Articles

A San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District permitting process for dairies has been rejected by the Fifth District Court of Appeal because the district did not conduct an adequate assessment of public health impacts.

A 7-year-old City of Los Angeles ordinance prohibiting new off-site signs has been upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the argument that the ban combined with a city contract permitting advertising at city-owned bus stops violated the First Amendment.

Not since Lyndon Johnson more than 40 years ago has any president come into office with anything like the sky-high expectations about reforming urban policy that Barack Obama brings. But the various federal policies related to growth and development have many constituencies – urban, suburban, and rural – and it is not yet clear that Obama can meld them in a meaningful way.

The development of affordable housing is inherently difficult. Projects typically require multiple funding sources, face neighborhood opposition, and are closely watched by both skeptics and state housing officials.

Yet California's need for additional affordable housing is undeniable, despite the crash in real estate prices. So CP&DR shares this look at three different projects to offer lessons for anyone involved in providing housing affordable to people of modest means: a crime-ridden, market-rate condominium complex that the Rialto Redevelopment Agency rehabilitated as affordable apartments; a new, eye-catching project in an industrial part of San Jose that serves 218 households making less than half of median income; and a project in Contra Costa County that overcame what  appeared to be imminent failure.

There is a new gold rush in California. Rather than extracting minerals from the ground, the new prospectors are hoping to exploit California's abundant sunshine and wind.

From the southern Cascade Mountains of far northern California to the desert along the Mexico border, utilities, start-up companies and entrepreneurs are proposing scores of large-scale solar thermal, photovoltaic and wind projects to generate electricity.

Although gigantic state budget deficits are threatening to stall thousands of public works projects in California, one major effort appears to remain on track: Courthouse construction. The $5 billion program for replacing, rehabilitating or expanding 41 courthouses has its own funding source in the form of civil filing fees and criminal penalties.

The City of Riverside's plan for spending $6 million in federal aid for foreclosures promises participation in nearly every category of rescue listed by the the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including rehabilitation, readying properties for sale to homeowners, and even demolishing properties that are too far gone and selling the land to Habitat for Humanity, the volunteer home building group.

Five million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

This is the target – at least for now – that is likely to drive
"smart growth"-style land use planning in California over the next few years. It's the tentative reduction target that the California Air Resources Board has assigned to the land use sector in order to help meet the state's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals by 2020.

A mobile home park owner in San Luis Obispo County has won a state court order for a new county hearing on a rent increase. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Manufactured Home Communities is due a new hearing because it did not have the opportunity to cross-examine tenants who testified against the proposed rent increases at an earlier county hearing.

A property owner cannot participate in a California Coastal Commission appeal process for years and then assert that the Commission was prohibited from considering the appeal because it missed a procedural deadline years earlier, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court rejected a Pacific Palisades landowner's contention that the Commission had lost jurisdiction over an appeal of the landowner's three-lot development because the Commission did not conduct a hearing within 49 days of receiving an appeal in 1999.

An environmental impact report for a proposed quarry in Madera County has been thrown out by an appellate court, which found the document's consideration of water, traffic, noise and cumulative impacts to be inadequate. The court also determined a water supply assessment is needed for a mitigation measure that could require the quarry to connect surrounding property owners with a water system.

A state appellate court has upheld the Coastal Commission's handling of a housing project appeal. The court ruled that although the Commission did not comply precisely with the state open meeting law's requirements, the Commission came close enough and did not portray an intent to avoid the law.

Monterey County has been ordered to pay more than $244,000 in attorney fees and costs in a California Public Records Act case involving a long-controversial development proposal in Carmel Valley.

Sometimes, email is no substitute for snail mail. In a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) case from Contra Costa County, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled that notification of a trial court's judgment via email did not trigger the 60-day deadline for filing an appeal.