With coronavirus-induced remote work cutting traffic and air pollution by dramatic levels, California’s regional planning agencies are laying plans to keep telecommuting at high levels once the pandemic has subsided. And the state may soon follow suit. "The entire State of California is going through an amazing real-time experiment in cleaner air and less congested roads," Lucy Dunn, head of the Orange County Business Council, said at the California Transportation Commission meeting on May 13 . She and fellow commissioner Joseph Lyou, who was a longtime member of the South Coast Management District Board, challenged Caltrans director Toks Omishakin to come up with a plan to incentivize employees to work at home more in order to effectively increase Caltrans's road capacity Omishakin said Caltrans itself had pivoted toward telework -- 85% of its employees now work at home, up from 5% at the beginning of the COVID crisis -- and promised to "look into it". Most regional planning agencies already have a transportation demand management (TDM) program, which is designed to work with employers to provide such traffic-reduction techniques carpool and vanpool services and transit passes. These programs are often undertaken in conjunction with air pollution control districts. But TDM programs have experienced only marginal success, and the potential for remote work – as evidenced by its success during the COVID-19 crisis – appears much more promising than any other technique. “In our region, air quality, where the measuring stations are, we’re 73% better than it was a year ago,” SANDAG’s executive director Hasan Ikhrata said told San Diego’s Channel 7 . “We see an opportunity here for more employers to allow their employees to work from home at least some of the time and that could have a huge impact." SANDAG is currently doing a survey of employers to assess their interest. So far the regional planning agencies have taken the lead, but the state might step up as the COVID crisis winds down. “Businesses have implemented telework policies at a scale we’ve never seen before, and meetings that would have taken place in person are now remote,” Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the Strategic Growth Council, told the PPIC Blog recently . “We’ve seen that these sorts of changes can rapidly reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Looking ahead, we can think about how to incorporate some of these changes into how we work.” Traditionally, employers have been skeptical of telecommuting – especially working from home -- because managers have struggled with the challenge of holding employees accountable for their productivity. But the COVID-19 crisis has created a gigantic experiment in how to make telecomuting work. Not all workers can work from home – a wide range of workers in agriculture, industrial plants, the medical field, hotel and restaurants, transportation and many other sectors must work onsite. But the best estimates suggest that about half of the American workforce is currently staying home – and many employers are finding that productivity is holding steady, at least for now. So California’s metropolitan planning organizations and councils of governments, which have traditionally focused on incentivizing alternatives to commuting alone, are quickly pivoting toward a more broad-ranging and sophisticated approach. First, they are providing support to companies and employees who experience barriers that preent them from telecommuting. And second, they are rethinking their commute incentives, which currently assume that employees travel to work every day by the same mode of travel. For example, one of the biggest hurdles many employers and employees face has to do with the technology associated with working at home. In many cases, neither the employer nor the e employee has the equipment required to work at home – and oftentimes employees do not have the broadband service required. “I called up the mayor of Delano and asked if their employees were telecommuting,” said Ahron Hakimi, executive director of the Kern County Council of Governments. “And she said, no, because we don’t have laptops. Well, that’s something we can help with. We can use the COG’s money to buy laptops. And we can help with broadband too.” Indeed, the move toward telecommuting has raised another question: Can funds meant to incentivize employees to commute in alternative ways be used to help them work at home instead, Or, as Brian Griesenbeck, director of data and analytics at SACOG in Sacramento put it, “Can we use vanpool money to provide broadband?” Indeed, Greisenbeck and other SACOG officials have highlighted an important barrier to encouraging more telecommuting: Most incentives and programs are focused on a single mode of commuting. Some funds must be spent providing carpool or vanpool services. Others must be spent on bicycle facilities or transit passes. Many employers provide parking subsidies for their employees. The system, Greisenbeck says, “treats people as tribal” – meaning employees are divided into tribes devoted to one form of commuting only. But he says, “most people commute in a variety of ways.” So the trick will be to combine different governmental programs to encourage the maximum amount of alternative commuting, including remote work. This may require an overhaul in program rules to make funds more flexible – perhaps not just using vanpool money to provide broadband, but also providing more flexible financial incentives to employees, so they might work at home one day, commute by bike or transit the next, and drive alone when necessary. Overall, regional planners see the potential for the telecommute movement to revitalize their moribund TDM programs. Such programs were popular in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when business district management entities often worked together with regional planning agencies to provide carpool matching and vanpool services as well as – in pre-Uber times – cars that could serve as a “guaranteed ride home” in case of an emergency. But in the last 10 to 15 years, TDM programs have not grown and regional planning agencies have had difficulty getting employers interested in them. Prior to COVID-19, telecommuting didn’t get much attention either. Ikhrata told Channel 7 that in 2016, SANDAG received a federal grant to do a pilot telecommuting program with 10 companies. “Frankly, we couldn’t get 10 to participate, only had four,” he said. Now, however, regional planners see the opportunity to seize the moment. Greisenbeck said SACOG might seek to help companies beef up their information technology horsepower and revamp their human resources policies to make sure telecommuting sticks: “How do we help businesses make this part of their culture?” Contacts: Hasan Ikhrata, SANDAG, Hasan.Ikhrata@sandag.org Louis Bedsworth, Strategic Growth Council, louise.bedsworth@sgc.ca.gov Brian Greisenbeck, SACOG,  bgriesenbeck@ sacog .org Ahron Hakimi, Kern County COG, AHakimi@ kerncog . org

State Population Growth Flattens; Inland Areas See Most Gains California added only 87,494 residents in 2019 to bring the state's estimated total population to 39,782,870 people as of Jan. 1, 2020, according to new population estimates and housing data released by the California Department of Finance . California's population grew by only 0.2 percent, continuing a historically slow growth trend since the Great Recession. Growth remains strong in the interior counties of the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, while remaining modest in the Bay Area, and slowing to near zero and even negative in most of the coastal counties. Los Angeles County, the state's most populous county, has now lost population the last two years, dropping 0.3 percent in 2018 and 0.1 percent in 2019. Changes in population rankings for cities reinforce the movement towards inland counties; Modesto passed Santa Clarita as 17th largest city. Elk Grove is now the 27th largest city passing Rancho Cucamonga, Garden Grove, and Santa Rosa. Rosevelle is now the 40th largest city passing Pasadena. California's statewide housing growth, as measured by net unit growth in completed housing units for 2019, was 94,662 units making 2019 the first time the state has added more housing units than people. Total housing in California reached 14.3 million, a 0.7 percent increase. Newsom’s Sacramento Delta Plan Draws Lawsuits  Three of the most powerful groups in California water sued the state this week over Gov. Gavin Newsom's two-month-old plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta . Environmental groups are charging the administration with not doing to protect endangered species. Meantime, beneficiaries of diverted delta water filed their own lawsuits over restrictions on water pumping that will result in significant new restrictions on supplies. A spokeswoman for Newsom's Natural Resources Agency said the administration "stands behind" its plan for operating the Delta. Rounding out the triumvirate of litigation is Gov. Newsom's feud with the Trump administration. Newsom announced in February he would sue the federal government over Trump's plans to deliver more water through the Delta. The status quo - the voluntary settlement agreement brokered by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration - appears to be falling apart. At least according to the State Water Contractors who said Newsom's plan "effectively ends the historic Voluntary Agreement process that brought together water agencies, regulators and conservation groups to tackle decades-old water resource problems.” State Moves to Give Mountain Lions Protected Status Regulators have taken a significant step toward adding mountains lions to the protected list under California's Endangered Species Act. Mountain lions were granted "candidate status" in six regions by the state Fish and Game Commission, which puts the big cats as little as one year away from protected status. The decision is only applicable to areas between the Bay Area and regions of Central and Southern California, where biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 lions. If the lions are added to California's endangered list, the state will be required to draft a recovery plan that include infrastructure changes like wildlife crossings. Currently, protections are being granted in piecemeal fashion in the courts. A 1,750-acre home development proposal in Temecula, for example, was blocked because the proposal did not adequately preserve areas where mountain lions cross under a freeway. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Census Data Suggests Shortage of 1 Million Homes for Poorest Households The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s recently released annual report suggests that improvements in the economy have mostly favored full-time workers and stockholders, and have not resolved the longstanding needs of low-income people who continue to struggle to find affordable and accessible housing - particularly in California. No state has an adequate supply of rental housing affordable available for extremely low-income households (residents with incomes at or below the poverty line or 30 percent of area median income, whichever is greater), the data shows. The shortage ranges from 8,202 rental homes in Wyoming to nearly one million in California, where there are 23 affordable homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. The states with the greatest percentage of extremely low-income renter households with severe cost burdens are Nevada (81 percent), Florida (79 percent), and California (77 percent). CP&DR Coverage: Developers Prevail in SB 35 Suits The battle over implementing SB 35 is playing out most ferociously in Silicon Valley – and in two new court rulings over the past month, both written by the same judge, developers have won the latest round. Both cases revolve around the question of how cities must apply objective design standards in an SB 35 case – and the rulings suggest that cities apply objective design and planning standards in a very clear way in order to stay out of legal trouble.  Quick Hits & Updates  UC Berkeley is facing criticism from local officials and some members of the community as it begins the scoping process for its new long-term development plan, which proposes to expand the university community by 23 percent in the next 15 years. UC Berkeley says it has no choice in the timing, as the university is required to conform to CEQA laws despite limited community engagement due to the COVID-19 lockdown. After years of legal battles and decades of neighborhood complaints, a West Fresno meat-rendering plant will shut down permanently by 2023 or incur hefty penalties. potentially clearing the way for housing and green space in a historically underprivileged part of town. Texas-based Darling Ingredients looked to be moving its plant to a more rural area until a relocation deal with the city fell through. The California State Transportation's $95 million grant to Inglewood for an elevated people mover to serve the new SoFi Field NFL stadium brings the amount of total secured funds to roughly $330 million of the nearly $1 billion needed to complete the project. Design plans are already underway, and officials say they don't expect the coronavirus pandemic to alter or delay construction plans. Inglewood expects to have the trains running sometime from 2024 to 2026. Los Angeles Metro's Crenshaw Line Northern Extension is supposed to break ground in 2041, but West Hollywood City Council is considering bumping up construction by as many as 15 years. West Hollywood is expected to contribute up to 25 percent of capital costs within the city to fast-track the project. Officials have their on multiple funding sources, but no specific funding from West Hollywood has been approved thus far. Amidst a housing crisis, Santa Monica emerges as a bright spot for its successful Affordable Housing Production Program (AHPP). A study published in the Housing Studies Journal found that inclusionary housing production by market-rate developers jumped by 15 percent in Santa Monica since the city adopted its 2010 General Plan, which included provisions that tied allowances in Floor Area Ratio, height and density to affordable housing unit requirements.  Despite last year's rainy reprieve, researchers who analyzed tree ring records, meteorological records, and climate models concluded that California is in 'megadrought' conditions not seen for 400 years, with one key difference: rising temperatures. The study, published in Science journal, corroborates what scientists have long warned policymakers: extreme warming will prolong natural dry cycles in the Western U.S. and areas of Mexico. A judge in Riverside County threw a lifeline to imperiled Southern California mountain lions, blocking a proposed 270-acre development in Western Riverside County. Part of the development sits on one of the only passages left for wildlife to move between coastal and inland mountains. The ruling came just days before state officials voted on whether to grant mountain lions protection under the Endangered Species Act. UC Berkeley released initial conceptual drawings for a 16-story housing complex and park at Peoples Park , a landmark in the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. The design tries to balance the need for student housing, supportive housing and services for people who are formerly homeless, with the need for open space, according to the project's website. The City of Berkeley is considering increasing the zoning density to allow up to three 12-story buildings in the near vicinity. In a bid to restore dwindling fish populations in the Klamath Rive r, a nonprofit group is spearheading the removal of four dams in Northern California and Southern Oregon. The massive project, which was set into motion in 2016 and just received key approvals from the State Water Board, will normalize water temperatures, reduce fish disease, and reduce toxic algae growth. Laguna Beach officials are bucking a county directive to house homeless people at local hotels during the ongoing pandemic. While not the first city to oppose the order, Laguna Beach is the first to file a lawsuit. The county announced plans to fight the lawsuit, according to a statement from the OC Emergency Operations Center. OC officials secured 76 rooms at the Laguna Hills Inn as part of a roughly 550-bed countywide plan.

When it opened in 1985, development of the Horton Plaza shopping mall in San Diego was hailed as a blueprint for how retail can revitalize a downtown area. The mall in its heyday attracted millions of shoppers to the city’s core with its unorthodox, multicolored and multi-patterned postmodern architecture. The American Institute of Architects described architect Jon Jerde’s design as a “razzle-dazzle and unvarnished mix of architectural forms” that “raises basic cornball stuff momentarily to an effective level of ephemeral design.” It effectively turned San Diego’s downtown from a seedy area “that nobody wanted to come to” into a bona fide destination, according to San Diego City Councilmember Chris Ward. Now, the city and owner Stockdale Capital Partners are seeking a new version of “razzle-dazzle” in the form of the technology industry. Amid shifting shopping habits and changing opinions of what makes an urban core appealing, a developer is looking to significantly change the six-block concrete fortress by converting it into a mixed-use technology campus and opening it up to the neighborhood. The building’s zebra stripes and pink- and coral-colored arcades will give way to something a bit more sleek and corporate. “Horton Plaza used to be something special,” said Daniel Michaels, managing director at Stockdale, at a May 2019 meeting of the San Diego City Council. “Everyone knows that. I grew up going there as a kid. We want to make it special again and make it economically impactful to the community, and we think this does just that.” The jobs component is an important one for the project, as officials have bemoaned the fact that the city loses much of its young talent pool coming out of San Diego’s universities to tech-heavy cities like San Francisco and Seattle.

The battle over implementing SB 35 is playing out most ferociously in Silicon Valley – and in two new court rulings over the past month, both written by the same judge, developers have won the latest round. Both cases revolve around the question of how cities must apply objective design standards in an SB 35 case – and the rulings suggest that cities apply objective design and planning standards in a very clear way in order to stay out of legal trouble.

Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested this week that certain restrictions will lift soon, possibly "in a matter of days." Obviously this will be a long process. But Californians can now poke their heads out the front door and assess the damage. It won’t be visible, like a Winnebago that’s been deposited on your front lawn by a tornado, and the storm won’t clear at once. We’ll probably still be carrying mental umbrellas down the sidewalk for a long while, dipping past each other reflexively to maintain distance. That’ll be good for the obliques. The impact on cities is less certain – though strong opinions abound. Pretty much everyone has become an urban planner since the outbreak began. You think of public space and contact with your neighbors differently when you think your neighbors might kill you, I suppose. We’ve all heard all the arguments : contagion thrives on density; the suburbs are healthier; public transit is dirty. We’ve also heard that density does not equal crowding; unhoused people are especially vulnerable; walking beats driving. People who don’t even know the word “density” are wondering if our cities are too dense. Some people who absolutely know the word density are exploiting the situation to add new moral heft to the idea of some suburban utopia that has never happened and never will happen. (James Brasuell at Planetizen did a heroic job compiling pieces on the density debates—and his catalog is probably just a faction of what’s out there.) This crisis is a failure of many things. It is a failure of public health policy. It is a failure of information dissemination. It’s arguably a failure of foreign policy. It’s definitely a failure of procurement. It is a failure of leadership at the highest levels. But it is not a failure of urban planning. And don’t let anyone tell you differently. Should planners be mindful of public health? Of course. But cities should not be expected to fix, or prevent, a pandemic any more than doctors should be expected to fix traffic on Highway 101 or the poverty rate in Watts. To prepare for the next pandemic we can stock up on ventilators and masks. We can invest in virology research . We can draft pandemic action plans and quarantine guidelines.  We can shelter at home sooner. We can choose not disband the federal Pandemic Response Team. We can treat viruses the way we treat geopolitics: we can unleash the medical-industrial complex and maintain an arsenal and we can make battle plans. And the “American way of life” can go on, hopefully with a little more wisdom and a little more compassion. If we take proper precautions—at every level of government and in every government—we won’t need to end public life as we know it, and we won’t need to colonize east Riverside and north Fresno with single-family homes. If we don’t take these precautions, all the arguments about density will be moot anyway. What that means is that, while world’s armchair planners and armchair epidemiologists carry on with their debates, actual planners should remain faithful to their missions. We don’t need to “ rethink ” cities because of the virus. We’ve been rethinking cities for a long time. As USC’s famously acerbic urban planning professor Lisa Schweitzer notes, “The issue is that density and its downsides require urban innovation, and in truth people innovate around density’s downsides all the time.” In California, planners have spent the past two decades trying to reintroduce density to cities. The results: SB 375 , vehicle miles travelled metrics , hundreds of billions of dollars for transit, more ambitious housing targets, and much more. These efforts are just beginning to bear fruit. We know how many housing units we still need, give or take a half-million. And we know about the ambiguities of density. Expertise is one thing. Public relations is another. As UCLA Professor David Shulman suggested when I interviewed him about the impending housing crisis: “If this gets seared into people’s consciousness, it could reduce density. Opponents will have new arguments against — valid or not, they’ll have an argument.” The density skeptics will remind us of this virus as often as possible. In response, planners are going to have to take a cue from the state’s medical community: they’re going to have to work like crazy not only to administer treatment but also to get the word out. Many planners are low-key sorts, happy to focus on details and the often-quiet work of policymaking. In the post-covid19 world, low-key isn’t going to cut it. COVID is a crisis, but it’s also a call to arms. Planners will have to explain, more forcefully and proactively than ever, why density is good. They will have to explain, in consultation with the actual epidemiologists, why concerns about contagion are reasonable but why they should not be conflated with density nor should they overwhelm the abundant, multifaceted, benefits of density – benefits that range from economic to social to aesthetic to, yes, physiological. Planners must not merely defend their field and their principles, as they so often do. They must champion them. They must present enthusiastic visions to regain what we had two months ago and to strive for more henceforth. I know this will require a monumental effort, especially when planning departments may be under-funded and under-staffed . But it will be worth it. When we get out of this, every day is going to feel like a parade. Planners can lead it. They should march right past the naysayers, megaphones in one hand, and invisible umbrellas in the other.

Court Rules in Favor of Los Altos Development, Bolsters SB 35 In what may well be a harbinger of how courts interpret Senate Bill 35, a Santa Clara Superior Court found Los Altos violated the law when the city denied a 15-unit development proposal. The developer had sought expedited approval under SB 35. Besides the ruling itself, the decision was striking in that the lead judge in the case found that Los Altos acted in bad faith under the Housing Accountability Act by blocking the project without merit in a way that goes beyond making a "benign error." The city initially claimed the project did not qualify because it didn't have enough affordable housing. When that claim failed scrutiny, city officials took issue with the number and accessibility of parking spaces. The decision isn't binding precedent, but pro-housing advocates hope judges, developers and city officials - who are still figuring out how to interpret the relatively new Senate Bill 35 - will look to the Los Altos ruling for guidance on how the law can be used in conjunction with other state housing laws. The suit was brought by pro-housing group California Renters Legal Advocacy & Education Fund. (See prior CP&DR commentary on SB 35.) Federal Government Narrows Protections on Bodies of Water The Trump Administration has published a revised rule defining which water bodies are subject to federal jurisdiction under the “Waters of the United States” regulations. The rule eliminates protections for many ephemeral bodies of water and indicates that wetlands, an important concern of environmental lists, must touch another navigable body of water to be considered under federal jurisdiction. The Navigable Waters Protection Rule, a replacement for the Obama Administration's waters of the United States rule, was published in the Federal Register on April 21. The Southern Environmental Law Center plans to file suit against the rule, which "leaves any waterways vulnerable to pollution, fill, and destruction," said a spokesperson for the center. The revision was welcomed by the construction industry, which had complained the 2015 rule was too broad and could restrict projects. The new navigable waters rule lists four categories of waters that would be subject to federal jurisdiction: territorial seas and waters used in interstate or foreign commerce; certain tributaries; lakes and ponds; and wetlands that abut any of the other three types of waters. Wetlands must touch another navigable body of water to be considered under federal jurisdiction under the rule. In some cases, wetlands separated from waters by a constructed feature, such as a levee, might also be judged a federal responsibility. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) California Cities Fare Poorly in National Air Pollution Ranking Newly released nationwide rankings by the American Lung Association of cleanest U.S. cities had only one California city, Salinas, on its list of best cities for ozone levels, year round particle pollution. But even Salinas didn't make the top 25 for cleanest year-round particle pollution. California wasn't alone--the entire West Coast fared poorly. Out of hundreds of cities, the cleanest cities were clustered along the East coast and in mideast regions, becoming increasingly less dense west of Colorado. Only four western cities made the cleanest cities list--two of which are in Alaska. Meanwhile, West Coast cities dominated lists for worst ozone, and worst year-round particle pollution. Los Angles-Long Beach, Visalia, Bakersfield, Sacramento-Roseville, and San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad were top five for worst in ozone pollution levels. Bakersfield, Fresno-Madera-Hanford, Visalia, Los Angeles-Long Beach, and San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA were top 5 by year-round particle pollution, but fared slightly better in short-term particle pollution levels. CP&DR Coverage: Hearings Go Online Under Loosened Brown Act  Planning departments statewide have shifted their meetings and official hearings, including city council and planning commission meetings, online in order to comply with stay-at-home orders while planners carry on with business during the COVID crisis. While many departments had already broadcast public meetings via webcast and accepted public comment remotely, the Brown Act had required that official meetings take place in-person and be open to the public. Revised rules allow online meetings to proceed so long as the public has sufficient advance notification, requiring public agencies to "use sound discretion and reasonable efforts to adhere as closely as reasonable possible to the provisions of the Bagley-Keene Act and the Brown Act...in order to maximize transparancy and provide the public access to their meetings." Quick Hits & Updates  The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that San Joaquin Valley's groundwater sustainability plans are too optimistic about the availability of new supplies. Few plans focus on demand, and those that do give few details on their approach. According to PPI's independent analysis, a realistic plan to end the region's groundwater overdraft will entail fallowing at least 500,000 acres of farmland. A consultant with California High Speed Rail is under investigation by the FBI following reports that its executives retaliated against employees for bringing forth negative information about the firm. California High-Speed Rail Authority disclosed the investigation at a meeting of its Board of Directors where it separately approved a plan to help fund the modernization of Los Angeles Union Station. San Francisco, Inglewood, and Los Angeles are the biggest award recipients of the latest round of Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP) grants, worth up to $4.9 billion after matching federal, state, and local funds. BART will get a $107 million infusion for new rail cars. Antelope Valley was awarded $6.5 million for electric buses, and Inglewood Transit will direct $95 million towards an APM system. HCD released the State of California Draft 2020-2024 Federal Consolidated Plan for public comment, which has been updated to include placeholder information for potential CARES Act funds. Due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, HUD has allowed the Department an extension on submitting the Consolidated Plan until June 30. The San Francisco Planning Commission voted in favor of initiating the rezoning of Balboa Reservoir, a 17.6-acre property the city has been trying to build on since 1980. Virginia-based investment firm Avalon Bay designed and submitted a plan that includes over 1,000 homes, half of which would be affordable housing, and 150 units reserved for City College of San Francisco staff. LA Metro’s Crenshaw Line likely won't be up and running until late 2021--a year later than the expected opening date—wrote Metro CEO Phil Washington in a letter to stakeholders. Though the letter cites the project's complexity as a reason for delays, documents indicate that by Metro's own accounting, only 1 percent of construction has been completed since October 2019. As public transit ridership plunges amid the coronavirus pandemic, two major transit projects in the San Diego region are on hold. San Diego MTS announced a hold on ElevateSD, a $24 billion rail and bus extension, and SANDAG has suspended plans to release a highly anticipated $100 billion blueprint for modernizing the region's transportation system. Climate change has doubled the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires, according to an analysis led by Stanford University. Temperatures rose about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit statewide while precipitation dropped 30 percent since 1980, changes scientists say they can confidently attribute to climate change. The study noted, however, that actions to mitigate climate change can have a substantial impact down the road. California has approved over $500 million in tax-exempt financing for a high-speed train to Las Vegas, clearing a path for investors to sell bonds for the private rail project if they succeed in securing a similar bond from Nevada. The $600 million allocation - which can be leveraged into as much as $3.2 billion in unrated tax-exempt bonds - is 15 percent of California's annual bond allotment. San Diego's Planning Commission is hoping to harness the tiny house movement to quickly expand the city's housing stock without having to rely on taxpayer-subsidized homes. If the City Council agrees with the Planning Commission and approves the new law this spring, it wouldn't take effect in coastal areas until the Coastal Commission also gives its assent. Judges across California have upheld Project Roomkey, an initiative that places homeless people in empty hotels and motels to protect them from unchecked spread through encampments. In a narrow ruling, a judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the City of Norwalk to comply, ruling that on balance, the interests of the county in implementing the order outweighed any harm the city could suffer. San Diego officials are seeking to streamline approvals for new housing developments under a San Diego International Airport flight path. The new rules are designed to give developers greater certainty about what kinds of projects are allowed under a flight path by creating a special overlay zone where limits on the size of projects would account for airport rules that would typically require a City Council vote to override. HCD released a summary of the requirements that AB 686 added to Housing Element Law that local governments and interested stakeholders can use to understand the changes. The memo provides a review of the added fair housing program requirement (which started January 1, 2019), the Assessment of Fair Housing, and the sites inventory analysis for all housing elements due on or after January 1, 2021.

CP&DR Vol. 35 No. 4 April 2020

CP&DR Vol. 33 No. 4 April 2018

I logged into the New York Times the other day, doing my best to dodge the Great Bleach-Injection Debate of 2020, and was shocked and delighted to happen upon an article about an exquisite Los Angeles neighborhood that I somehow had never heard of.  Called "Belvedere Heights," it includes a perfect little main street with an unbroken row of independent stores, mixed use, low-rise buildings, and rich architectural details. There are bay windows, streetlamps, and balconies—and fire escapes! Display windows snuggle up against the sidewalk, and each building has only a single storefront, each with its own distinctive facade. Judging by the design, its heyday must have been in the 1920s, give or take a decade. (There are no street trees, though. Curious.) It seemed like it would be a cool place for me to check out, next time I’m able to check out someplace other than Walgreens. Alas, the New York Times section I was reading wasn’t the national section or the real estate section. It was the arts section. Belvedere Heights isn’t near downtown Los Angeles. It isn’t antique, and most definitely is not mixed use. It’s at Melody Ranch studio, in the Santa Clarita Valley community of Newhall. It was built in the past few months. And it’s used for one thing: it’s a set for a television show.  Nobody lives here. "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" is a new supernatural noir crime drama on Showtime, following up a 2016 rendition set in Victorian London. Noir being our endemic genre, a vintage Los Angeles location was a must. Detectives and demons alike will have a field day in their version of 1938. In one block alone, they’ll have plenty of places for mischief to play out: "empty nightclub, a shuttered cinema, a vacant rooming house." The show features undead antagonists like a shape-shifting succubus, but its themes also cover real monsters, such as the development of the Los Angeles freeway system and the violence it inflicted on minority communities.  (If the story sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen a version of it in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". "Penny Dreadful" replaces toons with actual people.) The supernatural elements provide "a fun way, a really entertaining way to tell the story of the building of a freeway," said the show’s co-producer Michael Aguilar. Fair point. In a show about ghouls, vampires, and murders, its commentary on Los Angeles’s built environment is, perhaps, the element that should give us the biggest fright of all.  New York Times reporter Alexis Soloski notes that the establishments along "Penny Dreadful’s” street are "relics of a past that never quite existed." But that’s not true at all. Neighborhoods like it absolutely could have existed, most likely somewhere in what is now downtown Los Angeles’s Financial District, which is the poster child for the notorious federal urban renewal programs of the 1960s. Old photos (such as this and these ) are shocking: the neighborhood of Bunker Hill once included low-rise mixed use Victorian and post-Victorian buildings (including some that were probably dilapidated and probably home to not the savoriest of characters). Then came HUD-funded bulldozers , and up went the high-rises, concrete plazas, and parking lots. Or, as the show suggests, maybe it was just covered up by the 110 Freeway.  The material destruction was one thing. We can’t un-demolish the past. The regulatory carnage is another matter.  Take a look at the photos ( here and here ) of Belvedere Heights and consider everything that, with too few exceptions, state and local regulations forbid today (or, if not forbidden, are rendered prohibitively expensive, in part by regulations):  Storefronts hugging the sidewalk. Gotta have setbacks .  Sidewalks with curbs. Gotta have those parkways .  Seismic codes’ Public Enemy No. 1.  Second stories. What’s going on up there? A building should do only one thing!  Third stories. Hold my sherry. I think I’m going to faint... Bars (you can’t see them in the photo, but it’s noir, so you know they’re there). Liquor licenses are literally harder to get than marijuana licenses. Attached buildings. Gotta make space for parking — and curb cuts.  A two-lane, two-way street. Most commercial zoning correlates intensity of use with traffic capacity, ensuring that the busiest retail environments will be the least pedestrian-friendly. Timely infill development. Not with bureaucratic delay and CEQA suits.  Architectural details. California has notoriously high construction costs, due in part to some contracting regulations.  Low-cost housing. Development of new affordable housing costs up to $1 million per unit.  Narrow lots. Not illegal, but often financially infeasible, partly because regulations elevate the cost of development and, therefore, developments have to be large to pencil out. "Assembly" is the name of that game.  Independent businesses. When you add up all the regulations above, it’s pretty hard for mom and pop to hang a shingle anywhere. (Never mind. Shingles aren’t allowed either. Want a billboard ? That’s no problem.)  I have to give mad props, no pun intended, to "Penny Dreadful’s” art directors. They have, with paint and plywood, created an object lesson in what is wrong with modern-day urbanism.  Behold Belvedere Heights's small storefronts and shared walls, nesting comfortably side-by-side-by-side. Compare them to the mega mixed-users, with five stories of wood on top of massive concrete podiums and underground garages, that take up entire city blocks and look like beached cruise ships. They technically engage the sidewalk with ground-floor retail (usually a City Target or a Ross Dress-for-Less), but they also tend to be hideous and oppressive. There’s not a commercial strip in California that couldn’t accommodate this type of development if it was allowed to (maybe minus the bricks). The only chief constraint is parking, in terms of number of spaces and curb cuts. Well, we can figure that out too. Maybe it’s a shared parking scheme. Maybe it’s alleyways. Maybe it’s diagonal curbside parking. Maybe it’s no parking at all.  In the real Santa Clarita, the closest thing to a main street is the Home Depot parking lot. If I had to choose between living in Belvedere Heights and the outer ’burbs, I think I’d try my luck with the succubi. This is what fiction is for, of course. Beyond its escapist frights, "Penny Dreadful" is an allegory for race relations and sociopathy. It’s showing us what we ought not do. But it’s also showing us something we ought to do — something we ought to build. But, like the proverbial debonair vampire, the true horrors do not lie on the surface. It’s easy enough to see a high-rise or to speed down a freeway and think that things are OK. But the accretion of laws, regulations, and social conventions have made it all but impossible to revive our better angels. Belvedere Heights reminds us that, to create great places, we first have to envision them. Of course, many people, including planners and developers, have been trying valiantly to undo the damage of postwar 20th century urbanism. They’ve made progress. But, to use an unavoidable metaphor, there is no silver bullet that will erase, revise, and repeal all the bad regulations all at once. My emotional reaction to Belvedere Heights tells me that we have to keep at it.  Like most things in a noir drama, Belvedere Heights will end up dead, dismantled, and recycled for lumber and props until the next period piece comes along. If only we could figure out a way to banish more of our demons and bring this urban fantasy to life.

Covid-19 Crisis Set to Cost Cities $6.7 Billion over Two Years  Even if stay-at-home orders are lifted by June 1, California cities will lose at least $6.7 billion over the next two years according to an estimate compiled by the League of California Cities. That number is likely to be far worse. Gov. Gavin Newsom and public health officials have signaled that bans on large gatherings and travel will likely extend well into summer. Already, cities are reporting budget shortfalls, prompting layoffs, furloughs and cuts to basic services. Of the $5.8 billion that went to California in the last federal aid package, most went to counties. Only Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose saw any relief money, and even they aren't allowed to use money for anything other than coronavirus-related expenses. The League of California Cities asked Newsom and the state legislature last week to help cities cover budget shortfalls. Newsom plans to unveil a new budget proposal next month. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Ballot Measures for Local Funding Slumped in March  According to a recent analysis of the March 3 election, over half of local measures on the ballot didn't pass muster among local voters, who, collectively, turned out in record numbers for a spring primary election. Among the 293 measures were 150 school bond measures including 122 school bond measures seeking a total of $17.4 billion. There were 89 city, county, and special district fiscal measures, of which 45 were add-on sales tax measures and 27 parcel taxes, substantially more than ever before in a spring primary election. The number of measures increased year-over-year from 89 in June 2016 to 111 in June 2018. Greater numbers did not translate into greater success, however. Only 96 passed, a departure from the much higher passage rates in years prior. School bonds in particular fared poorly. Over half of the measures weren't even close to passage. Forty-five passed, authorizing a total of $6.636 in school construction bonds out of the total $17.4 billion requested. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Developer Sues Sacramento County over Climate Action Plan  In an unusual role reversal, a developer is filing suit against a county government for not being environmentally sensitive enough with a project. Tsakopoulos Investments is suing Sacramento County for approving Mather South without a climate action plan in the final EIR. In the suit, Tsakopoulos attorneys note that the county has never adopted climate change significance thresholds that could provide a point of reference in an EIR for a project like Mather South. As approved, Mather South would be an 848-acre project with up to 3,522 residential units, a 28-acre environmental education campus with 200 family units, a 21-acre research and development park and 21 acres of retail. As the developer for nearby Jackson Township, a 1,391-acre project that is currently undergoing its own EIR review, Tsakopoulos has an interest in ensuring Mather South is sharing environmental impact costs. Tsakopouls is asking for a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to keep Mather South from moving forward AND set aside its approvals and EIR. Housing Advocates Identify Shortfall of 1.3 Million Affordable Homes  The California Housing Partnership has released a report that shows the depth of housing need across California. The report describes a rapid increase in rents that in combination with a dramatic decline in state and federal funding has led to a shortage of 1.3 million affordable homes. Despite the 2017 Housing Package, state funding remains well below 2012 levels; at the federal level, tax reform brought about a 13 percent dip in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit housing production and preservation. Median rent in California has increased 40 percent since 2000 while median renter household income has only increased by 8 percent, and 79 percent of extremely low-income households are paying more than half of their income on housing costs compared to just 0.4 percent of above moderate-income households. Meanwhile, California spends nearly four times more on homeowners than renters. Quick Hits & Updates San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the appointment of Eric Shaw as Director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. He replaces Acting Deputy Director of Housing Dam Adams, who had served since July 2019. Mostly recently, Shaw served as an advisor to the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services where he coordinated community planning and engagement activities associated with recovery from the 2018 Camp Fire. Prior to his work at Cal OES, Shaw was the Director of the Office of Planning for Washington, D.C. Following Oakland's "Slow Streets" announcement, San Francisco's MTA has announced its own slow streets program. Phase 1 announced 12 candidate streets up for consideration for the program, which allows for local vehicle access and maintains usual right-of-way laws. Friends of the Los Angeles River co-founder Lewis MacAdams died of complications related to Parkinson's disease. As the group's first president, MacAdams successfully lobbied the federal government for $1.6 billion to restore the LA river. Friends of the Los Angeles River has grown to 40,000 supporters, and a 7-foot-high monument of MacAdams' likeness overlooks the river's edge in a park that bears his name. The Los Angeles Department of City Planning released the framework for a new program that would simplify the approval process for sit-down restaurants seeking to serve alcoholic beverages. The proposed Restaurant Beverage Program would shorten the time for city approvals from months to a matter of weeks. The program would allow qualifying restaurants to receive over-the-counter approvals and pay approximately $4,000 for a permit to serve alcohol—significantly less than the permit’s current cost of $13,000. These measures are in line with Los Angeles’s broader efforts to help local and family-owned businesses prepare for the economic recovery ahead. Despite coronavirus concerns and nearly empty trains, Caltrain has no plans to back away from ambitious plans to electrify and double the size of its fleet by 2022. A proposed half-cent sales tax continues to wind its way through the approval process. If passed, the measure would generate $100 million in cash per year, which Caltrain would use to expand service from 92 trains a day to 168 trains a day by 2022. An analysis of climate planning documents from 23 California cities details competing policy agendas as cities have predominantly focused on mitigation strategies rather than an integrated mitigation and adaptation plan. The Mineta Transportation Institute findings suggest promising steps that both municipal and state governments can take to support integrated actions at the local level. Following years of dispute and gridlock, industry leaders, environmentalists, and community leaders came together to develop a new "transition zones” to both promote development and ward off gentrification the San Diego neighborhood of Barrio Logan . The plan involves identifying four land uses for the five-block transition zone: "maritime commercial," "community commercial," "neighborhood commercial" and residential. Faster Bay Area is on hold indefinitely amid uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus. An affirmative vote, which would have been cast this coming November, would have levied a once-cent sales tax to generate $100 billion over 40 years. Faster Bay Area will have to go to the sidelines until a future election yet to be determined, the three groups behind the initiative said in a letter. The West Hollywood Planning Commission voted to eliminate on-site parking requirements for 100 percent affordable housing developments. The vote is in line with new state law AB 1763, a directive that requires only .5 spaces per unit if the building is within a half mile of a major transit stop. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has begun an eight year decommissioning process after a radioactive leak caused the plant to cease production eight years ago. Environmental hazards will remain, however, until a suitable location for the plant's radioactive nuclear waste becomes available.

The COVID-19 crisis has shuttered council chambers and hearing rooms across the state. But the show goes on — electronically.

State Recommends Imperiled Joshua Tree for Federal Protection California's iconic Joshua tree is a step closer to permanent protected status after securing a recommendation from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Last year, the federal government denied protected status under federal law, partly because state and local programs already provide the trees some protection. Conservation groups are pushing for more protection: the hardy trees, belonging to the yucca family, thrive in the Mojave Desert's arid conditions, but climate models consistently project rising temperatures and increasingly erratic precipitation patterns that would push Joshua Trees and many other native California species into higher elevations. And the department's recommendation raises an inviting possibility: as the first species under consideration primarily on the grounds of climate change forecasts, Joshua Trees could set a precedent for other species that will be driven to higher elevations to avoid rising temperatures. It would also throw up another permitting roadblock for development projects that would remove western Joshua trees. In Housing Case, Court Upholds State Power over Charter Cities  The California Supreme Court declined to hear Anderson v. City of San Jose , bolstering the state’s authority to use the Surplus Land Act to compel charter cities to prioritize affordable housing on their surplus land. The appeals court decision, which overturned a Santa Clara County Superior Court ruling, referenced recent case law and legislation illustrating the scope of California’s housing crisis as grounds to demonstrate that the state’s interest in providing affordable housing with surplus government property is more substantial than identifiable municipal interests, therefore clearing the bar set for statewide preemption. The decision may bring clarity to similar cases. In 2017, for example, Huntington Beach prevailed in a lawsuit with arguments that closely track those made in Anderson v. City of San Jose, in which the city claimed its right as a charter city to flout state-mandated goals. That clarity and the fact the Surplus Land Act was expanded for local agencies in the fall through AB 1486 could be a bellwether for more affordable housing in the future. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Detailed Report Enumerates Effect of Sea Level Rise on Bay Area Infrastructure  An alarming 700-page report on sea level rise commissioned by a consortium of state and Bay Area agencies warns that "the Bay Area is at a tipping point, poised between a growing body of information... and the beginnings of irreversible impacts" from rising sea levels. The report is based on a rise of 48 inches, a level supported by a previous study in which that level could arrive as early as 2060. The findings highlight specific aspects of the approaching threat to how the region functions. The access points to four major bridges would be affected; runways at San Francisco and Oakland airports would be largely under water; nearly 31,000 jobs planned for north San Jose would need to be relocated; and 78 miles of protected bicycle trails would be off-limits. "All these different aspects of the region are interconnected," said Dana Brechwald, who oversaw the study's preparation. "The solutions aren't going to be one size fits all." Quick Hits & Updates  After weeks of sparring over how many hotel rooms the city should lease and who should move into them, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city's board of supervisors have agreed to lease more than 8,000 hotel rooms to house the city's homeless and frontline workers. The emergency ordinance, which received unanimous approval, requires fulfillment by April 26. Officials worry San Francisco's progress from strict shelter-in-place policies will unravel if COVID-19 takes hold in the city's homeless population. Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, the Department of Housing and Community Development's Asset Management and Compliance Branch is providing guidance related to asset management and compliance functions for projects in HCD's portfolio. Landlords and property managers can find information regarding relief requests, reporting requirements, compliance monitoring and COVID-19 response best practices. The guidance will be in effect beginning April 16 and re-evaluated on a continual basis. HCD released an updated draft of Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process Guidelines. The draft incorporates new legislation from 2019 and technical clarifications to the initial document created under SB 35, which requires the availability of a simplified approval process for developments in localities that have not yet made sufficient progress towards their RHNA requirements. The public comment period ends May 18. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced the closure of 74 miles of city streets to nonessential car traffic. City officials hope to make it easier and safer for walkers, bikers, and runners to practice social distancing. Oakland has also opted to keep its nearly 6,000 acres of parks open. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will withdraw a proposed rule that would have protected sage-grouse populations in California and Nevada under the Endangered Species Act. The decision impacts roughly 3,000 birds and the birds' habitat, which 4.5 million acres of high-desert along the California-Nevada border. Redwood City is a step closer to ferry service after the Water Emergency Transportation Authority approved entering into a memorandum of understanding with the City and Port of Redwood City. The route is backed by the Bay Area Council as a means to decongest Highway 101, along with currently ongoing projects like building a carpool lane and electrifying Caltrain. Under a new measure being promoted by a Santa Ana coalition, apartment landlords would have to cap rent increases at 3 percent, applied retroactively since November 2017, and landlords would not be able to evict teachers or students during the school year to bring in another tenant or to sell the property. The law would establish a new rent control board to enforce the new measures. Pleasanton's proposed Costco development was hit by a second CEQA lawsuit from Pleasanton Citizens for Responsible Growth. This follows a previous lawsuit that set the project back for over a year of additional environmental analysis and public review as part of a settlement over a lawsuit in 2018. Businesses along the Port of San Diego tidelands are requesting the agency waive rents for 90-days--or face financial ruin, they say. The roughly 800 tenants are largely in the hospitality and retail sectors, including restaurants, hotels, harbor tours, sportfishing, and yacht clubs/marinas. The port is anticipating $30 million in lost revenue -- many rents are sales-based -- and faces the prospect of much more if it waives minimum rent requirements.