. But this is real estate, and those rules don't apply." Does Supply Create Its Own Demand? 27 July 2015 "Under some market conditions, more supply doesn't lead to market equilibrium because it actually creates its own demand. You can see this wherever the world's uber-rich decide to buy houses � New York, London, or, most relevant to this discussion, Santa Barbara." The Man Who Changed the Way We Think About Parking 19 April 2015 "Don Shoup has accomplished something every academic hopes to achieve and almost no one ever does: He has completely reframed an important public policy issue so that everybody thinks about it differently." Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts Legislation Passes in SB 628 31 August 2014 "The mechanism would be simpler, more focused on infrastructure, and more dependent on electoral approval, without the flexibility or protections for the existing urban public that were built and bashed into Redevelopment over the years." CEQA: The Cause of All Problems in California 23 March 2015 "Somehow, among all the laws, regulations, micro-, macro-, and global economic trends that impact on and emanate from our state, the overriding cause of California's malaise is � wait for it � CEQA." Is This The Right Meeting? Really? 2 December 2015 "Any greenhorn planner in the most podunk jurisdiction knows that he needs to keep a few audience-management tricks up his sleeve." Bill to Delay Implementation of SB 743 Gains Traction 25 May 2015 "A developers' group is promoting a new piece of legislation that would postpone implementation of SB 743 � the bill that would change traffic analysis to vehicle miles traveled in environmental review � for a year. The bill has apparently revealed a split among developers who say they focus on infill projects." Fair Housing: Talking Past Each Other About Cities and Segregation 30 August 2015 "On July 8 the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued  its final rule  on "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." Under the rule, state and local agencies receiving HUD funds must now do more than passively study barriers to fair housing: they must also make and follow genuine plans to reduce the barriers they describe." The Tech Housing Crunch's Fracking Dilemma 27 November 2015 "The dilemma of the tech housing crunch: If you build more housing for tech workers, won't those same tech workers just create new apps to disrupt the balance once again � to the benefit of well-off folks, at the expense of everybody else, including most of the tech workers? It's a little like the Gold Rush, when hydraulic mining was all the rage." California Cities and the Innovation Economy: Q&A With Enrico Moretti 6 April 2015 "Enrico Moretti, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, explains how cities promote innovation (defined not just as technology, but also as medicine, media, manufacturing and other sections that rely on constant improvement of products and services) and, importantly, how innovation affects cities' economies."

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. Facebook is reportedly offering $10,000 to workers who relocate within a 10-mile radius of its Menlo Park headquarters. On face, there's something admirably civic-minded about this. For one, Facebook wants employees to reduce their commute times and, by extension, their emissions. That's something that pretty much every city in California is trying to do, (minus the $10,000 bonus). Let's put that in the 'like' column.  Let's, though, look at the real winners and losers from a policy like this:  Winner #1: Facebook Employees As long as the cost of relocation, including rent increases, is less than the $10,000 that the company is offering, then employees win with shorter commutes, lower transportation costs, and the charms of Foster City, Newark, and, if you're lucky, Woodside. Then again, if you live in Woodside, $10,000 probably doesn't even cover the cost of groundskeeping.  Winner #2: Facebook Let's do a little math. Facebook made $2.59 billion in revenue last year. It employs 12,000 people. Each employee represents $215,000 in annual revenue. If a $10,000 one-time payment keeps employees happy, loyal, and productive, then it's a bargain.  Winner #3: Landlords Several million people live within Facebook's magical 10-mile radius. The handful of Facebook employees who take advantage of this deal and decide to scootch in are hardly going to upset the valley rental market all by themselves. But there's something fundamentally perverse, and economically inefficient, about a wealthy company offering wealthy employees even more money so that they can cope with an insane housing market that the company helped create in the first place. Taken to its logical extension--whereby all Silicon Valley firms start offering these incentives � all rents will go higher and landlords will get richer. That's because it's a lot easier to print bonus checks than it is to build housing, especially if cities aren't encouraging it.  Neutral Parties: Cities If you're a city in the 10-mile radius, you don't care what Facebook does, because you don't collect more taxes when rents go up. Losers: Everyone Else If you're not a Facebook employee, you're livid, because you now have richer competition for rental units.  (Before we go any further, let's acknowledge the real losers here: cartographers. Clearly none of brilliant folks at Facebook has considered that drawing a circumference around a point is the worst possible way to prescribe a commute shed -- especially when the resulting circle is bisected by a body of water called the San Francisco Bay. A subtler map, assigning bonuses to employees who live along transit lines, or at least freeways and major roads, would have made a ton more sense. As it is, you could sail in from the Farallons more quickly than you can cross the Dunbarton Bridge on most mornings.) Tech firms too often seem blind to the civic problems that surround them, especially when it comes to housing. Companies in Silicon Valley and, more recently, in Los Angeles have built fortunes partly on the allure of their respective locations, but they've done little to support their host cities or even to lobby for policies that would benefit them and everyone else. Exhibit A, as I wrote in another publication, is the failure of Santa Monica's Silicon Beach crowd to even notice when the city was actively reducing its housing capacity.  At least Facebook is acknowledging the problem. But it's pursuing the wrong solution. Or, rather, it's pursuing a self-interested solution rather than a civic-minded solution. It kind of reminds you of those private buses that pick up Google employees. They've been a big hit.  These are companies that like instant solutions. If you want to build a widget these days, you don't need to spend months to design it, prototype it, and find a factory to produce it. You just whip up some code. if you want to address the biggest crisis in the country's biggest state, you write some checks. At some point, the laws of economics are going to catch up with today's high-flying tech firms. Stock prices are going to fall, and profit margins are going to even out. Maybe someday people will go back to old-fashioned socializing. The point is, companies like Facebook aren't gong to be able to throw money at their problems. They're going to have to acknowledge that they're connected to other entities, they're going to have to cooperate with their neighbors, corporate and otherwise, and they're going to have to reach agreements that serve the common good. They will, in short, discover what governance, policy, and democracy is all about. By that point, they may discover what most progressive planners already know: The way to solve a housing crisis is, amazingly, to build more housing. Build denser housing. Build housing near transit. Build housing near jobs. I don't think Facebook is entirely ignorant of this reality. In fact, I'm sure it has residential neighbors who are far more ignorant than the company ever is. But, so far, firms that consider a 3-by-5-inch screen to be their most valuable pieces of real estate have proven pretty ham-fisted when it comes to real real estate.  Maybe now is the time for tech firms to put innovation aside and learn the old-fashioned art of policymaking.

Th e California Environmental Quality Act does not apply in reverse, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Overturning the First District Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that, with a few exceptions, CEQA analysis must be limited to the project's impacts on the environment (and, by extension, the project's environmental impacts on its own population) but not  the environment's impact on the project. Among other things, the ruling would seem to suggest that a CEQA analysis cannot analyze and mitigate the effect of future sea level rise or other climate change effects on a proposed project.  e conclude that agencies subject to CEQA generally are not required to analyze the impact of existing environmental conditions on a project's future users or residents," wrote Justice  Mariano-Florentino Cuellar for the unanimous court. " But when a proposed project risks exacerbating those environmental hazards or conditions that already exist, an agency must analyze the potential impacts of such hazards on future residents or user. In those specific instances, it is the project's impact on the environment -- and not the environment's impact on the project -- that compels an evaluation of how future residents or users could be affected by exacerbated conditions.  Cuellar, a longtime Stanford law professor and expert on administrative law, was appointed to the court last January by Gov. Jerry Brown. The court carved out exceptions to the "No-CEQA-In-Reverse" rule for airport-related safety hazards and noise problems (Public Resources Code Section 21096), schools locatd in close proximity to hazards, waste, or freeways that might emit hazardous substances (Section 21151.8), and housing developments located close to hazardous substances and sites subject to wildland fire, seismic, landslide, or flood hazards (Section 21159 and Section 21155.) The case, California Building Industry Association v. Bay Area Air Quality Management District , can be found here . A fuller CP&DR writeup is pending.

For the past three years, California's cities have been like beachcombers, waving metal detectors over miles of beach in the hopes of discovering $5 billion. They haven't had much luck -- until recently. In the past year, though, Sacramento has bestowed upon the state's cities two new funding tools that, while they don't replace redevelopment, have given cities, developers, and other institutions reasons to salivate.  First came Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts. The tool is as complex as its name implies. Allowing for a tremendous number of conditions and caveats, EIFD law (2014's Senate Bill 628) enables jurisdictions to set up special districts from which they can harvest marginal tax increment and use the increment to fund a broad range of investments. Investments include everything from hard infrastructure to affordable housing to any number of projects that support Sustainable Communities Strategies.  To many people's surprise, EIFDs have a new friend as of this year: Community Redevelopment Investment Authorities. The product of AB 2 (see CP&DR coverage )  - which evaded veto, to much surprise - CRIA's evoke the spirit of the old redevelopment law, to the extent that they focus on distressed areas. These areas are defined not by blight - a definition that was often stretched to the point of abuse - but rather by socioeconomic indicators, such as poverty rates among residents. They are subject to several safeguards, including popular approval, so as not to fall prey to abuse and cronyism, as redevelopment was frequently accused of doing. Neither of these tools promise the riches that redevelopment did, in part because they both exclude would-be school funds. And neither has been put into practice extensively. Nonetheless, it's interesting to consider the environment into which these tools are being introduced. If the world was fresh and new, jurisdictions might see them as curiosities with potential. Instead, there's that $5 billion. It's hard not to imagine that every city in the state is eying some combination of CRIAs and EIFDs to restore the natural order of things.   Not so fast.  I recently moderated a panel on CRIAs and EIFDs featuring an all-star cast: former Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency Director Cecilia Estolano, former Los Angeles City Council Member and current General Manager of L.A.'s Workforce and Development Department Jan Perry, and veteran land use consultant Larry Kosmont. The event was sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  Each exuded a combination of enthusiasm and sobriety.  Kosmont has the EIFD sales pitch down pat. He spoke energetically about the circumstances that warrant EIFDs, the benefits they confer, and the political hurdles and hoops that stand in the way. His exuberance is infectious. Estolano focused largely on the benefits of CRIAs; she has clearly moved on from the days of RDA. The great thing about EIFDs is that essentially anyone can conceive one. Redevelopment was always orchestrated by a redevelopment agency. An EIFD can be set up at a city's behest, of course. But it can also be the brainchild of a nonprofit, a developer, a special district, or anyone else who has a vision for an area and is willing to do the legwork necessary to get everyone to sign off on it. They can be top-down, bottom-up, or somewhere in between. And they can focus on any number of issues: housing, mobility, sustainability, economic development - you name it.  Ideally, cities, counties, and special districts might be able to rally around a cause and recognize each other's mutual benefits. That's the ideal case. Los Angeles Council Member Mitch O'Farrell joined the panel briefly to outline a vision of an EIFD for the Los Angeles River revitalization, which is a long-sought dream in Los Angeles and other river-adjacent cities. While you can summarize these programs in a few slides and imagine all the benefits, the political realities are daunting. In particular, EIFDs require that multiple jurisdictions "learn to play nice," as Kosmont put it. That's because EIFDs require cooperation of all jurisdictions and taxing entities affected by a proposed EIFD zone.  I mean, what are the odds that say, a city council person and a county supervisor don't see eye-to-eye? Exactly.  Ironically, EIFDs might be easiest to set up in places that need them the least. Imagine a developer in a rural area who needs a sewer line or a street grid. He might need to lobby only a single county supervisor and - poof - he'll have his increment. Meanwhile, the competing interests and rivalries that often arise in distressed inner city areas might make consensus impossible for an EIFD or a CRIA.  That's one reason why L.A. Council Member O'Farrell's Los Angeles River plan may not hold water. The 11-mile stretch of river flows through more than 10 jurisdictions. Estolano recommended that cities pick specific goals and from a comprehensive CRIA/EIFD strategy to realize them. One example is the city of Los Angeles' well publicized interest in forming "innovation districts." Otherwise, you can imagine dozens of well meaning entities in a single city running around trying to set up special districts willy-nilly, each meeting with little success. If nothing else, they'll tick off county supervisors left and right. That's why cities can't frantically try to reclaim their share of former RDA money as if it's there for the taking. EIFDs and CRIAs will never generate RDA money, and there's no bureaucratic structure. While jurisdictions will, eventually, get the hang of it, for now, each of these districts requires its own strategy, its own justification, and its own negotiations. It's surely a daunting prospect for cities. Then again, opponents of redevelopment long said that nothing's more daunting than the prospect of wasting $5 billion a year.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, the American Planning Association's Burnham Award will go to Dr. Elizabeth Vaughan. She will be recognized for, among other accomplishments, forcing improvements to a mega-development on Manhattan's West Side, elegantly creating more affordable housing, and making peace with anti-gentrification activists.  A former professor of planning, Vaughan is exacting, keeping an entire Census' worth of data in her head and crunching numbers on the fly; she analyzes every alternative in her head and sees demographic and social trends long before they take place. She has the toughness, intellect, and resolve of Janette Sadik-Kahn. She also has the awkwardness, self-doubt, and nonexistent dancing skills of Elaine Benes.   If Elizabeth sounds like an improbable character, it's because she is. She is fictional. Even so, as the central character in the Broadway musical "If/Then," currently on a national tour that begins in California, Elizabeth Vaughan may be the most famous urban planner in the country.   Played by Broadway megastar Idina Menzel, Elizabeth is the quintessential child of the 1990s (she celebrates her 39th birthday onstage). She and her cohort weathered urban decay, stayed healthy through the early AIDS crisis, made the country (or at least New York) a more tolerant place, and survived life before iPhones. She and her friends are spirited, liberal, and diverse to a fault. Matrices of gay couples, straight couples, biracial couples portray a colorblind and gender-neutral culture. It's a sanitized version of the cosmopolitanism that flourishes in many American cities even as intolerance and fear rises in the hinterlands. Their world is chaotic yet comfortable; they are not quite yuppies, but they're doing OK. They enjoy New York City for all it's worth, from strolls in the park to soliloquies on the fire escape to the chance to bump into 8 million other fascinating humans in any one of the 525,600 minutes that make up a year. Maps and architectural renderings hang over pillow talk between Elizabeth (Idina Menzel) and half-husband Josh (James Snyder). Photo Credit: Joan Marcus If "If/Then" sounds like "Rent" all grown up, that's because it is. It shares both cast members (including Menzel) and creative team members with the original 1996 Broadway production of Rent. And of course it shares a city. But, whereas New York was but the backdrop for the Rent kids to explore their Bohemian anguish, the city takes center stage in "If/Then." A literal "sidewalk ballet" is on display in song-and-dance numbers -- in parks, on balconies, in offices -- that celebrate urban life with full throat.  Menzel has just enough humility to play Elizabeth with humor and self-awareness. Perhaps too much self-awareness. Elizabeth constantly enumerates her flaws, chief among them is her ability to make "poor choices." Elizabeth is happiest when she is analyzing the tendencies of 8 million data points. When she has to decide for herself -- work for the city vs. teach college; go to a party or go to a protest; sleep with her boss or marry the handsome Army doctor -- she is nearly paralyzed. She wonders constantly, obsessively about the sidewalk less traveled.   In many cases, the world ends up choosing for her.   "If/Then" operates on a clever, if overwrought, narrative conceit. Like the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, it follows two storylines at once, with scenes and their alternatives weaving in and out of each other. The people, places, and relationships remain the same but the choices are different. And, of course, so are the outcomes.  If Elizabeth, who is "Liz" in one storyline and "Beth" in the other, chooses to marry the handsome doctor, then her best friend, Lucas, marries the doctor's best friend David. If she takes the job with the city, Elizabeth doesn't marry the doctor but instead ends up in halting friendship-romance with the same Lucas. Taking cues that date back to Sophocles, "If/Then" wonders, pedantically and entertainingly, whether we are governed by ourselves or our stars. Or by our city.   Whatever choices "If/Then's" mere mortals make, they take place on the foundation of New York. Whereas "Rent" celebrated urban life, "If/Then" celebrates the city as such. "Urban planner" isn't just a convenient backstory for Elizabeth. It's a focal point of the plot. Amazingly, we see Elizabeth "doing" urban planning in scene after scene. When Elizabeth isn't actively guiding the city's future, she and her friends are out there living in it. One of its best scenes has Elizabeth's irrepressible friend and obsessive matchmaker Kate serenading gentlemen in a subway car, quite unlike the common panhandler.   Menzel has a colorful supporting cast, but the story revolves literally around her. She is the fulcrum between which head and heart balance. Her choices are the ones that determine whether her friends are gay or straight and whether they take one job or another. By the time she becomes Director of the Department of City Planning, her choices are also the ones that determine where thousands of New Yorkers will live, how their public spaces will look, and whether Penn Station will finally get exhumed.   If ever a character has romanticized the planning profession, it is Elizabeth. She is the consummate pragmatic idealist. She understands the joy that pulses through a great city while she keeps the numbers all in their rows. Elizabeth and her colleagues speak honestly about gentrification, demographic trends, tensions between developers and stakeholders, political alliances, housing costs, and everyday things like bike lanes and sidewalks. Planning -- if we take it in its purest form, serving the masses and making life better on average -- is the ideal foil for the messiness and uncertainty of individual existence.   As much as "Rent" romanticized the creative loafing and angst of the 1990s (while its predecessor, "Angels in America" revealed the horrors of the AIDS crisis), "If/Then" is a celebration of professionalism. It's a little forced, but it's a refreshing change from Broadway's obsession with meta-drama. (Think "A Chorus Line," "The Music Man," "Cabaret," "Gypsy," "42nd Street," "Phantom of the Opera") "If/Then" is not quite dancing about architecture, but it's close, and it works.  Brian Yorkey, who wrote the book and lyrics, did his homework. Though Menzel's black mane would have to go silver before some of her signature projects actually got approved, it's a reasonable portrayal of basic planning. Terminology is used correctly, the issues are genuine, and even the places in Manhattan, right down to a thinly veiled Hudson Yards, are real, illustrated with street maps and images of landmarks. If only all planners were as passionate as Elizabeth is, or as dazzling as Menzel is. Indeed, there seems to be an intentional chasm between Menzel's celebrity and talent -- though occasionally nasal, her voice is crisp and powerful -- and the anonymity and bureaucratic tendencies of her character's career. Whatever choices we may face, we cannot all be Broadway stars.   As a musical about place, it's hard not to think about "If/Then's" audiences. When performed in a theater encircled by the city it portrays, the urban themes must have been obvious. On Hollywood Boulevard, "If/Then" reveals urban possibilities about which Angelenos are becoming increasingly aware but from which they still sometimes recoil. San Diegans may have to consider the battles they've waged over regional planning. Folks in Orange County may glimpse a world they'd prefer to experience on stage than in real life.   The production must be prepared for a chilly reception when it goes to Tempe Jan. 12-17. One of Elizabeth's more regrettable choices was spending 12 years in Phoenix with her then-husband. With its sprawl and its air conditioning, the city bears the brunt of some genuinely unkind jokes in a musical that is otherwise sweet and forgiving. The creative team may have had no problem unloading on the city of Joe Arpiao and the state of SB 1070. Let us, then, stop for a moment to contemplate that this review is about a major Broadway musical that is about urban planning. It is a first and probably a last. Whether this means that the profession has come into its own or whether it means that a single creative team got a whim and ran with it is anyone's guess. Planners should enjoy the spotlight while it lasts. And maybe they can even learn from it.  Understandably, neither Menzel nor her production won a Tony Award. The clever first act, which sets up the relationships and amply explores Elizabeth's dilemmas, devolves into melodrama in the second act. The music is not memorable enough, and the whole thing stumbles when it goes from light fun to grave seriousness. And yet, if "If/Then" can get audiences to think more deeply about cities and even get planners to discover (or rediscover) their inspirations, maybe Elizabeth will deserve that Burnham Award after all.   'If/Then' Selected Tour Dates  ifthenthemusical.com Dec. 8 - Jan. 3, Pantages Theater, Los Angeles  Jan. 5 - 10, San Diego Civic Theater  Jan. 12 - 17, Gammage Auditorium, Tempe, Arizona  Jan. 19 - 24, Segerstrom Center, Costa Mesa

Here's one for the irony hall of fame: the new distribution center of one of the world's largest shoe companies is located in one of the most un-walkable places in California. I mean to rib Skechers USA Inc. and its warehouse in Moreno Valley only lightly. No one expects to walk to an industrial or logistics facility the way they would to an office building or corner grocery store. Progressive planners can only hope that all those shoes land on worthy sidewalks after they're sold. Nonetheless, the Skechers distribution center has captured attention, not only because it's a real live building (we remember real estate development, don't we?) in one of the foreclosure capitals of the country but also because it touts its "green" credentials to a fare-thee-well. As the second- or third-largest warehouse in the state, it seems to hold as many superlatives as it does shoes. Most notably, this biggest of the big boxes claims to be the largest LEED-certified building in the United States. We usually don't talk about sprawl in discrete terms. Sprawl is a totality of developments. Yet the Sketchers building itself is sprawl. The structure spans 1.8 million square feet, mostly on one level. That alone is the size of a small tract housing development. The Los Angeles Times notes that it would take a half-minute to drive the 2,900-foot length of the building – at 60 miles per hour. The "short" end of the building is 700 feet, meaning that it covers the area of 40 football fields. This is ironic, since Skechers isn't known for making cleats. Up to 20,000 shoes of other types will pass through its conveyer belts and out the 270 truck bays every hour. Not bad for a little cobbling outfit from Manhattan Beach. Somehow, this behemoth racked up enough points to gain basic LEED certification. Environmentally friendly features reportedly include solar power (makes sense with a roof that big), natural ventilation (good luck in the Moreno Valley summer), and sensors that turn off lights in vacant parts of the building (duh). These features will reportedly save Skechers $10 million in energy costs per year compared to a conventional building. That's nice for Skechers, but it's not clear why the company deserves a plaque for being sensible. \tBeyond the building's walls, its location flouts every principle of smart growth. Moreno Valley is the classic outer suburb. It has wide streets, strip malls, and tract housing, and it's far from any traditional urban center. This means that 500 or so daily workers will be driving there by all sorts of routes, none of which is likely to involve a bus, bike, or, indeed, even those weird convex shoes that claim to make your butt look firmer. So, on the regional scale, the place embodies, at best, business-as-usual freeway urbanism. If laws like Senate Bill 375 were retroactive, we'd scoop up all the residents of Moreno Valley and deposit them in condo towers in Downtown Los Angeles. Then we'd let wildflowers take over. Then you'd build warehouses…. Well, I don't know where you'd build them. Probably close to freeways, rail spurs, and other infrastructure. \tBut just as you can't un-ring a bell, you can't un-leap a frog. Moreno Valley's leapfrog development is here to stay, and the freeways and heavy rail lines leading to it (as well as the ports of L.A. and Long Beach) are too. That's why—and I can't believe I'm saying this—the Skechers warehouse might be almost all right. \tRegardless of what LEED says, the greenest component of the warehouse may lie in what it isn't: it's not six other warehouses. \tThat's the number of facilities Skechers currently uses, and they're spread all over the Inland Empire. So if all those truck trips to one location in Moreno Valley scare you, imagine the aggregate impact of the current system. There's no reason to believe that workers are driving any less to get to those jobs than they will once they're redeployed to the new place. There's one other scale worth considering: the global scale. Ultimately, Skechers' LEED-plated building is just one stop on the long conveyor belt connecting the sweatshops of China to the closets of America. Those shoes grace California's shores because we have the port infrastructure and inland connections. But the environmental impact of what happens here pales in comparison to what's happening in Guangzhou or Shenzen. Out of sight, out of mind. \tSo let's tally the votes. Building: OK. Location: bad. Economics of scale: good. Global impact: unclear, but probably unavoidable no matter what it is. \tThere is, of course, one more element to consider: the output. Skechers isn't a tire company or chemical plant. If, after they cross an ocean, slide through a conveyer belt, and cross a continent, Skechers' products get consumers to lace up, take a stroll, and tighten their glutes, then it might be pretty green after all. They just probably won't be doing much of it in Moreno Valley. --Josh Stephens

I don't want to appear out of step with rational people – it's so hard to regain people's trust once they suspect you've gone off the rails – but that doesn't mean that I don't endorse Riverside County Supervisor Jeff  Stone's suggestion last week to partition California into two states.  The beauty of this two-state idea is the epic gerrymander that would force Northern California to take Los Angeles-- a magnet for entertainment types, Beverly Hills matrons, hiphop artists with jewelry in their teeth and people who speak foreign languages, among other annoyances--as its new capitol. For its part, the new State of Southern California would include up to 13 counties, including Riverside, Orange and San Diego The motivation? "Our taxes are too high, our schools don't educate our children well enough, unions and other special interests have more clout in the Legislature than the general public," Stone said in a statement. Speaking as the self-appointed representative for Los Angeles, I'm willing to strike a deal with Supervisor Stone, as long as he meets the following demands: 1. \t I want a redwood grove immediately transported to Edwards Air Force Base, located in the desert region in northernmost L.A. County.  If we arrange all the redwood trees in a giant circle, they can make a convenient target for incoming spacecraft. 2. \t I want giant fog-making machinery, so clouds can drift poetically over the LA in the afternoon, just before the evening gets that oceanfront chill. (Believe me, they'll never miss the fog in Tiburon.)  3. \t Move Malibu to Eureka, so we don't have to deal with people who challenge us as we wade waist-deep across their "private" beach waters.  Granted, such people are a tiny minority of the good people of Malibu, but relocating them northwards improves the chances they will be eaten by sharks.   4. \t Move the Golden Gate bridge to Long Beach, which could serve as a wonderful "image piece" to celebrate that city's industrial waterfront.   5. \t Move Santa Monica to a site just outside Pleasanton –they're roughly in the same demographic and median household income, so they should get along-- while bringing Big Sur and Point Lobos Reserve to the area to the Santa Monica Bay, so I don't have to drive so far to visit my favorite parts of Northern  California.  6. \t To keep undesirables out of the new State of Northern California, a barrier fence can be built along the borders of the two states, to keep Southerners from attempting to infiltrate our citadel of affluence and scenic shorelines. Travelers attempting to enter Northern California would be stopped at checkpoints. Those lacking special work visas would be turned away. 7. \t In recognition of the region's emerging majority population, Spanish becomes the official language of the new State of Southern California.  I‘m prepared to deal, Supervisor Stone. And I'll make a special offer: if you and I can come to an agreement before Labor Day, I'll throw in Kern County, as a kind of goodwill gift, or "lagniappe," as such gifts are known in Louisiana.  Think it over. Lunch is my treat. We'll have Humboldt fog for the cheese course. --Morris Newman

United by common complaints against a particularly loud, disruptive neighbor, the residents who live under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport are a relatively cohesive bunch. The Second District Court of Appeals has ruled, however, that neighborhood cohesion goes only so far. According to the court's decision in City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (2011), the city's voluntary program by which certain residents who live near the airport can sell their property to the city does not amount to a taking of adjacent properties. In this case, plaintiffs argued that the city's program to purchase properties in areas near LAX and demolish the buildings constituted inverse condemnation of adjacent properties owned by plaintiffs. The decision illustrates the difficulty of establishing such a claim when a public entity does not directly invade a claimant's property. The court was not persuaded, and plaintiffs' suit was dismissed. In 2000, the city established the "Voluntary Residential Acquisition and Relocation Program" for the neighborhoods of Manchester Square and Belford. According to the city, this program was created in response to residents who expressed a desire to relocate rather than to submit their homes to city-funded soundproofing as mitigation for the noise associated with the airport. As the name of the program implies, the city purchased properties from only those who chose to sell to the city—without ever invoking taking a property against an owner's wishes. By 2009, the city had spent several hundred million dollars to purchase and demolish 72 percent of the multi-family dwellings and 94 percent of the single-family dwellings in the area. Unlike the majority of the property owners in Manchester Square and Belford, plaintiffs in the suit—including owners of rental properties within the neighborhoods—chose not to sell. Yet, as more and more buildings were demolished by the city, the number of renters in plaintiffs' properties continued to decrease as the neighborhood presumably became less appealing socially and aesthetically. Instead of selling their properties, plaintiffs brought suit against the city claiming inverse condemnation: the city's program, they claimed, devalued their property but offered no compensation. The trial court agreed with plaintiffs. The city appealed, and the appellate court reversed. In the appellate court's words, the central question in the case was "whether the City's creation of ‘condemnation blight' resulted in a duty to pay just compensation." In answering "no," the court discussed prior case law holding that "there is no property right appurtenant to plaintiff's property … which entitled him to the maintenance of his residences…" (Bacich v. Board of Control (1943) 23 Cal.2d 343; see also Hecton v. People ex rel. Dept. of Transportation (1976) 58 Cal.App.3d 653; Oliver v. AT&T Wireless Services (1999) 76 Cal.App.4th 521 Legal=">Legal" Digest="Digest" Vol.="Vol." 15,="15," No.="No." 1,="1," Jan="Jan" 2000="2000"> .) The court also discussed another Supreme Court case, Klopping v. City of Whittier (1972) 8 Cal.3d 39, in which the City of Whittier had initiated and then withdrew condemnation proceedings while continuing to declare that it would one day condemn the property. The California Supreme Court found that this amounted to a compensable taking because the city's promised actions had lowered property values. In this case, plaintiffs asserted that the principles in Klopping applied to the city's actions, and therefore, a taking had occurred. In comparing the facts in this case to those in Klopping, the court found that plaintiffs had failed to show any facts that would support a Klopping-style taking. Specifically, plaintiffs presented no evidence "that the City had condemned their properties, had intent to eventually acquire their properties through condemnation, or had a plan for future use of their property that would someday require condemnation of their properties – or any property in Manchester Square or Belford." Contrary to plaintiffs' implications, the city's program was voluntary, and plaintiffs presented no evidence that any former owner felt coerced to sell their property to the city. The "blight" that emerged was therefore the result of voluntary actions which, though possibly detrimental to the remaining owners, were not directly influenced by the city. Under these facts, the court held that the city acted properly in acquiring and demolishing the properties, and plaintiffs were not entitled to compensation. The Case: City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court (2011) 194 Cal.App.4th 210 Photo Credit: Hillel Aron

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.   The California Environmental Quality Act potentially has the shortest time period in which legal challenges can be filed—as few as 30 days, depending upon the fact pattern. For legal challenges alleging noncompliance with provisions of the state Planning, Zoning and Development law, the relevant statutes are slightly longer at 90 days. However, the Legislature has created an even longer filing period based upon challenges under the affordable housing laws. A recent decision of the Fourth Appellate District illustrates the overlapping and potentially conflicting application of CEQA and other land use statutes. The northern San Diego County city of Solano Beach submitted a draft housing element to the Department of Housing and Community Development in 2007. The department found the element in compliance. However, compliance was subject to approving a then-pending application for a site referenced as Site 8 in the Housing Element for 131 units, including 13 affordable units. Site 8, which is near the Solano Beach train station, was one of nine such sites identified by the Housing Element as appropriate for mixed use and residential development. In fact, Site 8 was considered crucial for the implementation of a Housing Element policy to encourage residential capacity in mixed-use developments. The Housing Element claimed that Site 8 would "be a key to the City's ability to meet not only its regional share for new construction but also its quantified objectives by income category." In the following year, the city processed a developer's application for Site 8. After a number of public hearings, the city directed the applicant to revise the project design based upon inconsistency with local zoning and specific plan requirements. This decision meant that project approval could not meet a grant deadline. The project ultimately failed to qualify for a $6 million grant and thus became financially infeasible.  Roughly two months later, on July 8, 2008, plaintiffs gave notice to the city that failure to approve the original Site 8 project violated its housing own element. On August 27, 2008, the City Council adopted Resolution 2008-152, retaining outside legal counsel to defend the city against anticipated legal challenges to its housing element. On September 2, 2009, the plaintiffs filed a complaint and writ of mandate. The petitioners presented eight causes of action, all linked to alleged compliance with various requirements of state affordable housing requirements applicable to planning, zoning and land development requirements.  The city responded by filing a demurrer, arguing that the claims were barred either by the 90-day provisions of Government Code sections 66499.37 (90 days; Subdivision Map Act) or alternatively 65009(d) (1 year; housing element challenges). The city also argued that, as a matter of law, the plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action. The trial court ruled for the city on both the statute of limitations as well as the substantive legal issues. On appeal, the Fourth Appellate District ruled for the city on the statute of limitations grounds; because that ruling disposed of all of the claims, the court declined to rule on the substantive allegations. The court's ruling on the statute of limitations focused on 65009(d) as it was most favorable to the plaintiffs. Litigation under this code provision first requires the future plaintiff to give written notice to the city or county before it files suit. The code then provides that the cause of action accrues "60 days after notice is filed or the legislative body takes final action in response to the notice, whichever occurs first."  As pled, the complaint established that the City Council took action on August 27, 2008. This became the controlling date in calculating the statute of limitations and as a result, plaintiff's complaint, filed on September 2, 2009, did not meet the one-year requirement. Therefore, the appellate court concluded that the case had been appropriately dismissed. The Case:  Haro v. City of Solano Beach, No. D057304, 2011 DJDAR. Filed May 12, 2011. Ordered published May 12, 2011 The Attorneys:  For Plaintiff: Affordable Housing Advocates and Catherine A. Rodman  For the City of Solano Beach: Burke, Williams & Sorensen, Thomas B. Brown, Matthew D. Visick and John J. Welsh; McDougal, Love, Eckis, Boehmer & Foley and Johanna N. Canlas; Goldfarb & Lipman and Barbara E. Kautz