With essentially the entire state talking about — and arguing over — Senate Bill 827, Sen. Scott Wiener  released  Version 3.0 yesterday with some major updates.   SB 827  rose meteorically from the Statehouse the first week of January with a bold proposal to up-zone vast swaths of urban California in order to alleviate the state’s housing crisis. Designed to promote transit oriented infill development, the original bill defined transit zones broadly, allowed overly large buildings, and seemed to override local zoning. Critics also characterized it as a blank check to market-rate developers, without regard for concerns about displacement and social justice.   History will judge whether Wiener went too aggressive too soon. In an  interview  with CP&DR six weeks ago, Weiner insisted that he always intended to amend SB 827 and that the first version was just a start. His  first revision  suggested that he’d taken much of the feedback to heart, and the third version – downscaled like a high-rise in the gunsights of neighborhood opponents – does more of the same.   Wiener’s new provisions include the following:   Affordable Housing Requirements:  Previous versions of SB 827 allowed cities to impose inclusionary requirements or other regulations to promote affordable, subsidized housing. The new version requires inclusionary housing, even if a city does not already have such a provision. Weiner has based the inclusionary requirements on existing Density Bonus Law.  Restrict Demolitions : Responding to concerns about displacement, SB 827 would forbid demolition of any building that has had an Ellis Act eviction within the previous five years.  No Net Loss : Projects built under SB 827 may not decrease the stock of affordable units; developers must offer a right-of-return to any tenants displaced by construction.  Height Restrictions : Some critics of SB 827 published doctored photos showing endless banks of high-rises, apparently lifted from photos of Hong Kong or Shanghai, superimposed on California cities. In reality, SB 827 allowed buildings of up to eight stories (possibly more, with density bonuses), but that has been cut to 55 feet around rail and ferry stations, with no mandatory height increases around bus lines. The revision still allows for increased density and decreased parking.  Redefining Qualifying Bus Stops : The original SB 827 defined “transit” so broadly as to cover vast swaths of many cities. Critics contended not only that it would lead to overdevelopment but also noted an important nuance of bus service: service levels can change. The revision defines headways that qualify.   Delayed Implementation : The provisions of SB 827 would not go into effect until 2021.  Parking Minimums and Transit Passes : The revision fiddles with parking minimums to allow cities to require a certain amount of parking beyond a quarter-mile radius of a major transit stop. It also requires developers to provide residents with transit passes — possibly a strong enticement for them to use transit, but also an expensive amenity for developers.  Square Footage : Projects must dedicate at least two-thirds of their square footage to residential uses.   The big question remaining is whether stakeholders who were turned off by the original bill — some of them calling it tone-deaf, some of them calling it much worse — can be swayed. While SB 827 has had vocal supporters, including individuals and organizations in the YIMBY movement and  planning scholars  from around the country, it has also roused serious organized opposition from social justice organizations, tenants rights groups, and even environmental groups such as the presumably pro-infill  Sierra Club . The city councils of both Los Angeles and San Francisco  (where Wiener was a city/county supervisor) have voted on and proclaimed their opposition to the bill.   Typically, bills get negotiated quietly in Sacramento, among lawmakers and only the most interested stakeholders. Very few receive this sort of public attention, so it remains to be seen whether this more nuanced version of SB 827 will drive the discussion forward or simply give the sides more to howl about. As well, it remains to be seen whether Weiner’s staunchest YIMBY supporters will weaken their resolve in the face of what could be considered watered-down bill.   SB 827 is scheduled to receive its first public hearing April 17. This article has been updated since is original publication.

The American Planning Association announced five National Planning Excellence Awards and sixteen National Planning Achievement Awards , six of which went to people or programs in California. The late Margarita Piel McCoy won the Planning Excellence Award for Pioneers. She was the first woman appointed to a full ventured position in planning at a major university and the first department chair, at Cal Poly-PomonaT The award for Best Practice-Gold went to the Spanish Planning Committee (SPC) for the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. The SPC consists of 16 planners who routinely review and translate documents and provide live interpretation services during public hearings and community meetings. The Best Practice-Silver went to San Francisco’s Accessory Dwelling Unit and Unit Legalization Program. Because of the San Francisco program, ADUs cost on average one-third of a typical unit in new development, and ADU owners can recoup the costs in a few years. Since March 2018, 1,200 new ADUs were in the housing pipelines. Sea-Level Marin Adaptation Response Team from the Marin County Community Development Agency won Gold for Environmental Planning for a board game and community outreach related to climate change. San Francisco’s Street Air won Gold for a Grassroots Initiative, which was led by three high school students that studies street design and air pollution levels on Columbus Avenue in downtown SF that led to a short documentary film. The City of San Jose was awarded Silver for its Public Outreach in the creation of a video tutorial, "Designing an Addition to Your Single-Family Residence.”  Environmentalists Sue Trump Administration to Protect Waterways The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the Trump Administration for violating the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that was passed more than nine years ago by Congress. The Act requires the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to draw up plans for designated waterways that won’t impede water flows, protects plants and animals from harm, and provides recreational opportunities. About 100 miles of these waterways are in Inyo, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. According to the Act, the managing agency must develop a plan for managing the rivers within three years. The lawsuit is focusing on eight rivers in Southern California and claims the agencies “unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed” compliance with the law. The following waterways all received wild and scenic designations from Congress: Amargosa River in Inyo and San Bernardino counties; Owens Headwater and Cottonwood Creek in Inyo, Piru Creek in Ventura County; North Fork of San Jacinto River, Fuller Mill Creek, and Palm Canyon Creek in Riverside County; and Bautista Creek near Hemet. U.S. Sues California to Lift Restrictions on Sale of Federal Lands The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit in Sacramento suing to reverse a state law that seeks to keep the federal government from selling any of the 45.8 million acres of property it controls in the state. The lawsuit is the latest effort from the federal government to roll back California’s strict environmental protections as the Trump administrations plans to open more lands in the west for mining, drilling, and other interests. In October, after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced plans to cut protections for 10 national monuments in the state, California legislators passed a law, the Public Lands Protection Act, that gives the state lands commission the power to block the sale, donation, or exchange of federal lands. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement announcing the lawsuit, “The Constitution empowers the federal government- not state legislatures- to decide when and how federal lands are sold.” However, author of the bill Sen. Benjamin Allen (D- Santa Monica), argues the law didn't actually prevent any sales, just that the state wouldn't recognize the deed of sale as legal unless the Lands Commission approved it. Allen said, “We’re not trying to seize the land, we’re not trying to take the land. Ninety-nine percent of the land sales the federal government wants to do will be just fine. What we want to do is protect against the more extreme cases that have been threatened.” Last month, the Trump administration sued to block three California state laws saying they were an unconstitutional attempt to thwart enforcement of federal immigration laws. Study Lauds Fruitvale Station TOD for Promoting Social Equity Researchers from UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative issued a study contending, among other findings, that the Fruitvale BART station is a prime example of successful transit-oriented development without resulting in gentrification . In the mid- 1990s the Spanish-speaking community development organization, Unity Council, opposed the plans to place a parking garage adjacent to the Fruitvale station and after a decade of debate, ultimately ended up taking over the project’s development. The transit village now is home to a charter high school, senior center, public library, pediatric clinic, union office, Clinica de la Raza, restaurants, housing, and a weekly farmers market. The study from UCLA identified 12 other census tracts in the Bay Area and 12 elsewhere in California with similar demographic composition, household income, and average rent in 2000 before the transit village was constructed. Using the census data, they looked at how those neighborhoods changed in 15 years. Fruitvale saw higher growth in household incomes compared to similar neighborhoods in both the Bay Area and the state, along with more residents graduating from high school, and getting bachelors degrees. Over the 15 year period, Fruitvale lost only one percent of its Latino population, four percent of its black residents, less than one percent of its white residents, while gaining six percent of new Asian residents. Rents in Fruitvale increased higher than the Bay Area on average, with an 83 percent increase, compared to 71 percent in similar Bay Area neighborhoods, and 66 percent in similar California neighborhoods outside the area. Cap-and-Trade Annual Report  California Climate Investments released its 2018 Annual Report to the Legislature of Cap-and-Trade Auction Proceeds. The Annual Report describes the status of funded programs and lists the projects funded. The report highlights AB 398 which clarifies the continuation of the Cap-and-Trade Program post 2020 and that the Legislature has appropriated nearly $6.1 billion to State agencies from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The document highlights the thirty programs that received monies from the fund. The report highlights projects such as the Urban Forestry Outreach in Imperial Valley and the UC Cooperative Extension to Technical Assistance to Farmers in Fresno County. Nearly $615 million or 31 percent of cumulative implemented funds have been awarded to projects located in disadvantaged communities and 51 percent of funds (over $1 billion) to projects benefiting disadvantaged communities. San Diego Initiates Update of Parks Master Plan City of San Diego officials launched a three-year effort to update the parks master plan for the first time since the 1940s. The goal for the plan will follow the “smart growth” shift of adding density to existing neighborhoods rather than allowing sprawl outwards. The new plan will re-evaluate how many acres of parkland each neighborhood needs and to distribute parklands more equitably across communities and income levels. The definition of park will likely be loosened to include urban plazas, hiking trails, and some open space areas. City officials say San Diego has approximately 6,200 acres of regional parks and beaches, 3,000 acres of community and neighborhood parks, and an additional 27,000 acres of preserved open space areas. The city also has 57 recreation centers, 17 off-leash dog areas, 13 aquatic complexes, seven skateparks, and three municipal golf courses. However, a recent survey from the Trust for Pubic Land found 23 percent of residents live farther than a 10-minute walk from a local park or recreational facility. Quick Hits & Updates The San Francisco Planning Commission is slated to certify the EIR for the Central SoMa Plan on April 12. The Commission could then immediately vote to approve the plan and recommend its adoption to the Board of Supervisors, but an attempted appeal is likely to occur. The plan, as proposed, raises the proposed height limits for numerous neighborhood parcels, add an additional 7,500 units of housing, and enough office space for an additional 45,000 workers. The California Transportation Commission has adopted its 2018 State Transportation Improvement Program , which will fund over $3 billion in transportation improvements, including new capacity projects over the next five years. More than $2 billion of these funds come from the stabilization of gas tax revenue from the Road Repair and Accountability Act. California Transportation Commission also adopted the 2018 State Highway Operation and Protection program. The four-year program dedicated almost $18 billion for repairs, safety improvements and operational improvements to the State Highway System. A coalition of citizen groups in Santa Ana filed paperwork last week to put rent control on the city’s November ballot. If the filing complies with the city requirements, Santa Ana will become the seventh city in California, and the fifth in Southern California, where citizens are circulating petitions seeking to limit rent hikes and requiring justification for issuing eviction notices to tenants. Statewide, a ballot drive to repeal the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Act is also underway. The City of Santa Ana has created a panel of landlord and tenant advocates to work together on tenant protections. The proposed “Community Preservation, Rent Stabilization and Renters’ Rights Act” would limit annual rent hikes to the rate of inflation or five percent, whichever is lower. The San Francisco Federal Credit Union filed a lawsuit with San Francisco Superior Court saying SFMTA failed to regulate taxi medallions by allowing Uber and Lyft to take over the taxi business. The credit union agreed to finance the sale of taxi medallions in 2009 in cooperation with SFMTA. The suit is seeking $28 million in damages from the city, claiming that the medallions are now worthless.  A Los Angeles County auditor had a critical review  of the fiscal management of the LA Homeless Services Authority. The review found that the authority’s finance operation is understaffed, lacks management oversight and pays its bills too slowly. The homeless authority, which was formed in the 1990s, currently administers about $100 million in funds and is expected to raise about $355 million annually from the quarter-cent sales tax approved last year. LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas filed a motion asking for a report from top officials on “relevant structural adjustments necessary… to improve the outcomes and accountability of Measure H funds.” The Anaheim City Council approved , 7-0, new rules for permit parking in residential neighborhoods. The changes include shortening the application process to convert a neighborhood to permit-only street parking, addressing concerns that the program favored homeowners over renters, and preventing spillover issues that push cars from permitted streets to nearby neighborhoods. Any city street will now be eligible for permitting. Parking permits will cost $30 for two years, after which the permit will need to be renewed. Each household can purchase up to 100 guest permits each calendar year for $1 each. Homeowners in Montecito must hold off on additions or rebuilding until FEMA draws a “recovery map” for the area. The owners of 350 homes that were destroyed or badly damaged early January have been advised by the county not to spend money on rebuilding plans until FEMA finishes their work. The study is based on LIDAR data – remote sensing imagery collected by air shortly before the natural disaster- that will help delineate the boundaries of “hazard zones” in Montecito and Carpinteria. Within the hazard zones, FEMA will show the elevations of floodwaters, marking how high the water is expected to rise during a 100-year rainfall. Preparing the maps will likely take three to four months, according to FEMA officials. A three-judge panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned a Los Angeles County Superior Court that would have prevented demolition of a 1960s modernist bank building to make space for a planned Frank Gehry-designed mixed-use project on the western edge of Hollywood. The court confirmed the city council’s decision to “approve a project that meets the city’s objectives." One of the project’s opponents also declared victory, saying the ruling will force the council to rescind its November 2016 decision to approve the project- and then carry out a formal review of a planned lane closure. Cannabis technology company American Green bought the old ghost town of Nipton for $5 million last year, and sold it to Delta International Oil & Gas for $7.7 million for exploratory drilling. Phoenix-based American Green said, “Buying and building towns is very cash intensive. Up until now, the cost of attracting capital has been very expensive for our company.” The goal is to create an 80-acre cannabis-themed resort on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

It’s often been argued – in these pages as well as elsewhere – that one of the struggles in California planning is the struggle to apply suburban standards to an increasingly urban society. And you just knew that sooner or later this underlying issue was going to come up in calculating school impact fees.

Marking a first for Senate Bill 35, a break-through-the-jams housing statute enacted last year, a homebuilder earlier this month invoked the law to both bypass the California Environmental Quality Act and speed up the approval process for a 260-unit rental complex in Berkeley. Half the units in the 1900 Fourth Street development are reserved for low- to-moderate-income households, far beyond the city’s inclusionary requirement of 13 affordable units. The developer is WBI, a subsidiary of Danville-based Blake Griggs Properties. Sponsored by State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), SB 35 exempts projects from both CEQA and local land-use laws for projects that meet at least one of two conditions: In communities that have already built required number of affordable units, projects set aside 10 percent of units for low- and moderate-income households (those earning 80 percent of the area or less of area median income (AMI). In cities that have not yet built their “fair share,” 50 percent of the units are to be set aside for the same category of renters. Additionally, construction workers must be paid prevailing wages. The project is the latest of many that have run the gauntlet of Berkeley land-use politics, local opposition consistently leads to the rejection or down-sizing of both commercial and residential projects. Subjecting conforming projects to CEQA review is par for the course in Berkeley, according to lawyer Jennifer Hernandez, a partner at Holland & Knight who represents the developer. “There are no ministerial approvals in Berkeley,” she said. The city required the developer of 1900 Fourth to prepare an EIR, even though the proposed housing conformed to existing ordinances, and did not need to be down-sized or otherwise changed. Local anti-growth groups latched onto the alleged remnants of Indian artifacts in the soil as the means to bring CEQA into the development dispute. Activist groups like Indians Organizing for a Change claimed construction would disrupt ancient shellmounds, which were funerary towers built by ancestors of the Ohlone Indian Tribe. The remains of more than 300 mounds, some of them 20 feet tall, were built as early as 3700 BC. After testing the subsurface for shellmound remains, including trenching, the construction site did not overlay any shellmounds, according to Berkeley planning consultant Mark Rhoades, a consultant to the developerThose findings were included in the 2016 draft EIR, although Indian representatives remain unconvinced Facing the force of SB 35, the city announced on March 8 it was fast-tracking the approval of the development, officially starting the 180-day countdown to approval, as required in the statute. Other components of the project include 27,500-square-feet shopping center with a restaurant, a 7,000-square-foot park, and a 1,300-square-foot community center. Indian representative Vincent Medina Jr. said he was “surprised and taken aback” by the city’s decision to go forward with the housing. Speaking to Berkeleyside, a local news site, Medina said he found the move “deeply unsettling … that our burial spaces, our sacred sites are not protected or respected by people who want to make a profit on these places.” Hernandez, for her part, she said she was impressed by the muscle in SB 35: the city has already scheduled meetings involving multiple departments to iron out traffic-circulation and other details necessary for final project approval. “The clock is ticking and the city has been very cooperative,” she said, referring to the 180-day deadline for project approval required under the new state law. The use of SB 35 to bypass both CEQA and local ordinances has the potential to become a popular toll for home builders across the state that previously have hit roadblocks of zoning restrictions, hostile neighborhood groups, or both. Technically, SB 35 is applicable to the great majority of California municipalities. According to a SB 35 Statewide Determination Summary, prepared by the California League of Cities, only 13 cities or counties statewide had approved or built their share of affordable units according to the Regional Housing Needs Assessments (RHNA). “It is not surprising that the (summary) includes nearly every city and county in California,” says the League of Cities report. “Because state formula-generated housing need numbers have always ignored actual market conditions restrictive local zoning and the loss of affordable housing funds due to the termination of redevelopment agencies.”

Few symbols of the tech economy are more palpable or more massive than the Apple Corporation’s new headquarters, an enormous aluminum-clad torus that made landfall on the northern edge of Cupertino recently. Few symbols of the consequences of the tech economy are more palpable or more massive than Vallco Shopping Mall, a moribund 50-acre shopping center, just the other side of Interstate 280 from Apple. A standard-issue 1970s mall, once replete with Ice Capades, Orange Julius, May Co., and mountains of parking, Vallco has been wasting away roughly as long as the iTunes store has been in business. Developers have eyed the site for years, considering it an ideal location for redevelopment — in a city at the epicenter of California’s housing crisis, where an average two-bedroom goes for over $3,330. Due in large part to community opposition, redevelopment of the site has proceeded at a speeds more reminiscent of dial-up modems than 4G wireless. Developer Sand Hill Property Co. bought the property four years ago and proposed a mixed-use development for the site called Vallco Town Center. Sand Hill placed a measure on the 2016 Cupertino ballot that, if passed, would have enacted zoning to accommodate its proposed the project. Opponents put a competing measure on the ballot essentially calling for the downzoning of the entire site. Both measured failed, leaving stakeholders and the developer to prepare for a protracted battle. Last month, though, Sand Hill revealed a new proposal for a mixed use development with 2,400 housing units, two million square feet of office space, and the imprimatur of celebrity architect Rafael Viñoly. It also added a new killer app to get the project entitled: invocation of SB 35. Among the most prominent bills in the suite of 15 housing-related bills enacted last year , SB 35 attempts to add meaning to the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Traditionally, the Department of Housing and Community Development has set RHNA targets for housing production in every city in the state, but cities that failed to approve — much less zone for — the allocations essentially faced no consequences. SB 35 requires cities that are out of compliance with RHNA to streamline their approvals for certain housing developments by-right, provided that the developments include housing earmarked for low-income residents. SB 35 takes away a degree of local control. Some local stakeholders welcome it. Geoff Paulsen, chair of the Cupertino Planning Commission, said he is “pumped” about the Vallco proposal, and he “enthusiastically endorse(s)" the use of SB 35.  “We've been held hostage by the NIMBY element, which is just afraid of change,” said Paulsen, speaking as a private citizen and not in his official capacity as planning commissioner. “Let each city have its design input but not let each city have the control of stopping people from being afford a place to live." Earlier this year, HCD published a list cities that have not fulfilled their RHNA obligations. Only 13 cities and counties avoided the list while 378, including Cupertino, received some level of censure. The city’s most recent housing report shows that only 199 units of the 1,064 in the city’s RHNA have been permitted; the city has permitted none of its allocated 563 units for low- and very-low-income residents. SB 35 includes tiered streamlining categories depending on how far out of compliance a jurisdiction is. In Cupertino projects must include at least 50 percent affordability to qualify for SB 35 streamlining. The invocation of SB 35 not only bypasses the City Council and Planning Commission also exempts the project from analysis under — and lawsuits based on — the California Environmental Quality Act. Even so, environmentalists wary of development on the urban fringe hail the maneuver. “This is one of the most important opportunities to provide new homes in the heart of Silicon Valley to address our jobs-housing imbalance and take pressure off of the natural and agricultural lands of the region that are threatened by sprawl development,” said Matt Vander Sluis, deputy director of Greenbelt Alliance. Sand Hill’s “Revitalize Vallco” website insists that it still intends to go through the traditional planning process. Cupertino planners are currently drafting a specific plan for the proposed development. The city’s general plan already allows for a mix of uses on the site. SB 35 requires that at least half of a mixed-use project’s square footage to go residential development. Sand Hill’s proposal would dedicate 4.7 million square feet, or 68 percent of the project’s total floor space, to residential uses. Paulsen said he will advocate for design changes such as more green space but acknowledged that design issues are “minor” compared to the need to provide well located housing. Along with a small multifamily development in Berkeley (see CP&DR coverage ), Vallco is one of the first, and by far the largest, projects to use SB 35. Vander Suis called it a “wakeup call” for the cities of the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay. Many of them have waved for years in a discomfiting condition in which they are trying to retain their bedroom-community character while suffering (or benefiting from) astronomical real estate prices and the presence of some of the 21st century’s most successful corporations. “Communities have so many reasons to build housing, and SB 35 is one more reason,” said Vander Sluis. A recent informal poll conducted by residents group Better Cupertino found that, among five options for the Vallco site, just over 50 percent of the survey’s 2,555 respondents favored a mall. This despite the fact that the property is in dispute precisely because the community was not able to support the mall that is already there. "Some of these people want to go back to the 1970s and bring back Penney’s and Kmart and that kind of thing,” said Paulsen. “That’s just not going to happen. The world is changing. We need to shape the change, not resist it.” While homeowners have not been shy about opposing development, many of the companies and their employees have, traditionally, not gotten politically engaged. This deadlock has prevented many Silicon Valley cities from achieving their RHNA numbers. Now that they are vulnerable to SB 35 projects, they will either have to plan for growth and approve RHNA-supporting projects of their own accord — or be prepared to accept SB 35-compliants projects whether their plans and zoning call for it or not. Representatives of the Cupertino Planning Department and of Better Cupertino did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Contacts & Resources  Revitalize Vallco (Sand Hill Property Co.) Vallco Specific Plan Geoff Paulsen , Chair, Cupertino Planning Commission ,  gpaulsen@cupertino.org Matt Vander Sluis , Deputy Director,  Greenbelt Alliance ,  mvandersluis@greenbelt.org Image courtesy of Revitalize Vallco.

When California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016, they did not necessarily unleash an epidemic of cannabis use. Experts say it is too soon to tell whether legalization will lead to an increase in statewide usage over the former combination of black market and medicinal sales that has developed since the 1990s. What they did unleash, though, was a massive and multifaceted regulatory scheme that local and state officials — including urban planners — are just beginning to hash out.   January 1 marked the official start of legalized recreational cannabis sales statewide. State law permits cities and counties to embrace or reject legalized cannabis as they see fit. Since then, cities and counties have been considering a daunting range of policy options.  "It’s going to be a long slog,” said Dale Gieringer, California State Coordinator for NORML. "It’s a tough thing to bring everybody into compliance with extremely extensive regulations.”  Roughly two dozen cities — primarily large cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and Santa Ana — have adopted regulations that permit a range of cannabis-related activities. Large swaths of the state, primarily along the eastern border, remain so-called “cannabis deserts.”  Many, though, have adopted moratoria allowing them to deliberate and observe how regulations play out in permissive cities.  “The politics is dictating whether they banned or put the moratorium in place,” said Heather Stratman, CEO of the Association of California Cities-Orange County. “Some of the more middle-of-the-road cities want to understand it first.” Other localities have opted for outright probation. “There’s no question that a lot of local governments have kicked the can down the road,” said Gieringer. “They’ve just passed a ban so they don’t have to worry about it.” He said he has been “pleasantly surprised” by cities including Fresno, Carmel, and Lompoc that used to be “dead-set against cannabis” but are now allowing some form of legalized cannabis.  Permissive cities are responding to enticements such as revenue, suppression of the black market, and popular demand. At the same time, they are also running headlong into tough decisions about land use, taxation, public health, public safety, commerce, and community character, among others.  “My guess would be 120-150 are looking at some form of implementation,” said Tim Cromartie, Senior Advisor for Cannabis Compliance at HDL Companies and former point person for cannabis at the League of California Cities. “The challenge is that many cities didn’t even wake up to this until Prop 64 passed…about a year after that, now they’re getting traction.” Arguably the biggest debacle so far has taken place in rural Calaveras County. County officials announced a preliminary permitting program and accepted fees from applicants several months ago. The county then did an about-face, announcing that cannabis would be prohibited, absorbing application fees and potentially squandering start-up capital that aspiring businesses had spent. Most cities that have permitted retail cannabis have instituted controls such as limits on the number of stores, buffer zones between stores and sensitive uses (mainly schools), and regulations on signage and storefront design. While these regulations may seem like common sense, they are not without unintended consequences.  “Cannabis is this microcosm of all of economics happening all at once. You see the way that policy affects on-the-ground actions,” said Allan Steiner, a consultant with Green Rush Consulting. “You see the fight between regulation and non-regulation and the way that different policy can affect different economic realities.” Planning and cannabis intersect most directly in the regulations concerning placement and types of facilities that a city adopts. In some ways, facilities for growing, processing, and distributing cannabis are less controversial than retail stores. Industrial facilities are more likely to be viewed as “invisible” — especially if they are confined to areas already zoned for industrial uses — whereas retail facilities must, by their nature, be visible to the general public.  Greg Minor, assistant to the Oakland City Administrator, said Oakland has tried to restrict locations as little as possible.   “Essentially we allow them to locate where their non-cannabis equivalent can located, but with some buffers for sensitive uses or buffers for retail,” said Greg Minor, assistant to the Oakland City Administrator and staffer for the Oakland Cannabis Commission. Nicole Elliott, director of the San Francisco Office of Cannabis, said that San Francisco’s regulations for legalized cannabis are somewhat more liberal than their prior regulations for medical cannabis. The city’s new “Green Zone,” as she put it, reduces many buffers from 1,000 feet to 600 for certain sensitive uses.  In some cities, especially those that do not place numerical limits on the number of facilities, zoning regulations act as a de facto, or “organic,” limit. They mean that, effectively, there are a limited number of potential sites in a city for cannabis businesses, and that number may or may not comport with consumer demand or entrepreneurial ambitions.  According to Steiner, this can mean that cannabis entrepreneurship amounts to something of a land rush, in which businesses that receive permits are simply those who secured their real estate first — often at premium prices.  “What you create is a real estate grab sort of mentality,” said Steiner. “Having control over the real estate becomes one of the primary pieces that makes you competitive.” While some cities are encouraging cannabis entrepreneurship among minority and disadvantaged populations, the permitting process can work at cross-purposes.  “Starting a business in San Francisco is very expensive,” said Elliott. "Sitting on that land and going through the appeals process can be an incredibly high barrier to entry for any small business, especially cannabis.” The City of Oakland is trying to avoid this problem by issuing its limited number of citywide permits to approved operators (determined by a combination of application and lottery) regardless of whether they have storefronts already secured. Minor said that the city has issued eight permits, out of about 115 applicants.  “The overall philosophy has been to minimize barriers to entry,” said Minor. “We did not require that people have a property owned or leased as a prerequisite, which I think was unique or definitely not common. Typically even the city of Oakland in the past had required people to have a property up-front.” Even this strategy is not without complications.  “I've heard anecdotally that landlords will increase the price for a cannabis operator as compared to a non-cannabis operator,” said Minor. “On the flip side, we hear some anecdotes about non-cannabis operators being displaced…. We’re sort of balancing those concerns.” Even on their merits, Steiner has questioned whether buffer zones, which are typically 600 or 1,000 feet, even serve their intended purposes. He suggests that they serve more as political bargaining chips, which cities can use to satisfy skeptics of legalized cannabis, rather than genuine protections against abuse.  “I don’t know that the difference between 600 versus 1,000 feet from a school makes any difference in how often (children) see that building, how enticing that business is to them, how accessible it is,” said Steiner. “It’s a taboo subject, so we use buffers rather than having conversations.” Elliot said that buffers tend to inspire “some of the most politically driven conversations." Steiner suggested that even before cities delve into the niceties of buffer zones and permitting schemes, they first need to understand the existing cannabis-related landscape. In particular, cannabis’ quasi-legal status over the past decade or so created a literally countless number of grey-market businesses. Some say that cities must first discover and map those businesses before they implement an aboveboard permitting scheme.  “You need to understand the businesses that are currently operating in your town,” said Steiner. “If you don’t think they’re there, there’s a good chance you’re not paying attention.” Some cities have offered temporary “amnesty” to these businesses to enable them comply with new regulations.  Even communities that have rejected cannabis are not necessarily immune to the cannabis trade, legal and illegal. The absence of legalized retail cannabis in some places all but ensures that the black market will continue to thrive. Orange County, a geographically small county with a population of over 3 million, has only two permitted cannabis stores, both in Santa Ana.  “When cities ban it or put moratoriums in place, it drives the black market,” said Stratman. “I think that’s an issue that has not come to a head yet. If we’re trying to regulate it well, keep it out of the hands of children, and put tight restrictions in place, we lose the opportunity to do that by just saying no.” Stratman said that this situation is a natural consequence of local political decision-making.  “You have 34 cities (in Orange County) that, when they’re creating these ordinances, look at it from their own jurisdictional boundaries,” said Stratman. “Versus where my thoughts go all the time: these are all transcending issues. The sale of marijuana has no jurisdictional boundaries.” A handful of traditionally conservative counties, such as Butte, Lassen, and Yolo, have approved cultivation of cannabis without approving manufacturing or retail. Presumably this reflects the proliferation of marijuana farms that often elude law enforcement in the first place. Ironically, California’s bumper crop of now-legal marijuana may be fueling black markets elsewhere.  Cromartie noted that Californians consume only 30 percent of the marijuana produced in-state (a crop estimated to be worth over $20 billion annually). The rest of of it goes somewhere else, meaning, “we’re basically the breadbasket for cannabis in this country." He lamented that the state did not cap the total amount of marijuana grown in the state to a level that would be consistent with in-state consumption — especially because of the federal government’s concerns about interstate trafficking.  “So of course we’re in the gunsights of the feds,” said Cromartie. “They have an ongoing justification to ramp up enforcement efforts.” Local officials are generally complimentary of the state’s regulations, in part because they give so much discretion to localities. They acknowledged, though, that the situation for the next few years will remain in flux. The current regulations were drafted as emergency regulations and therefore are expected to be amended as policymakers develop a sense of what the recreational cannabis industry looks like.  Elliott in San Francisco and Minor in Oakland both said that original state regulations neglected to allow for shared use of facilities, such as different producers using the same industrial kitchen to produce edibles. Elliot added that another shortcoming that has become evident are strictures on times and methods of delivery to retail establishments that don’t have generous street frontage or loading zones.  “They haven't necessarily thought about how these activities occur in dense urban environments when drafting their regulations,” said Elliott.  Elliot suggested that the operators have ample opportunity to demonstrate their good faith and neighborliness. She cited one store that is acting like a miniature business improvement district by hiring roving security personnel and beautifying their block. She said that her office serves in part for a resource for other businesses that want to be good neighbors in the legalized economy.  “With the creation of this office and the new permits we are trying to ensure that they are integrating into their communities in a thoughtful way,” said Elliott. Ultimately, cannabis’ presence in the urban landscape may depend on the arcana of tax policy. Currently, the state taxes cannabis purchases at 15 percent, and localities are free to add their own taxes. Many are doing so, arguing that — like it or not — cannabis represents a revenue source. Supporters of legalization caution against setting tax rates so high that they inadvertently privilege the black market.  Cromartie noted that the tax burden on legal cannabis is even heavier than it might appear. Cannabis businesses cannot take any federal tax write-offs and therefore must bear greater financial burdens than conventional businesses do.  “Unlike other businesses -- if they’re selling tires -- they get deductions from their taxes,” said Cromartie. “The cannabis business gets zip. They have additional overhead that other businesses don’t have, and they have to just eat it.” What this means for cities is that storefront cannabis is still competing with streetcorner drug deals.  “I think it's going to take 2-3 years to really implement a statewide licensing system that displaces the criminal market, at least for California,” said Gieringer. Contacts & Resources    California Cannabis Portal Weedmaps - California Be Green Legal Regulation Map Tim Cromartie, Senior Advisor for Cannabis Compliance, HDL Companies,  TCromartie@hdlcompanies.com Nicole Elliott,  Director, San Francisco Office of Cannabis,  nicole.elliott@sfgov.org Dale Gieringer, California State Coordinator, NORML,  dale@canorml.org Greg Minor,  Assistant to the Oakland City Administrator and staffer for the Oakland Cannabis Commission,  GMinor@oaklandnet.com Allan Steiner,  Client Relations Specialist, Green Rush Consulting,  services@greenrushconsulting.com Heather Stratman,  CEO, Association of California Cities-Orange County,   hstratman@accoc.org

The Lewis Center at UCLA released research suggesting that new housing developments in Los Angeles are, in general, not displacing older, affordable units, as many critics of market-rate development claim. The research looked at records of new multifamily development between 2014 and 2016 and found 13,749 units opened in 971 multifamily developments across Los Angeles. The researchers randomly selected 104 developments to conduct in-depth analysis. The analysis showed that more than 13 times as many units were constructed across the city than were demolished, and 22 percent of the new units were affordable. According to the findings, new multifamily developments are replacing single-family housing, and many new multifamily developments are being built on vacant lots. However, the majority of the single-family houses being demolished were in South Los Angeles neighborhoods and not the Westside. OPR Releases Annual Survey Results The Office of Planning and Research has released results of the 2017 Annual Planning Survey , distributed to all cities and counties in the state and provides the latest information on local planning activities, the status of city and county general plans, and an important local perspective on issues of statewide concern. In 2017, a total of 348 of the 540 cities and counties (64 percent  in California completed the Annual Planning Survey. This includes 302 of the 482 cities (62.6 percent) and 45 of the 58 counties (77.5 percent).  The survey asked agencies to report on whether their plans address issues such as health, aging, greenhouse gas emissions, access to food, and other pressing issues. This year, in addition to posting the full results of the APS, OPR provided an overview of transportation, land use, climate action planning, water conservation, in-fill, and open space. The survey also includes information on how local governments track progress on general plan policies.  Orange County Clashes with Cities over Homeless Housing Plans The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted , 4-0, to scrap a plan to relocate 400 homeless residents. Earlier in March, Irvine and Laguna Niguel each voted to sue Orange County and Huntington Beach officials opted to explore legal options of their own to shut down a plan approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to erect temporary tent cities for four hundred homeless people. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter insisted the Board find a more permanent solution for the homeless recently relocated from the Santa Ana riverbed. According to the plan, once the county’s stock of temporary shelter beds are filled, the next two hundred people would go to temporary tent-like structures at a 100-acre site adjacent to the Great Park in Irvine, once those fill up the next 100 people would be sent to an abandoned landfill area in Huntington Beach, and the next 100 people would go to a county owned parcel in Laguna Niguel next to City Hall, a library, and a daycare. Laguna Niguel residents are concerned their city would end up being the No. 1 choice because Irvine’s litigious community would immediately file a lawsuit and the “methane-filled” Huntington Beach site would be found unreasonable. Supervisor Bartlett (Laguna Niguel district) said she and Supervisor Michelle Steel (Huntington Beach district) would introduce an agenda item that the 400 people be moved to the El Toro Marine Base site. Amazon Fulfillment Center May Not be Boon to Fresno The City of Fresno affirmed a package of economic incentives last summer to locate an Amazon fulfillment center in the southwest corner of the city. The package will be worth up to $30 million over the next 30 years and the center will employ 1,500 workers when it opens later this year. A Washington, DC think tank, Economic Policy Institute, recently published a report that found on average, “Amazon’s fulfillment centers are ineffective at providing net job growth.” While the county gains roughly 30 percent more warehousing and storage jobs it loses jobs in other industries and merely shifts the composition of employment. The EPI economists explain that either the jobs created in the warehouse and storage sector are offset by job losses in other industries or the employment growth generated by Amazon is too small to meaningfully detect in the data. The researchers assert that rather than providing millions in tax rebates and other economic incentives to lure Amazon in hopes of stimulating job growth, local governments should invest in early-childhood education and infrastructure which have been proven to spur long-term economic development. Agricultural Plan Seeks to Preserve Farmland in Bay Area The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority recently released the the Santa Clara Valley Agricultural Pla n, billed as an innovative approach to agricultural preservation that will reduce future conversion of local farmland. The plan, with support from cities of San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy and the county, will map agricultural lands in Santa Clara Valley for conservation and identifying the regional GHG reduction potential. Santa Clara County has 24,000 acres of farmland that generates 8,100 jobs and $830 million in economic output. However, in the last three decades the County has lost 21,171 acres of farm and rangelands to development. The State launched the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program I 2015, which provides cap and trade funding to protect agricultural lands in order to reduce GHG emissions to meet California’s climate change goals.  San Diego to Account for Wildfires in General Plan In the wake of a horrific fire season, the City of San Diego is adding policies aimed at preventing massive wildfires to its general plan. The policies will be part of a new wildfire planning section and will cover everything from brush management guidelines to the use of fire-resistant building materials in dangerous areas. Many of the rules would only apply to homes located on the edges of canyons or where suburban neighborhoods bump up against undeveloped wilderness. The state Board of Forestry and Fire Protections approved the plans in January, the Planning Commission unanimously approved them last week, and the City Council is scheduled to okay them this spring. City officials say many of the new policies have already been in place but new state law requires all California cities to add them to their general plans. The website of the city’s Fire-Rescue Department provides residents with many tips for preventing wildfires and includes a how-to video on brush management. Contentious Brisbane Development May Go to Voters A battle over housing is brewing in Brisbane and will likely go to voters. The Brisbane City Council unanimously approved a housing development along the Baylands with as many as 2,200 units and 4 million square feet of commercial space. Councilmembers at the March 22 meeting said they felt pressure to build housing as a means of alleviating the regional housing affordability crisis but also said they are concerned about the project proposing to build on contaminated land. City officials will return with a proposed General Plan amendment that would allow between 1,800 and 2,200 housing units and up to 4 million square feet of commercial space. At the next meeting there will be a discussion about environmental remediation requirements and a fiscal impact analysis of the project. The project is most likely slated to become a ballot referendum, allowing voters to determine whether development is allowed at the site. Quick Hits & Updates  The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation's new  Food Truck Index, “Food Truck Nation,” highlights the more than $2.7 billion industry across cities in America. The report complied the rules governing food truck in 20 American cities and surveyed 288 food truck owners to strengthen the findings of the index. Los Angeles ranked 8th as friendliest to food trucks with relatively light regulatory burdens, but higher costs to operate than most other cities. San Francisco ranked 18th and among top five for most difficult cities for food trucks with 32 separate procedures to obtain permits and licenses with a minimum cost of $3,481. Former Sacramento Kings co-owner Gregg Lukenbill, a member of the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, says his group and others will contest any city effort to rip out train tracks in order to make room for a 4.5-mile recreational trail along an old and unused rail line that stretches through South Land Park. The line was last used by trains carrying farm products in 1978. The city is applying for regional bikeway funds this summer in the hopes of breaking ground in spring 2020. The San Francisco Examiner reports that in the two years since a law to encourage accessory dwelling units passed, only 23 new units have been built while 109 permits have been issued in the city. While advocates say ADUs can be an affordable way to help solve the housing crisis, the process is complicated and expensive. LA Metro has begun exploring whether some of its properties, including bus yards and Metro stations, could be used to provide services for homeless people. Metro Board of Directors asked the agency to prepare a list of properties that could accommodate showers, storage for belongings, parking lots where people could sleep in their cars overnights, or other facilities. Nearly three out of 10 riders told the agency that they stopped taking transit because they felt unsafe and the county’s rising homeless population has become a major concern for the agency. The board of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District rejected a nonbining letter of intent to purchase water from the Cadiz Inc.’s proposed project water-mining project in the Mojave Desert. The company is looking to pump as much as 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater a year and pipe it across the desert to sell to cities in Southern California. Board member Bryan Urias said lobbyists working for Cadiz have repeatedly contacted him trying to influence his vote. Originally the water district had decided to explore the Cadiz project as an option, but after the vote the board decided to take no action. The Oakland A’s are proposing purchasing the entire Oakland Coliseum site from the city and Alameda County. While the team isn’t committed to the Coliseum location, they don’t want another buyer snatching up the site. The A’s are proposing buying the site in exchange for paying off the city and county’s roughly $135 million in outstanding debt on the stadium and Oracle Arena. Orange County released a new Declaration on Housing which proclaims the county “is experiencing a substantial shortage of housing, which is creating a significant negative impact on household budgets and the quality of life of its residents, as well as diminishing out county’s workforce.” County staff have been directed to work with stakeholders to collaborate and prepare a report detailing how Orange County can facilitate the construction of housing under half a million dollars. The deadline for the report is June 11. The California Transportation Commission allocated $50 million in state funds to the Riverside County Transportation Commission to launch environmental studies to build tolled express lanes on the 15 Freeway corridor between Cajalco Road in Corona and Highway 74 in Lake Elsinore. The state agency also awarded $47.6 million to the I-15/ French valley Parkway interchange in Temecula, and $2.9 million to the I-15/ Railroad Canyon Road interchange in Lake Elsinore. Angelo Tsakopoulos, a prominent Sacramento real estate developer, contributed $2.02 million to his daughter Eleni Kounalakis’s bid to become California lieutenant governor. The California Fair Political Practices Commission said there’s nothing wrong with the financial arrangement (the money was contributed to an independent expenditure committee). Kounalakis has served as US Ambassador to Hungary in 2010 and worked in the family business, AKT Development, for nearly two decades. Cisco Systems Inc. announced it will donate $50 million over five year to address the growing homeless problem in Santa Clara County. The donation will go to Destination: Home, a public-private partnership that focuses on getting housing for the homeless as the first step in addressing other problems related to health, addiction, family estrangement, and joblessness. Los Angeles World Airports is looking for proposals to redevelop 93 acres just north of LAX and Westchester Parkway. That is approximately one-third of the 340 vacant acres it is eventually planning to develop with a mix of offices and shops, plus green space and pedestrian areas. One of the vacant parcels is zoned for office space but could also be used as recreational space while the other is zoned for low-density, landscaped office campus. BART General Manager Grace Crunican sent a letter to Bay Area legislators saying VTA and BART have reached an agreement on recommending building one tunnel instead of two for the long-awaited San Jose BART extension . Originally BART wanted a twin bore for safety reasons while VTA wanted a single bore because it would cause less disruption to downtown businesses and cost less to build. The two boards are set to meet this month to discuss the multi-billion-dollar project. According to a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), 53 percent of Californians still support high-speed rail despite the increase in cost and delays. The numbers are up from 48 percent in favor last year. In the Bay Area, 61 percent are in favor of the project. Two Bay Area developers, AGI/KASA Partners and Blake Griggs, are the last two teams facing off to develop a hotly contested 6-acre housing site in South San Francisco near the city’s BART station. The two groups have submitted proposals that could bring more than 800 units on a city-owned vacant piece of land near El Camino Real. City Council is expected to select a wining developer next week. Officials of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California had a board workshop last week in which they outlined ways the agency could finance the construction of two giant water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The state’s large agricultural irrigation districts have not committed to these future water purchases, meaning MWD and ratepayers from LA to San Diego could be stuck with a roughly $11 billion bill for the project. MWD’s board already voted last fall to invest $4.3 billion in the twin tunnel project.

CP&DR Vol. 33 No. 3 March 2018

Several environmental groups are suing the County of San Diego for its plans to use carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions from new housing and commercial developments. The County recently redrafted its Climate Action Plan under court order and the new document includes a plan that would allow developers to offset air pollution by purchasing carbon credits purchased through carbon registries. The suit, filed in San Diego Superior Court, argues the county has no way to verify the quality of the credits and should require all such off-set programs to be located within the county. The suit notes that the revised plan would facilitate the county’s approval of sprawl development over thousands of acres of greenfield lands in unincorporated areas, including nearly 20,000 new residential units already in the pipeline. Plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the Endangered Habitats League, Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Climate Action Campaign, and Preserve Wild Santee. City of Oakland Negotiates for Full Ownership of Coliseum Alameda County and the City of Oakland are negotiating a deal to sever their 52-year joint ownership of the Oakland Coliseum sports complex and surrounding land in the hope that a single owner would make it easier to build housing. City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said in a statement, “the city of Oakland and Alameda County are aligned in the view that development of the Coliseum property would be simplified and streamlined with a single owner that controls all aspects of the future development process.” The city would keep the land and would pay the county, however the county still owes about $38 million to the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Los Angeles School District Tries to Assess its Real Estate Holdings A Los Angeles Unified School District task force recently analyzed the school system’s vast real estate holdings, which cost millions of dollars a year to maintain. The LA Unified Advisory Task Force made three recommendations: 1) Take a careful inventory; 2) figure out how best to utilize these properties; and 3) engage the community along the way. The group recommends LA Unified hires real estate experts to complete an analysis. The nation’s second-largest school system owns 6,400 acres and includes 1,200 schools and centers. In its portfolio are also vacant lots, administrative buildings, operation plants and parking lots. The report states, “The district lacks a comprehensive strategy to manage these properties and utilize each asset at its highest and best use to support the district’s goals.” Court Decision Halts Martis Valley West Project Sierra Watch, Mountain Area Preservation, and the League to Save Lake Tahoe celebrate a court decision handed down  Monday  that halts the controversial Martis Valley West Project, a 7,428-acre project in North Tahoe that would include more than six acres of retail stores, restaurants, offices and sports equipment rentals as well as the homes. .  Placer County Superior Court  Judge Michael W. Jones issued an order to vacate and set aside Placer County’s 2016 approvals of the project, focusing on Placer County’s failure to provide sufficient CEQA analysis of the project’s impacts on emergency evacuation, such as in the event of a wildfire. The proposed project is located in a very high severity fire zone.  The conservation groups contend that the region’s community will benefit from the stoppage of a project that would threaten public safety, the local environment, and Lake Tahoe. Discovery of Faultline Prompts Redesign of San Diego Waterfront Redevelopment Unified Port of San Diego officials voiced approval for major alterations on Protea Waterfront Development plans after major earthquake fault lines were discovered on-site. The government agency that oversees the redevelopment of Seaport Village would not vote on changes until September. The big changes include moving the hotel and aquarium and turning the fault line into a pedestrian mall surrounded by trees. Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego submitted a letter to the board saying the new design would block view of the bay from the hotel, create traffic problems, and is disproportionate to the amount of land adjacent to the hotel. However CEO of Protea said he had a meeting planned with Hyatt later in the week to discuss solutions. Quick Hits & Updates Some farmers in Oceanside are opposed to a proposed ballot measure that could preserve the city’s disappearing agricultural land. The group filed a complaint with the city clerk, the county district attorney, and the state Fair Political Practices Commission saying the nonprofit Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources are violating state and local campaign laws by not filing the financial disclosure forms required by the FPPC. Neil Nagata, an Oceanside farmer and president of the San Diego County Farm Bureau wrote in the complaint, “Oceanside voters deserve to know who really is behind this measure.” Recent technical documents in the High Speed Rail Authority 2018 business plan indicate that a 30-mile stretch south of San Francisco no longer has dedicated tracks designed for speeds of up to 220 mph. Instead the stretch between San Jose and Gilroy would operate at 110 mph on ground-level tracks on or adjacent to an existing right of way owned by Union Pacific. This change in design may add several minutes to the trip but will save about $1.7 billion. The original design included elevated tracks and the use of significant private land. Facebook has announced plans for a new 465,000 square-foot office building at its headquarters in Menlo Park. Just eight months ago Facebook unveiled its plans for a Willow Campus with 1.75 million square-feet of offices, 1,500 homes, and 125,000 square-feet of retail space. According to San Jose ’s latest annual housing report the city only issued 475, or 20 percent, of its target number of affordable units last year. During the same time, the city issued permits for 2,622 new market rate units. Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “I would challenge other mayors and cities to step up and present their own plans because we are not going to build our way out of this housing crisis by confining our efforts to the city of San Jose. This is a regional problem.” The developer of a 27-story tech office center is San Francisco is proposing temporarily moving the historic Flower Mart to the congest Embarcadero to Piers 19 and 23. However many vendors and customers are concerned that the proposed location has many tourists which will not appreciate the trucks and semi trucks clogging Embarcadero. Flower Mart vendors were promised they’ll return to the new space at Sixth and Brannan after construction in two to three years.  Ground was broken on a $13 million effort to restore a wildlife corridor that will connect the Cleveland National Forest with Orange County wild coastal terrains. The project has been in the making for more than two decades and will encourage biological diversity in the animals that dwell in more than 20,000 acres of coastal chaparral surrounding Laguna Beach. The corridor is being funded by the Great Park developer, FivePoint Holdings, and is estimated to be completed by mid-2019. The San Francisco Police Department reported last spring that Lyft and Uber drivers were responsible for two-thirds of all traffic violations in downtown San Francisco. Bicycle activists in the city are protesting about the dangerous conditions and need for protected bike lanes as many ride-hailing drivers pull into bike lanes to load or unload passengers. In May 2017, the late Mayor Ed Lee proposed a pilot program of loading zones that would allow ride-hailing drivers some curb space to allow for loading and unloading of passengers. In exchange, the city would get data about where Uber and Lyft rides were happening. A consortium of developers wants to build 1,100 new homes around Balboa Reservoir in San Francisco but the group Save CCSF says eliminating the existing 2,000 parking spaces would hurt the City College. The group has now filed initial paperwork for a ballot measure that would prohibit development on the Balboa Reservoir site until a planned Performing Arts Education Center on an adjacent site is “built, completed and opened to the public.” The proposed development would include 80 homes at 55 percent AMI and 24 rental homes at 105 percent AMI, and 83 homes at 120 percent AMI. Los Angeles City Councilmembers pledged last week to build at least 222 units of permanent supportive housing in each of the 15 districts over the next three years. If they accomplish the goal, they would bring 3,330 supportive housing units to “every corner” of the city by July 2020. The construction of the buildings would come from Measure HHH, the $1.2 billion bond measure to finance the construction of 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over the next ten years. Travis Kalanick , the former CEO of Uber, has announced he will head City Storage Systems, a holding company that redevelops distressed real estate particularly for parking, retail, and industrial properties. Kalanick was ousted from Uber in June has bought controlling interest worth $150 million in the new company and says it is a 15-person start-up based in Los Angeles. Orange County Supervisors and various OC city councils have voiced concern over a recent proposal to place a homeless shelter on the site of an abandoned landfill in Huntington Beach. The opposition underscores the challenges Orange County faces as it tries to find housing for homeless people who have been evicted from massive camps along the Santa Ana River. A federal judge has said the county needs to find solutions. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission  adopted a 10-year investment strategy, which will direct $3.8 billion to 20 Bay Area projects. The focus will be primarily on Interstate Corridors and the Port of Oakland in Alameda County. MTC and the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) adopted a Goods Movement Plan in 2016 that will be implemented the plan and will confer many benefits for the region. Some of the benefits of the strategy will be to deliver projects that can improve mobility and economic vitality, addressing community and environmental concerns of freight, and enable the region to coordinate and compete for state and federal fund sources. According to a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association, walking across the street is more dangerous than it has been in more than a quarter-century. Nearly 6,000 pedestrians were killed by automobiles nationwide for the second straight year. In California, there were an estimated 352 pedestrian deaths between January and June 2017 making it the 15th- highest rate in the country.

Give Scott Wiener credit: Everybody in California is talking about housing and SB 827, and – truth be told – nobody’s talking about much of anything else. SB 827 is, of course, the now-famous bill that would pre-empt local control over certain residential projects located close to transit stops. It’s the most high-profile piece of legislation – other than the sanctuary state bill – to be proposed in California in a long time. Everybody’s talking about it. California’s burgeoning YIMBY groups are enthusiastically supporting it . A distinguished group of 22 urban planning and policy professors has taken the unusual step of endorsing it. Meanwhile, a curious alliance of renter activists and NIMBY groups are opposing it, often using harsh terms in the process – apparently because they share a common view that change will be bad for their very different constituencies: affluent homeowners and at-risk renters. (Indeed, the old rent control crowd has become very vocal against SB 827, fearing that low-cost old rent controlled buildings will be replaced by luxury high-rises.) These activists range from a candidate for Cupertino City Council, who argued in measured terms that there’s little evidence market-rate housing becomes affordable over time (probably true in Cupertino), all the way over to the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, which said that SB 827 is a “declaration of war on South L.A.” and said that Wiener is to gentrification what Donald Trump is to racism. Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, a former speaker of the California Assembly, is leading the charge for L.A. to oppose SB 827. His recent committee hearing on the topic yielded a bemused piece in Streetsblog wondering why NIMBYs in peaceful Beachwood Canyon, far from any transit, would froth at the mouth about SB 827. Even Joel Kotkin has weighed in, somewhat cryptically, apparently siding with the NIMBYs over the market advocates by saying: "If you live within a half mile of transit lines, developers can come in and reshape your areas with little public input." And yes, this debate has even spilled over onto the pages (both real and virtual) of California Planning & Development Report , where our Josh Stephens – admittedly an unabashed supporter of the YIMBY group Abundant Los Angeles – mixed it up with longtime Sierra Club leader (and former Berkeley planning commissioner) Eric Parfrey about whether the Club is being hypocritical in supporting infill development while opposing SB 827. Even Joel Kotkin has weighed in, somewhat cryptically siding with the NIMBYs over market advocates, “If you live within a half mile of transit lines,” he wrote recently , “developers can come in and reshape your areas with little public input.” The big question, of course, is where is all this going to go this year. One thing is clear: Unlike past efforts, it’s not going to go nowhere . Despite the significant resistance among NIMBYs and renters rights advocates, something along the lines of SB 827 is going to get passed. After all, last year, 15 housing bills were signed into law, including Wiener’s SB 35 , a distant cousin of SB 827. Furthermore, housing has taken center stage in the gubernatorial race, even if the don’t always address SB 827 head on. On the one hand are Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa , former big-city mayors who have endorsed the audacious goal of building a half-milion units per year. Then there’s John Chiang , who says that there’s no way that much housing will ever be built but we should throw tons of money at affordable housing. And finally there’s the leading Republican candidate, John Cox , who quite predictably is advocating an extreme streamlining of the California Environmental Quality Act to solve all housing problems. So what’s going to happen? Most likely it will come down to the question of affordable housing versus market-rate housing. In other words, will local overrides such as SB 827 apply to all housing projects? Or will they apply mostly to affordable housing projects? This is where we are beginning to see a shift in political alliances and possible political outcomes compared to past years. Up to now, the most influential lobbyists favoring infill development in Sacramento have been the affordable housing developers, both non-profit and for-profit, and their allies in the advocacy world, especially from the Bay Area. There is considerable pressure in that world to focus public policy exclusively on affordable housing. Think back to the Strategic Growth Council’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, funded by the cap-and-trade money. As the program guidelines were being developed, Bay Area affordable housing advocates were all over the process and the result is a major emphasis on affordable housing in a program that is, by statute, focused on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. And in political terms, focusing on affordable housing – by which I mean housing built with government subsidies and reserved for households with specific incomes – is a perfect way out of the political box, at least for in dealing with the renter advocates. If you run the risk of displacing tenants from low-cost but unsubsidized housing, what better outcome could there be than creating guaranteed affordable housing that those tenants – and others – can move back into. Yet there’s a growing belief on the part of housing advocates such as Wiener that affordable housing won’t solve the problem. No matter how much money is thrown at that particular problem – and Chiang, for one, is proposing another $9 billion bond on top of the $4 billion bond that will be on the ballot this fall – it’s not enough to make up the 2.5-million-unit gap that McKinsey Global Institute identified and that Newsom and Villaraigosa have promised to erase. In the view of all of those folks, the private market has to step up and build a lot of market-rate housing as well in order to solve the problem. But NIMBYs and affordable housing advocates simply don’t believe that’s going to happen – they think all the new development is going to be luxury and there isn’t going to be any filter-down of older housing to the middle classes. Some SB 827 opponents even seem to view Wiener as a kind of a shill for the private real estate development industry. The question, then, is whether the infill market advocates can overcome the NIMBY/renter opposition in Sacramento. Wiener definitely represents something new in California politics – a liberal democrat from San Francisco who is fighting folks on his side of the political spectrum over the role of the market in increasing housing supply and affordability. In the end, he may have to fold this year on the question of affordable housing with SB 827 – he’s already amending the bill to provide renter protections. But it’s clear that this new kind of Democratic housing advocate isn’t going to go away in California anytime soon.

A mixed-use project located near the Covina Metrolink station is exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act – at least insofar as parking requirements are concerned – because of SB 743.

I’ve always felt that CPDR is an invaluable resource for young (and old planners) trying to make their way through the maze of growth regulations and politics in the state. I have been a planner working in Northern California over the last four decades, working for three counties and spending a dozen years in the private sector. I also spent three years on the Berkeley Planning Commission, where I learned at least as much about the profession as I did in planning graduate school at UC Berkeley. I have also been an activist with the Sierra Club over the last twenty years. The recent blog post (Sierra Club California Blazes Wrong Trail on Urbanism) about Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB 827 and the Club’s position on the bill was incomplete and, at times, seemed mean-spirited. Some of the logic in at least one of the arguments in the blog also seemed sketchy and not based on actual facts. We all agree that California is facing a massive affordable housing crisis (which is also manifesting in other states, but the sheer numbers here are staggering). The crisis is calling out for state involvement and positive state leadership. We have been talking about this for some time. Sierra Club California, which is the organization and lobbying arm in Sacramento, represents over 180,000 members, or about one fifth of all members in the U.S. The blog piece quoted from some national growth and housing related policies that were adopted in 1970 and 2000. However, many are unaware that the state organization has adopted much more detailed housing and growth management policies and positions, which have been in place since 2000. SCC’s Growth Management Guidelines help our state legislative committee and our lobbying staff develop positions on specific bills (and also guide us when we take positions on state and local growth initiatives). We support the goal of increasing transit-oriented development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for decades--but we have concerns about the ill-conceived approach in SB 827. The bill is a flawed and unbaked piece of legislation that may never get out of a policy committee without serious revision. This bill is using the same undemocratic state-level pre-emption tactics that are being used by right-wing legislatures during the Trump era to squash local and progressive laws at the local level. As the press release from the national Club office that was cited in the blog noted, last year we saw this regressive tactic used in Louisiana and Tennessee in an effort to stop local affordable housing mandates for developers, using the very same blunt instrument -- removal of local zoning authority. There have also been examples applied to block local fracking bans, deregulate factory farms, suppress the minimum wage, and most recently, in a bill that just passed committee in Utah last month, restrict local elected officials’ ability to advocate for public lands protections. Curiously, the blog seemed to miss the point of these dangerous pre-emption laws related to housing. The blog criticized our staff for pointing to these dangerous laws and then argued unconvincingly that these very laws were “designed to downzone. The preemption was against local laws that favored dense development — which the Sierra Club supposedly supports. In other words, those laws didn’t have unintended consequences. They do exactly what their state legislatures designed them to do. SB 827, whether you love it or hate it, would do the opposite of those laws. How dumb does Kash think we are? The club’s opposition, therefore, takes place in some weird backwards land. It’s like ordering steak tartare and getting angry with the chef for not cooking it well done.” This is hyperbole and overwrought. The blog linked to the background news article and op-ed that described which local inclusionary housing programs were being attacked in Louisiana and Tennessee. Notably, prominent planning groups such as the American Institute of Certified Planners (I am a member) are actively opposed to these laws. The faulty logic expressed in the blog seems to assume that any housing project that is subject to these inclusionary ordinances are automatically multiple family, denser projects. No. The way many inclusionary housing programs work, the requirement to provide affordable units within the project (or pay an in-lieu fee) apply to all housing of a certain size, including conventional single-family home subdivisions. There is no evidence that the right wingers are trying to overturn local inclusionary laws because they force higher densities; the legislators are opposed to local agencies requiring developers to provide affordable units in their projects, because they think it’s bad for business and/or some sort of socialistic tactic. The blog then veers off into an ad hominen attack on Club activists in San Francisco citing a single disgruntled blogger. The blog also cites a dated 2015 SF Chronicle news article about the failed attempt by local Republicans, real estate interests, and others to stage a takeover coup of the local SF group. Needless to say, the attempt fizzled, because these people were not credible. The blog’s criticism of the positions taken on local development projects by SF Club activists is inaccurate and mean-spirited, especially the comments that these activists are, “in one way or another, reflective of the same older, wealthier constituencies that oppose new development in California generally. These are the folks who are leading the Sierra Club these days. What these club leaders may not realize is that they are at odds with the official policies of their own organization.” In fact, these leaders have supported high-density development in San Francisco, a city that is currently exceeding its State recommended housing allocation by over 200%. Parfrey is chair of the Sierra Club California Executive Committee. He can be reached at parfrey@sbcglobal.net