The State Water Resources Control Board approved a $383 million plan to slow the degredation of the Salton Sea in the next decade. Funding is still unclear but the plan has support from major water agencies, environmental groups, and residents living in urban and rural areas near the lake. The plan would create a smaller, but more sustainable lake as San Diego’s regional water agency will stop sending water to the lake end of this year. This means no water deliveries from the Colorado River, shrinking the lake at an even faster rate. The plan calls for preserving 29,800 of the 48,300 acres as ponds in part to abate toxic dust storms that would arise if more of the lakebed was exposed. The plan includes annual targets for completion beginning with 500 acres in 2018 and 4,200 acres in 2028. Timothy Krantz, professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that the plan’s provision “are only band-aids to a very serious environmental disaster….Our models at the  Salton Sea Database  at the University of Redlands indicate about 90,000 acres (140 square miles) of lake bed exposure over that same period. The state has set aside $80 million for the project, out of $380 million needed. (See prior CP&DR coverage here and here .) State to Allow City of Industry to Purchase Land for Solar Farm California Department of Finance will not challenge the City of Industry’s purchase of nearly 2,500 acres of ranch lands alongs the edge of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Orange counties. This allows the city to move forward with plans to build a massive solar farm on the Tres Hermanos ranch. The property is located within the cities of Diamond Bar and Chino Hills, and the two cities asked for a review following the approval of the discounted sale of the ranch by the Oversight Board of Los Angeles County. According to the two cities, the land was appraised at a maximum value of $122.5 million and was sold to the City of Industry for $41.7 million.Diamond Bar and Chino Hills both filed lawsuits last month alleging Industry and the Oversight Board failed to follow the state’s plan for redevelopment properties dissolved in 2012 leading to a shortchange on property tax revenues from the ranch. Study Blames Rent Control for High Housing Costs in S.F.  According Stanford economists Rebecca Diamond and Tim McQuade, rent control policies in San Francisco may have fueled gentrification. The study, The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco ,found that occupants of rent-controlled apartments built before 1980 are 20 percent more likely to stay than other renters which makes it seem as though it allows and encourages long-term residents to stay. However, Diamond explains to SFGate “Rent control exacerbates the housing shortage by pushing landlords to remove supply of rental housing” meaning the rental market will make all rents more expensive by causing landlords to remove supply of units. This eventually led to more owner occupied and high-end new construction rental housing which likely fueled gentrification in the city. The study found landlords with property in desirable neighborhoods were more likely to evict tenants, use buy-outs, or the Ellis Act. According to SPUR, a local advocacy organization, San Francisco has 172,000 rent-controlled units which comprises about 75 percent of the city’s rental stock. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) SCAG Envisions 1 Million More Residents of L.A. County The Southern California Association of Governments released its projections for the region’s population growth at the 16th annual Mayoral Housing, Transportation and Jobs Summit. Los Angeles County will experience growth of more than one million people over the next 20 years, increasing concerns about the housing and transit crisis in the region. Multiple measures have been passed at the local and state level to raise billions of dollars for new housing, transportation, and environmental projects in the region. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti has also committed the city to construct more than 100,000 new residential units by 2021. Officials Wary of GOP Tax Plan’s Impact on Housing Production The recent GOP federal tax proposal, if passed in its current form, would have a disproportionate  impact on California. It would take away tax exemptions that generate $2.2 billion annually for affordable housing construction and led to roughly 20,000 homes last year in California. Like many other states, California relies on federal tax breaks to finance affordable housing projects. Throughout the state, roughly 90,000 affordable units were expected to be built as a result of a $4 billion statewide housing bond (pending voter approval in November 2018) however with the tax proposal that number would be cut in half. “The newly released House Tax Reform bill would be catastrophic for affordable housing in California,” wrote Tia Boatman Patterson, executive director of the California Housing Finance Agency, in a recent statement.  Sandbag Board Discusses Reform Measures  The SANDAG Board recently discussed its "Plan of Excellence," focusing on a comprehensive effort to improve SANDAG operations while incorporating the changes to the agency required by the passage of Assembly Bill 805. The board’s three-member Independent Examination Subcommittee – Vice Chair and Del Mar Mayor Terry Sinnott, Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, and Poway Mayor Steve Vaus – will go over the proposed approach (called the Plan of Excellence), which addresses input from prior Board reform discussions, recommendations from the Hueston Hennigan LLP report, and a variety of other sources. The meeting also included items on several important topics, including the Implementation of AB 805’s requirements, progress to date on the agency’s 7-Point Data Accuracy and Modeling Work Plan, and an update on the recruitment efforts for a new executive director to lead the agency. Quick Hits & Updates San Francisco announced an experimental program to provide ride-hailing services designated loading zones to address problems of double-parking and blocking crosswalks and bike and transit lanes to pick up passengers. Uber and Lyft would be required to use the passenger pickup zone. Clients of the ride-hailing services would receive a text notifications alerting them to the new procedures and giving them instructions. The two companies agreed to give the city the data that will be collected, including trip information. According to a recent survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, 45 percent of California adults are seriously considering moving away from their part of the state because of housing costs. Meaning only 55 percent of those surveyed are staying put. Additionally 64 percent of adults are in favor of building more housing in their communities, 59 percent believe housing affordability is a big problem in their region, and over 60 percent are in favor of changing environmental regulations and local permitting processes to make housing more affordable. Ford GoBikes launched in San Jose last week with 34 stations in and around downtown San Jose. The bike share system launched in San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, and Berkeley, but San Jose has the highest placement of stations in Communities of Concern. The bike-share annual membership is $5 for the first year and has bikes available 24/7 everyday of the year. A Superior Court jury in Sacramento found , 9-3, that the City of Sacramento did not treat homeless people unfairly in its enforcement of an ordinance banning outdoor camping. Homeless plaintiffs hoped to prove the city violated their constitutional right to equal protection under the law by selectively enforcing the ordinance against those forced to live outdoors. The jury said the city uses the ordinance to protect the public and act on complaints against campers, and has to cite and arrest homeless people who refused to leave illegal encampments. The Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee unanimously amended San Francisco’s cannabis rules to make it legal to smoke cannabis inside dispensaries. Committee chairman Mark Farrell pointed out the challenge of many tenants having “no smoking” provisions in their leases and nowhere to go. The amendment would take indoor consumption permits out of the hands of public health officials and instead make them the responsibility of the Office of Cannabis. The amendment must still go before the full Board of Supervisors at the November 14th meeting. Four commercial fishery organizations are suing the California State Water Resources Control Board for failing to maintain clean water and public trust resources in the Delta and Central Valley. The lawsuit contends the Board has failed to list Delta waterways as impaired, and the lack of action is harming the salmon population. The group argues without healthy salmon populations and functional rivers free of toxic pesticides, thousands of coastal jobs are in danger. Perkins Eastman and Arup have been selected to redesign Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. The project is organized by Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza and the American Institute of Architects San Francisco Chapter. The City of Pasadena outlined the citizen-led Connecting Pasadena Project, which highlights the development plans for the 50-acre area next to Old Pasadena downtown that would have been used for the proposed 710-freeway extension. The city is hoping it can reacquire the property once Caltrans officially kills the extension project and transform the area into neighborhoods, parks, and tree-lined boulevards. The Glendale City Council  awarded  a contract to begin a feasibility study for a streetcar to connect Glendale and Burbank. The project is estimated to cost between $97 and $243 million for a route of about 9.5 miles. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and other agencies released a comprehensive flood resilience strategy “RainReadySF” to prepare Bay Area residents and businesses for the upcoming rainy season. The strategy includes planned infrastructure investments and requiring neighborhoods to develop better flood maps, new construction standards in flood areas, and flood-protection requirements for property sales and renovations. Oakland  received a proposal for a 34-story project for downtown with 120,000 square-feet of office space, 185 residential units, and 12,000 square-feet of ground-floor retail. The tower would be the East Bay’s tallest building. The project would be located near the 12th Street and Broadway BART station, and therefore provide office and housing near mass transit. Anaheim’s ARTIC station has doubled the number of daily trips in the last three years since the transit hub opened, but total ridership is far below projections. Daily weekday trips in 2017 were up more than 80 percent since 2015. City spokesman Mike Lyster said some of the boost in riders could be the addition of Tres Estrellas de Oro, which provides daily trips to and from Tijuana, a service that began in January 2016. City officials are saying the consultants projections were overly optimistic for the public transit project. The California Coastal Commission unanimously approved a deal that allows the owner of a coastal ranch to fix damage to land developed without permission and transfer 36 acres of coastal property to Santa Barbara County. The ranch land will be used to extend a current public park at Jalama Beach. The settlement is important because the public has been shut out of the public land for over a hundred years. The area is free of urban sprawl, crowds, development, and freeways. The land is part of the 37 square-file Cojo Jalama Ranches, formerly known as Bixby Ranch. Los Angeles Metro board  approved a staff recommendation to study proposed safety improvements that could lead to converting the 18-mile Orange bus rapid transit line to a light-rail line. Agency staff have recommended building an elevated busway bridge. Metro has set aside $286 million for the Orange Line improvements.

A property owner who claimed that the San Diego County Airport Land Use Compatibility Plan resulted in a taking of property sued the wrong agencies , the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The property owner obtained permits from the City of Carlsbad to build a project near Palomar Airport, but did not construct the project before those permits expired. Meanwhile, the San Diego Airport Authority – serving as the Airport Land Use Commission – changed the ALUCP in such a way that Carlsbad denied the project a second time around. The landowners sued the Airport Authority and San Diego County – but not Carlsbad, which had permitting authority.

The City of San Diego’s new habitat conservation plan for vernal pools, approved unanimously by the Planning Commission with a agreement with environmental groups, is facing new opposition from nearly a dozen environmental groups. Under the plan, federal officials would cede authority over projects that would destroy vernal pools to San Diego officials; in exchange the city would protect many pools and abide by a clear set of rules.The plan would accelerate construction of housing tracts and shopping plazas by removing federal approvals so that development of projects proposed for properties with vernal pools can commence significantly more quickly. Opponents contend the plan uses an incomplete inventory of local pools (roughly 2,500 citywide), allows destruction of some important pools, management of the pools is inadequate, and the cost over 31 years will be significantly higher than the $13 million the city officials estimated. City officials say the inventory relies on years of comprehensive analysis of the local vernal pools and stress that the plan will be updated each year as new staff hired become aware of additional needs. The plan is expected to be presented to the City Council for final approval before the end of the year. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear W. Hollywood Takings Case The United States Supreme Court turned down a property rights case from developers of an 11-unit condo in West Hollywood that challenged a California requirement about subsidizing the creation of affordable housing. The builders claim the fees violate the Constitution’s prohibition against taking private property “for public use without just compensation”. The California courts have said these fees are not an “exaction” or a taking of property , but rather a reasonable regulation of development. Citing the San Jose case two years ago that said the purpose of the in-lieu housing fee is not to defray the cost of increased demand on public services resulting from the specific development project, but rather to combat the overall lack of affordable housing. Transformative Climate Communities Program Names Finalists The Transformative Climate Communities  Program received seven concept proposals for implementation grants. The concept proposals were reviewed by an Interagency Review Panel and the following were recommended to be invited to submit Full Applications: Green Together: NE Valley, City of Los Angeles, The Trust for Public Land (Lead Applicant); Ontario Connects - People Places Prosperity, City of Ontario (Lead Applicant); River District Transformation Project, City of Sacramento, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (Lead Applicant); South Los Angeles (LA) Transformative Climate Communities Greenhouse Gas Reduction Project, City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Lead Applicant); Transform Fresno, City of Fresno (Lead Applicant); Watts Rising Collaborative, City of Los Angeles, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (Lead Applicant). The deadline to submit the full application is Nov. 30.  Sonoma County Considers Changing Land Use Rules for Fire Recovery Sonoma County supervisors are considering plans to provide more emergency housing options, regulate cleanup, and create a new fund to pay for some of the disaster response in an effort to speed up the region’s recovery from recent fires that destroyed thousands of structures countywide. One major proposal would allow landowners to temporarily rent out structures on agricultural properties. Another proposal would put standards in place for homeowners who opt out of the government’s free debris removal program, requiring private contractors to meet the same standards as their public counterparts for removing, transporting and ultimately disposing of hazardous waste. Most significantly, supervisors unanimously agreed to place a moratorium on new vacation rental permits and allow housing in temporary locations such as RVs, pool houses, and sanctioned overnight parking lots. California Named Third-Most 'Bicycle Friendly' State The League of American Bicyclists ranked the 50 states on their "bike friendliness” in 2017.Washington was number one, Minnesota two and California third. The rankings credited California for five bicycle-friendly actions, but lower ratings on legislation and enforcement. North Dakota, Hawaii and Nebraska were 48, 49 and 50 on the list, respectively. The data was analyzed in five categories: Infrastructure and Funding, Education and Encouragement, Legislation and Enforcement, Policies and Programs, and Evaluation and Planning. Additionally it was noted the number of bicycle friendly actions taken by each state which include Complete Streets policy, safe passing law, statewide bike plan, spending more than two percent of federal transportation money on biking and walking, and a bicycle safety emphasis area.  San Jose Coyote Creek Named to List of Threatened Landscapes The Cultural Landscape Foundation announced its list of 2017 Landslide Program, which help raise awareness about threatened and at-risk landscapes and works of architecture. There were 13 places named to the list nationwide, and Coyote Valley in San Jose was the only California place named. Coyote Valley is the largest undeveloped landscape overlaying Silicon Valley’s groundwater aquifer and provides 2,500 acres of floodplain to mitigate flooding. The major threat to the open space includes sprawl from pressure to increase housing in the region. TCLF is nonprofit that educates and engages the public to make “our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards”.  Trump Administration Considers Opening Marine Sanctuaries President Trump has received a report from the U.S. Commerce Secretary with recommendations on which of America’s national marine sanctuaries and ocean monuments should be eliminated or have their boundaries changed. Among the 11 areas listed, multiple are located in California: parts of Monterey Bay, and the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries off the Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. The report has not been released to the public, which makes environmental groups furious. As Richard Charter a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation told the Mercury News, “We’re in a strange new world in which documents that the public has every right to see are being withheld from public view.” Secretary Ross received 100,000 comments this summer during the public comment period, with 99 percent in favor of retaining the existing boundaries of the protected ocean areas. Quick Hits & Updates The California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling on billionaire Vinod Khosla’s repeated refusal to grant public access to Martins Beach in San Mateo County. In 2008, Khosla purchased beachfront property and erected “Beach closed, keep out” signs which began a legal battle. Khosla has 90 days to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the plantiff Surfrider Foundation sees it as a victory that the state’s highest court will not be reviewing the decision.  San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved  plans for a massive development at the city’s Pier 70. The project will turn 35 acres of shipyard into housing, commercial space, waterfront parks, and artist studios. The developer, Forest City, reduced the amount of commercial space from 2.3 million to 1.75 million square feet to satisfy community groups.  The owners of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows have released plans to link the two ski resorts with a 13,000-foot gondola named the California Express. The project must be approved by Placer County planning officials and the U.S. Forest Service, but the resorts hope to have it running by the 2019-2020 season. The two ski resorts are jointly owned and operated by Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, and this project would create the largest ski area in California.  Disneyland Resort will shelve  plans for a new transportation hub and will instead build a 6,500-space parking structure near its shopping district. The transportation hub “Eastern Gateway” would have included a new pedestrian bridge, 6,800 parking spaces, and driveways for taxis, buses, and shuttles. Shop owners around the resort are thrilled the project is dropped because they were worried the bridge would divert foot traffic from their shops.  Today, Nov. 7, residents of Santa Barbara are voting on Measure C, which would raise city sales tax to 8.75 percent from the current 7.75 percent. The revenues generated would pay for renovation and infrastructure improvement projects and would bring in an estimated $22 million a year, roughly the same as the city’s redevelopment agency before it was dissolved in 2012. San Francisco landlord Anne Kihagi must pay $3.5 million after a jury found her guilty of harassing and illegally evicting tenants. Kihagi violated the law when she kicked three tenants out of a rent-controlled home and said her sister would be occupying the unit. Kihagi also harassed residents by reducing garbage services, shutting off electricity, and not calling back when repairs were needed. San Francisco’s city attorney won a judgment against Kihagi in May after filing a lawsuit against her saying she waged “a war of harassment, intimidation and retaliation” against her rent-controlled tenants to illegally evict them. A national survey completed by WalletHub ranked 100 of the largest cities in the county by the “greenest” lifestyle. Seven of the top ten cities are in California: San Francisco (first), San Diego (second), Fremont (third), San Jose (fifth), Sacramento (seventh), Irvine (eigth), and Oakland (tenth). The survey looks at environment, transportation, energy sources, and lifestyle and policy. Some of the indicators used to evaluate include greenhouse gas emissions per capita, miles of bicycle lanes, and average commute time by automobile. The Fresno City Council unanimously approved the relocation of a meat-rendering plant out of southwest Fresno to a new plant three miles west near the city’s wastewater treatment plant. Neighbors of Darling Ingredients have complained about odors since 2012, when a group of residents filed a lawsuit. As Councilman Oliver Baines said, “The community wins, the company wins, and our city wins.” The City of Los Angeles  selected Gruen Associates to design the final 12-miles of the Valley portion of the Los Angeles River Greenway. The first step will be a detailed feasibility study, which is anticipated to take nine months with community input and review.  The Trump administration indicated that it opposes the Delta tunnels project, meaning the project might not receive the funding Gov. Jerry Brown was hoping for from the U.S. Interior Department. Those opposed to the project say the comment puts the California WaterFix further in doubt. So far, most of the major State Water Project customers have agreed to participate, with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California agreeing to spend more than $4 billion to build the tunnels.  Exposition Park officials will update the park’s master plan for the first time since 1993 to prepare for the groundbreaking in 2018 of the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, construction on the Banc of California soccer stadium, and prepare for the 2028 Olympics. The master plan update will be overseen by architecture firm Torti Gallas + Partners, and is expected to take three years to complete.

As I write this, a few hours before the first pitch of Game 6 and the first furtive steps of trick-or-treating, countless Californians are doubtless making mad dashes for one of the scariest places of all: the gas station.  As of midnight, once the ghouls and goblins depart, California drivers will be paying an extra 12 cents per gallon. Permanently.  This gas tax increase came about through Senate Bill 1, passed in April. Roughly $5 billion in annual proceeds will be distributed to counties to pay for all manner of transportation projects and maintenance. The increase — 43 percent higher than the current state gas tax, to 41.7 cents — was necessary because the current tax rate is 27 years old. Inflation left it in the dust, and the rise of more fuel-eficent cars since 1994 bit into revenues.  While drivers will understandably gripe about added expense — and some are openly protesting — just as they’re probably ecstatic about saving that extra $1.20 or so by filling up now, it’s worth wondering what this form of taxation really means for mobility and development in California. Just as Bill Fulton talks about the “fiscalization of land use,” we can also talk about the fiscalization of transportation. In this case, there are some weird incentives.  One the one hand, the tax is a disincentive, albeit a minuscule one, to driving. On the other hand, the state now has 12 more reasons per gallon to want Californians to drive more — and, ideally, to do so in less-efficient cars. This raises, of course, the age-old debate over taxing gas versus taxing miles driven. If Tesla gets its way, this might be the last increase to the gas tax in state history, because the state will have no choice but to tax by distance.  Back on the consumer’s side, the tax is one more reason why cities should support public transit, build more walkable and bike able places, and generally encourage people not to drive. Fortunately, the state has plenty of policies in place to support this sort of thing, most notably AB 32, SB 375, and the impending vehicle-miles traveled metrics. If these policies take cars off the road, it's hopefully all going to even out, since it will result in less wear-and-tear on streets and highways. But cities don’t transform themselves overnight, like carriages into pumpkins. And that’s where this tax — like any other flat gas tax — gets really dicey.  Naturally, people who drive most deserve to pay the most gas tax, right? Not exactly.  Needless to say, California is suffering a housing crisis. And our urban areas are haunted by the ghosts of 20th-century approach to urban development. This combination means many of the millions of residents who live in outer suburbs and commute ridiculous distances aren’t doing so because they dig swimming pools, key parties, and neighbors who give out full-size candy bars on Halloween. They live there because they can’t afford to live anywhere else. They commute to jobs low-paying jobs in the city because all the low-paying jobs in the suburbs are taken. They are doing just well enough to own a car (or else they’d cram into truly unpleasant conditions in urban apartments) but not enough for much of anything else.  This means, of course, that the gas tax isn’t just regressive but doubly regressive. Poor suburban Californians already disproportionately bear the temporal and emotional costs of driving. Now they’ll disproportionately bear the financial cost of the gas tax increase too.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t raise the gas tax, of course. You don’t need a Ph.D. in public finance to know that 27 years without so much as an adjustment for inflation makes no sense. But nor do you need a Ph.D. in urban planning to know that the relationship between living, working, and driving in California is out of whack — especially with housing costs what they are today.  Scary, isn’t it?

Los Angeles is one of a dozen cities worldwide, including Mexico City, London, Cape Town, and Paris, that are vowing to buy only zero-emission buses starting in 2025 and make entire neighborhoods fuel-free by promoting walking, cycling, and public transportation. The C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration includes 12 cities from around the world. Seattle is the only other city in the group from the United States. The goals are aimed at localized air pollution as well as climate change. The plan echoes one released by the city of Madrid, which envisions a “zero-emissions zone” in the city center where residents, public transportation and zero-emission vehicles can go. The group of cities are committed to eliminating emissions in designated areas of the cities by 2030 and have policies to fight air pollution, improve the quality of life, and help tackle the global threat of climate change. Humbolt County Adopts New General Plan  The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved , 3-1, a new general plan and general plan EIR after 18 years. A decade ago a General Plan Update draft had more housing and less environmental impact but with new supervisors the policies in the GPU changed, as did the ideological makeup of the county Planning Commission, and the guiding principles underpinning the whole process. One of the major changes in the newly adopted General Plan is that new homes will be permitted on resource lands in the county. The county must still modify and update the Local Coastal Plan, which can take six months to two years to receive certification by the California Coastal Commission. Fresno Restores Fulton Street The City of Fresno recently celebrated  the re-opening of Fulton Street in the heart of downtown Fresno. The project to transform Fulton Mall, which opened as a a pedestrian-only street in 1964 and had fallen on hard times in recent years, into a traditional two-way street began in March 2016. The goal is to make it easier for business to open downtown to bring both vehicular and pedestrian traffic to the area. The city received federal and state grants totaling $20 million to help pay for the revitalization. Construction was supposed to take 14 months but took 19 months, causing businesses in the area to leave or close up for a hiatus until construction was completed. Approximately $5 million was spent to restore 18 pieces of artwork, which are an important part of the historic character of Fulton Street. Mayor Ashley Swearengin called it a signal of the “rebirth” of downtown Fresno.  Controversy Arises over Development of Downtown Laguna Niguel  According to Voice of OC, the Orange County Board of Supervisors killed a contract with a developer of county-owned land, halting development of downtown Laguna Niguel in August. City Councilmembers learned the project was dead at their October 17 meeting, and county supervisors still have not publicly reported their vote two months ago. Laguna Niguel was formed in 1989 but has no downtown area, the proposed project was the Agora Arts District Downtown and the county had a contract with Lab Holding to develop the site until the agreement was terminated. The disagreement is over the original RFP and the requirement of a completion bond, which Lab Holding said was never in the original proposal sent out by the county. Shaheen Sadeghi, founder of Lab Holding, said the financial terms changed significantly and were given 24 months to complete the project. Additionally, the county was splitting financing of the EIR with the city, but Lab Holdings secured its own construction funding and therefore the performance/completion bonds are uncommon for landholders.  Fire Watch: 8,400 Homes Burned; 100,000 Residents Displaced in N. Calif. According to an initial accounting, the recent fires in Northern California have destroyed at least 8,400 homes and buildings, 42 lives lost, and 100,000 people displaced by the fires with many wondering where they will live in the long term. In Santa Rosa alone, 2,800 homes have been destroyed putting added strain on the housing market. That is approximately 4 percent of the city’s 67,000 residential units. As Frank Nothaft, chief economist with CoreLogic explained to Mercury News, “it’s already a tight housing market… and apartments are tough. Rents are up. Prices are up. Rental vacancies are well below the national rates.” Nothaft also explains that rebuilding homes can take longer than usual because of the shortage of skilled construction labor. Tenants Rights Advocates Seek Repeal Costa-Hawkins Act in 2018 Faith-based community organization LA Voice has announced that it will promote a measure that would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, the 1995 law that bars rent caps on single-family homes and apartments built after that year. The potential 2018 statewide ballot initiative would allow cities and counties to dramatically expand rent control. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a nonprofit community organizing group, is the primary backer of the initiative. Assemblyman Richard Bloom also introduced a bill last year repealing the act but pulled it before a committee hearing because of significant opposition. Oakland Launches Program to Turn Vacant Properties into Housing The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department, Alameda County, and non-profit Hello Housing have teamed up to transform 26 vacant properties into affordable housing for low and moderate-income residents. The group has been working for two years to acquire formerly blighted and tax-defaulted properties and converting them into housing that is safe, healthy, and affordable. The pilot program “Oakland Tax-Defaulted Properties” has multiple goals including creating new affordable housing units, returning abandoned properties to the tax rolls, curbing excessive and continuous city cleanup costs, and enhancing the vitality of Oakland neighborhoods. The 26 vacant sites will become 24 single-family homes that will be sold to low and moderate-income homebuyers earning a maximum of 120 percent of the area median income and two affordable multi-family rental properties. The properties are expected to be completed in late 2018. Quick Hits & Updates San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee issued an executive directive to speed up approvals and permits for new housing, with a goal of completing 5,000 new and renovated units per year. The order calls for housing projects to be considered for approval no later than six months after they are filed for projects not requiring environmental review, and up to 22 months for more complex projects. The City of Los Angeles has nearly doubled the number of hotel rooms within walking distance of the LA Convention Center to 4,637 rooms but still needs many more, according to a city study. However, the study concludes LA ranks 18 th in the nation when it comes to hotel rooms within walking distance- three-quarters of a mile- of a convention center.  A Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Helen E. Williams sided with the City of San Jose in a  dispute  over replacement of the Willow Glen Trestle, which the city had  permitted  for demolition . Friends of the Willow Glen Trestle claimed it is a historical resource. The court acknowledge “practical challenges” of establishing historical status and the analytical gaps when it comes to CEQA protection and transparency to agency decisions on a discretionary historical resource. The trestle was placed on the California Register of Historic Resources list last year, but Judge Williams said that was irrelevant to judicial review of the original demolition approval. Ed Pope, an army veteran and Irvine resident, has started a petition to overturn the City Council’s decision to swap land at Irvine’s Great Park for a veterans cemetery. In a press release Pope said, “I am outraged by this land-swap scheme that dishonors our veterans and enables FivePoint Communities to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in windfall profits.” The original site would have taken at least $70 million to clean up but funds from the state, Federal government, and the City of Irvine were secured. Orange County Supervisors unanimously picked a team of developers, operating under Dana Point Harbor Partners, to manage an overhaul of Dana Point Harbor with new shops, restaurants, boat slops, and hotels. The group is seeking $20 million subsidy from the county for the project. The proposed project is estimated to bring in $1.2 billion in revenue over a half-century. Leading Democratic candidates for California governor  assembled  at the City Club in San Francisco to discuss  housing and climate change, among other topics. F ormer LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former state schools chief Delaine Eastin  Eastin both brought up Prop. 13 and how the 1978 measure must be reformed.  A road diet pilot program in the Los Angeles  neighborhood  of Playa del Rey has ended abruptly, with lanes removed from three roads will be restored, after vehement public outcry. Councilmember Mike Bonin said while road diets worked in other cities, not enough community outreach and public education campaigns over public safety were done to make it an acceptable project to the community. The road diet was part  of  Los Angeles ’ s  efforts  to implement Vision Zero. (See  prior  CP&DR coverage .)

Twenty-five years ago, the proliferation of mixed-use development was scarcely a glimmer in a New Urbanist’s eye. Today, of course, the practice of developing multistory buildings with retail on the ground floor and, typically, residences on the upper floors is a standard part of cities’ development plans, especially those that are pursuing sustainability and walkability. But 1992 was when the City of Redondo Beach, in the South Bay region of Los Angeles county, first adopted a mixed-use ordinance, perhaps ahead of its time. This year, when most other cities are embracing and promoting mixed-use, Redondo Beach recently took a step back. In September, the city council adopted a two-year moratorium on all new mixed-use developments in the city. Proponents of the moratorium, including a vocal neighborhood group called Save the Riviera, raised concerns that mixed-use developments were straining local infrastructure, including sewage and roads, and were not performing as the city had intended. Redondo Union School District officials voiced concerns that more housing would stress local schools. "Current vertical mixed-use in Redondo Beach that allows 35 units per acre with allowable density bonuses for affordable housing has not worked,” said Mayor Bill Brand. “It has created traffic problems that continue to worsen and threaten the health and safety of our residents while providing little affordable housing.” The moratorium is designed to prevent further stresses until the city can comprehensively update its general plan, a process that is in the offing. "It prevents more out-of-scale, out of character development that are paving over commercial square footage….for primarily residential,” said City Council Member Nils Nehrenheim, formerly a leader of Save the Riviera. In particular, ground-floor commercial space was, reportedly, under-performing and therefore not generating the tax revenues that the city had anticipated. One mixed-use development replaced a car dealership, which had been "giving the city phenomenal tax revenue,” according to Nehrenheim. While the moratorium may appear to be a rejection of progressive urban planning trends — especially in a region with a severe housing shortage — Redondo Beach officials insist that it is nothing of the sort. They say it is a specific response to a unique set of circumstances. "I am a huge proponent of mixed use. I think it’s an excellent zoning tool and use of certain land,” said Nehrenheim. In some ways, the idea of pedestrian-friendly development never made sense on many of the parcels to which the mixed-use ordinance applied. Redondo Beach does not have a traditional downtown area, and much of the development in question was taking place on Pacific Coast Highway, which is a major, multilane thoroughfare. “(Planners) chose this area because they wanted to create focal points of activity. The areas they chose….is along a traffic corridor whose speed limits is 40 miles per hour. How do you create focal points of activity on a state highway?” said Nehrenheim. Redondo Beach’s experience also suggests that the city’s originally conceptions of mixed use may have been half-baked. Mixed use developments to not, in and of themselves, create activity if they are located poorly. "I think with all mixed use, the commercial viability can be questionable,” said Jones. "You get two blocks from the core and the commercial can be marginal." Tax revenues and neighborhood character aside, traffic on PCH may be the driving force behind some of the opposition to mixed use. Proponents of the moratorium say that, essentially, the city has too much housing — or not enough jobs. Rather than supply housing for people who work in Redondo Beach, more housing will simply mean more commuters who leave the city in the morning and return in the evening, thus exacerbating traffic rather than alleviating it. "There’s pretty much a mass transit disconnect between the south end of the South Bay, and that covers Torrance, Redondo, Hermosa Beach,” said Bruce Szekes, of Save the Riveriera. "Right now a lot of the intersections in the beach are poor at current counts without adding any more density." Moreover, city officials say that Redondo Beach is already doing its part to alleviate the region’s housing crisis by meeting its Regional Housing Needs Asseessment targets. They point fingers at neighboring cities that have disregarded RHNA and even become less dense in recent years. "A lot of coastal communities are dealing with the strong demand for housing,” said Jones. "With our RHNA numbers, we're doing our part." Mayor Bill Brand said that further housing development should focus on subsidized housing. "Horizontal mixed-use with required low income affordable housing for larger projects is a much better approach,” said Brand. Nonetheless, the South Bay’s economy has boomed in recent years with the rise of industrial and technology companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, creating further demand for market-rate housing. In practice, though, the moratorium may not mean much. Three mixed-use developments were recently approved. The Legado, with over 100 residential units, was approved after months of rancor — and a lawsuit by the developer -- shortly before the moratorium took effect. While those projects get underway, the city is embarking on an update to its general plan, which is expected to include a revised approach to mixed use. A General Plan Advisory Committee has been convened to "examining how to better plan our communities and mitigate the threats to our health and safety that increasing traffic gridlock causes,” according to Brand. While proponents of the moratorium would like the city to maintain modest residential densities — around a maximum of 30 units per acre, down from the current 35 — the moratorium does not necessarily mean that mixed-use will be forever banished from the city. Contacts & Resources Bill Brand, Mayor, City of Redondo Beach,  Bill.Brand@redondo.org Aaron Jones, Community Development Director, City of Redondo Beach,  aaron.jones@redondo.org Nils Nehrenheim, Council Member, City of Redondo Beach,  Nils.Nehrenheim@redondo.org Bruce Szekes, Save the Riviera, info@saveriviera.org

Once when I was a planning practitioner we had a debate about how to handle the determination of a particular program under the California Environmental Quality Act. My colleagues argued that we should do an environmental impact report because otherwise we might get sued. I argued that we were going to get sued no matter what, so we might as well use an exemption. If we did an EIR, I said, some judge would just find that we didn’t do it right. On the other hand, if we used an exemption we had a chance of winning outright.

At least eight cities and coalitions of cities in California have submitted  proposals, among 238 nationwide, to lure Amazon's second headquarters by the deadline, last Thursday. The company’s criteria include leading universities systems, proximity to a major airport, and enough land to accommodate 8 million square feet and 50,000 employees. A multifaceted bid by the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, the City of Pomona, the Pomona Fairplex, and Cal Poly Pomona proposed a joint plan through the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. Irvine is bidding through the Irvine Company, and San Diego, and Chula Vista have each submitted proposals. Huntington Beach and Long Beach teamed up to offer “Sand, Sea and Air,” which includes the Boeing campus with 500,000 square feet and a 164-acre campus that can accommodate 5.4 million buildable square feet adjacent to Long Beach Airport. Santa Ana has proposed a 10 million-square-foot hub with developer Michael Harrah in the old Orange County Register’s building.  In the Bay Area , the City of San Jose submitted a bid, as did a coalition of four cities —  Concord, Fremont, Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco — with 60 million square feet of commercial across three counties. The proposal includes properties such as the former Concord Naval Weapons Stations, Hunters Point, and the Oakland Coliseum. It also includes 45,000 new homes with the motto: “Don’t aggregate and coagulate. Disperse and be diverse”.  Gov. Jerry Brown offered hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives if Amazon chooses a California city as its second home. (See prior CP&DR commentary .) Fresno Water Fee Prompts Suit by Developers The Fresno City Council recently  approved , 5-1, a water capacity fee which adds up to $4,246 for a new single-family home in April. Three major home-builders are challenging the fees in court, saying they are too high, unfair, and amount to a tax that violates state law. The trial is scheduled for March 2018 in Fresno County Superior Court. One developer, Granville Homes president Darius Assemi, told the council the fee will be passed onto new homebuyers and therefore they need to make sure it is an appropriate fee. City Attorney Douglas Sloan says the fees are only what’s needed to cover the cost of service and that the fees bear a “fair or reasonable relationship” to new homeowners’ burdens on future water demands. Planning Funds Available for Hazard Mitigation The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is accepting  applications for funding through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, available as a result of three Presidential Disaster Declarations. Planning activities that reduce the effects of future natural disasters are eligible for the funding if the subapplicants are state agencies, local governments, special districts, and some private non-profits. Planning Subapplications are due by January 1, 2018. Eligible activities include updating or enhancing sections of the current FEMA-approved mitigation plan; integrating information from mitigation plans, specifically risk assessment or mitigation strategies; building capability through delivery of technical assistance and training; and evaluating adoption and/or implementation of ordinances that reduce risk and/or increase resilience. California Homes Rank among Most Expensive in Study of Land and Construction Costs A new study by Buildzoom shows home prices have risen more dramatically than construction costs have. The study estimated the average home value compared to the cost of replacing the home, as well as related measures for zip code areas within each of the largest U.S. metro regions. In Coastal metro areas the high cost of housing is not driven by the construction costs but rather by the high cost of land (scarcity of zoned units, not available land).  The research shows how timing is vital in a developers’ land acquisition. Among cities with the highest average replacement cost per home, California cities occupied four of the five top spots; the average land value per home followed a similar pattern, meaning that the intrinsic costs of land — minutes the costs of building — are highest in California. The San Jose metro area had the highest average home value $1,133,000 and Buffalo metro the lowest $167,000. The data shows that in coastal metro regions the value of homes is derives less from their materials or construction but rather the opportunity they offer for living and working in the city. The goal of the research is to indicate the challenges that restricted housing supply- rules governing land use- brings to a region. Quick Hits & Updates The Sacramento Bee projects that the wildfires destroyed roughly 6,700 homes and business in and around Santa Rosa, which is approximately five percent of the housing stock. The Department of Housing and Urban Development says Santa Rosa has an unmet rental demand of more than 1,700 units over the next three years and only 200 new rental homes are under construction. The population of Santa Rosa had grown by 1,000 annually over the last seven years with fewer than 300 new homes built in 2016. The California State Transportation Agency is now accepting applications for the next round of  Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program  (TIRCP) awards and the first round of  State Rail Assistance (SRA)  Programs awards. These grants combined will provide about $2.5 billion over the next five years to transit and rail operators across the state. The TIRCP official Call for Projects, with detailed information about application requirements, is located  here . Program Guidelines are located  here . SRA Guidelines, with detailed information about program requirements, are located  here . The California Air Resources Board  released its Final Staff Report on the Proposed Update to the Senate Bill 375 Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Targets. The board hearing is scheduled for November 16 and the Final Environmental Analysis will be available at least ten days before the hearing. Three Newport Beach real estate firms have been picked to head the redevelopment of Dana Point Harbor. The mixed-use project is expected to cost around $300 million and will include new restaurants, shops, hotels, and other waterfront properties. San Diego City Councilmember Scott Sherman is proposing to soften park construction obligations that housing developers face to spur more development. Instead, developers should spend their required park contribution on adding playgrounds or other amenities to an existing park instead of future parks that may never be built. Los Angeles Metro, with $619 million from Measure M, is forging ahead with plans to extend the Green and Crenshaw/LAX Lines 4.6 miles southward to a new transit center in Torrance. There are currently two routes under consideration: one following the railroad right-of-way and the other along Hawthorne Boulevard. Both alternatives would service the new station being built to connect with the LAX Automated People Mover. Metro is conducting a supplemental alternative analysis for the project and is expected to go to the Board for a vote in winter 2018.   Google’s development partner, TC Agoge, has struck a deal with the Sucessor Agency to the San Jose Redevelopment Agency to buy a vacant property near the SAP Center. In June the tech company revealed its plans to build a transit-oriented campus of 6-8 million square feet where 15,000 to 20,000 employees might work. Google is incremental purchasing properties in the western edges of downtown near Diridon Station. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Sacramento Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit trying to block a 15-story residential tower in the midtown neighborhood that was blocked on the grounds of it being too dense. The Yamanee would be the tallest building in midtown, with three floors of parking and ten floors, or 134 units, of condominiums. The lawsuit alleged the city oversetepped its discretion in allowing the project to be three times more dense than the general plan’s designation for the area. Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley denied the challenge and found the city has the authority to allow higher density when a project provides “significant community benefit.” JP Morgan Chase has awarded $3.5 million grant to a two nonprofit lenders: Housing Trust Silicon Valley and Genesis LA Economic Development Corp. to help spur construction of small-scale, affordable housing units such as accessory dwelling units. The funds provide seed money for a pilot program expected to begin next year. The low-cost flexible loans would be made to homeowners in exchange for their promise to rent the adu at affordable costs to low and middle-income earners. A group of environmental conservation groups filed an appeal against the Mid County Parkway, a proposed 16-mile east-west highway corridor that would link the cities of Perris and San Jacinto. The groups challenge the $2 billion project saying it would cut through low-income neighborhoods, threaten wildlife preserves, and worsen air pollution. The project would be partially paid through Measure A, a half-cent sales tax approved by Riverside County voters. ATTOM Data Solutions released its 2017 U.S. Natural Hazard Housing Risk Index. According to the Risk Heat Map, all of California is located in the “Very High” risk category.  TO collect the data, ATTOM indexed more than 3,000 counties and 22,000 cities on the risk of earthquakes, floods, hail, hurricane storm surge, tornadoes, and wildfires.  In California, Nevada County (Truckee) made the top five list for highest overall natural hazard risk and San Jose, Los Angeles, and Bakersfield were three of the top five cities to make the list. The San Francisco Planning Commission approved  changes to the Western Shoreline Area Plan including closing the southern stretch of the Great Highway and relocating the parking lot and restrooms. The amendments also call for added protection for the 14-foot-wide wastewater infrastructure buried under the Great Highway. The plans still need further approval at the local and state levels, including the California Coastal Commission.   The federal government has given Cadiz Inc, the go-ahead to lay pipeline for its proposed desert water project. In 2015, Bureau of Land Management said Cadiz couldn't use the existing railroad right-of-way and would have to obtain federal permission, which would have triggered a lengthy environmental review. The BLM follows other Trump administration moves to eliminate legal hurdles erected when President Obama was in office. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles is reopening the Section 8 waiting list lottery for the first time in 13 years. The agency is expecting more than 600,000 people to apply for the rental subsidy program and only 20,000 will be selected for placement on the waiting list. According to Mayor Garcetti’s office, 56,000 households in the City are currently enrolled. San Francisco Supervisor Norman Yee presented a revised ordinance that allows robots on the streets and sidewalks but only with permits and a human nearby to monitor the devices. Yee’s initial ordinance would have outright banned the devices from city sidewalks, but it did not appear to have enough votes to pass the board.  Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to look into restoring an expired ordinance that could help control rising rents and evictions at mobile home parks. The motion will begin by asking county departments to look into the feasibility of such an ordinance.

By 2040, California will have an "integrated statewide" rail network, according to a new public draft of the California State Rail Plan plan  released by Caltrans. The plan outlines a series of investments to connect most communities in California to each other at least every hour throughout the day, with many regions being connected with half-hourly service. It also highlights the critical role for the rail system to be expanded in its ability to move a growing volume of freight cleanly and efficiently. Caltrans intends for these investments to lead to an easy-to-use rail system that provides faster and more frequent service, customer-friendly timed multimodal connections, integrated ticketing and trip planning, and increased reliability of travel in congested corridors. Caltrans is seeking public input between October 11 until December 11. Caltrans will hold public workshops across the state in San Luis Obispo Oct. 14, Fresno the Oct. 30, Oakland Nov. 1, Sacramento Nov. 7, San Diego Nov. 13, San Bernardino Nov. 14, Los Angeles Nov. 15th, and an online webinar Dec. 6. S.F. Releases Strategy to Reduce Homelessness San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing will release i ts “Five-Year Strategic Framework” to reduce homelessness this week. The plan’s goals are to cut the number of hard-core street people in half, ending family homelessness, and clearing away all large tent encampments. One of the key aims is to bundle the city’s homeless services tighter to make a Homelessness Response System that ties together the 15 existing independent databases now being used to track homeless people through housing, medical and other services. The new system should be fully up and running by December 2018. Other plans in the framework are to expand the Moving On Initiative to help 300 people leave supportive housing for independent living, open at least one new Navigation Center, ramp up family and youth aid programs and construct 1,367 new supportive housing units in five years. Fresno Takes Steps to Spend TCC Funds The Community Steering Committee of the Fresno Transformative Climate Communities Collaborative voted on a package  of projects that will be presented to the Fresno City Council and then Sacramento for final approval. The proposals include a West Fresno campus for Fresno City College, an electric car-sharing service, a mixed-use development in Chinatown, and a community activity center. In total 25 proposals were submitted for a piece of $70 million in cap-and-trade funding. Fresno was tapped for a large share of TCC funds for its combination of environmental challenges and poverty rate. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) State Legislation to Change Governance of SANDAG Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that would establish an independent auditor for the San Diego Association of Governments and shift the balance of power on its 21-member board of elected officials in favor of the larger cities. For the past few months, SANDAG has faced allegations of mismanagement and negligence, such as overselling how much public money a tax proposal would raise for promised transportation projects. San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez authored the bill. Those opposed call it a “shameful power grab by Sacramento Democrats, leaving the majority of cities in our county at the mercy of the two largest.” However, many groups are in favor of the changes. To approve major decisions, SANDAG’s board of directors get a straight vote by each official and a weighted vote based on city’s population. The legislation alters how the weighted vote is calculated and allows the weighted vote to supersede the tally vote as long as four separate jurisdictions vote in the majority. Firm Floats L.A. River Revitalization Concept AECOM released  its LA River Gateway revitalization proposal for the hundreds of acres of land alongside the downtown section of the Los Angeles River. The multinational construction firm did the research at no charge and with no formal client because it wants to show what the vision could be for the future. AECOM officials propose that public agency landowners form a joint powers authority and leverage their ownership of more than one-third of the land within the plan area to form a taxing agency that could fund new streets, housing, and other development. The framework for the proposal is guided by the city of Los Angeles’s sustainability goals. Economic Forecast Calls for Rising Rents in S. California USC released  its 2017 Casden Economics Forecast and found that rising employment combined with low homeownership will continue to drive rent up over the next two years throughout the region. The forecast finds by 2019 rents are expected to increase over $136 from 2017 levels in Los Angeles County, $149 in Orange County, $124 in Inland Empire, $121 in San Diego County, and $98 in Ventura County. The report stresses the challenges employers have in attempting to recruit out-of-state talent. L.A. Metro Looks to Accelerate Key Projects with Private Funds Los Angeles Metro announced  three transit projects may be built sooner rather than later because of private investors. The three projects include designing and building a train through the Sepulveda Pass, building a light-rail line from downtown LA to southeast LA County cities, and creating an additional pay lanes on crowded freeways. By adding private capital up front, the agency can start designing next year instead of waiting for the tax revenues to accrue. The Sepulveda Transit Corridor includes an 11-mile train portion that is scheduled to be completed in 2033. The light-rail project will connect Artesia to downtown Los Angeles and is expected to break ground in 2022. The final project is ExpressLanes on the 10 Freeway from El Monte to Los Angeles and the 110 Freeway from South Los Angeles to the 105 Freeway in Norwalk. Quick Hits & Updates Donald Shoup, a research professor of urban planning at UCLA best known for his work on parking, is the 2017 recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award-the highest honor given by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). The award is conferred every two years to honor significant contributions to the field of planning.  The Planning and Land Use Management Committee of the Los Angeles City Council approved a measure that would charge developers in the city a fee to help pay for low-income housing. The fee is expected to generate more than $100 million a year and produce or preserve hundreds of subsidized units. Those opposed to the fee say it will further stifle housing production. The fee would be around $15 per square foot and would be phased in over an 18-month period. The measure now goes to the full council.  The City of Santa Rosa is looking to dramatically increase housing densities throughout the city, especially downtown and near its two train stations. A new plan calls for density bonuses for developers that could allow up to 100 percent more housing units than traditional zoning would allow for the site. Developers who build affordable units in the city would be granted the right to build more units than normal. Under the Housing Action plan the city is also considering inclusionary housing and making easier and cheaper to build granny units. (Editor’s Note: This plan was drafted prior to last week’s fires.) A California State Audit found Gov. Brown’s $17 billion proposal for twin water tunnels under the Sacramento Bay-Delta was suffering from “significant cost increases and delays”. State auditor Elaine Howle also said the Department of Water Resources had not completed an economic or financial analysis to demonstrate the financial viability of the project.  The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which sponsored and promoted the failed Los Angeles’s Measure S ballot measure in March, is forming a new division called the Healthy Housing Foundation to provide affordable housing. AHF has already purchased a Skid Row building for $8 million in an effort to provide apartments for hundreds of low-income tenants and is in the process of purchasing a Hollywood motel. Populous, the same architectural firm that designed Petco Park, has been hired by San Diego State University to begin initial planning on a multi-purpose stadium in Mission Valley. The plan is to build a 35,000-seat, expandable structure for around $150 million. SDSU would use land for a campus expansion and set aside space for a stadium for soccer games and other events. There are several other proposals pending for the property.  UCLA released an Affordable Housing Policy Brief from Paul Habibi “Housing Pays: Capturing the Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Increased Housing Production in L.A.” In LA County about 6 in 10 renters are cost-burdened, meaning paying at least 30 percent of income on housing each month, and one-third of county renters spend half their income on housing. The report shows that expediting and streamlining housing development to maintain high levels of housing production would produce $583 million over eight years.  Billionaire landowner Vinod Khosla has finally let people visit a beach accessible through his property between 9am and 4:30pm, but not every day. The California Coastal Commission say this does not sufficiently addresses his violations of state law guaranteeing public access to the coast. Khosla’s lawyers are arguing that the state interference with his “fundamental right to exclude the public from private property” would be a type of “taking” that requires compensation under U.S. Supreme Court property-rights rulings. Los Angeles County supervisors fired Sean Rogan, executive director of the Housing Authority and Community Development Commission. No public explanation has been given. According to an annual financial report, the San Diego Housing Commission funded fewer than 20 percent of the affordable rental housing units it hoped to finance, despite nearly 85 percent increase in revenue due to developer fees to support such projects. Officials were aiming to construction 310 units but by June 30 only had 51 rental units backed by the commission. The report cited delays in project timelines and funding approvals among the reasons for the low production totals. It says 800 low-income housing units are expected to be completed by July 2018. The State Lands Commission informed  Cadiz Inc. that its proposed water pipeline crosses a strip of state-owned land and therefore requires a state lease. The Trump administration cleared a major obstacle that was erected by the Obama administration but this recent letter is the latest hurdle in a long history of the politically connected company’s attempts to pump groundwater 200 miles east of Los Angeles. University of San Diego economist Alan Gin says the city needs to put restrictions on short-term rentals or else the existing supply of local housing will become even scarcer than it already is. Gin says the region is 68,000 units short of what it needs. San Diego County’s average rent hit a record of $1,875 a month. San Diego City Council is expected to take up the issue of STRs soon.

If ever a movie made a star out of a building, the movie was Blade Runner and the star was the Bradbury Building . Rumor has it that it was restored in part because of the fame director Ridley Scott conferred on it by making it the setting for the death of Roy Batty, the emotional undoing of Deckard, and one of the more potent testimonies to the fragility of humanity. The real Los Angeles is thus better off for what happened in the fictional Los Angeles. Then again, 2019 is still two years away. Blade Runner created a dystopic vision of Los Angeles that remains as culturally potent today — if not more so — than it was when it came out in 35 years ago. It shows up in books, articles , and offhand remarks with astounding regularity. It’s a testament to the arresting visuals of hyper-dense polyglot streets illuminated by sparkling advertisements and the possibility, however slim, that our sunny, spread-out paradise could, someday, become one of the dark places of the earth. After all, perhaps the biggest fantasy to come out of Los Angeles is Los Angeles itself. For all the theorizing about Blade Runner, it’s worth asking not what Scott was saying about the future of Los Angeles (or of cities in general) but rather why he chose Los Angeles in the first place. If Blade Runner had taken place in an older, more endearing city — say San Francisco or London — we’d be sad to witness its demise. If it had taken place someplace more generic, like Phoenix, Denver, or Gotham City, we might not care. Los Angeles hit the sweet spot between lamentation and acceptance, and, as Mike Davis says, between sunshine and noir. Director Ridley Scott, like his fellow Briton Reyner Banham, approached Los Angeles with equal parts dread and fascination. His choice was not so much a commentary on the Los Angeles of the future but rather of the Los Angeles of the present. K trudges down a sunless street in Los Angeles in 2049. The challenge that speculative fiction faces, of course, is that eventually the future catches up with it. Blade Runner 2049 takes place 30 years later, in an even bleaker world. An apparent combination of nuclear war, climate change, and technological sabotage has rendered the planet even less habitable than it was before. The dove that Batty released years ago has left no offspring. J.F. Sebastian, the sad-eyed toymaker in the first film, jokes, “No housing shortage around here. Plenty of room for everybody” since everyone who can has moved Off-World. That’s how he can afford an entire office building for his dolls and marionettes and how Deckard can afford to live in an architectural masterpiece on a cop’s salary. In the intervening years, though, the housing shortage has returned with a vengeance, not necessarily because the world has more inhabitants but because it has less land. The moral question, of course, is whether the city should accept all who need safe haven. That’s the same question that today’s Los Angeles is asking itself – or should be asking itself, at any rate. In 2049, untold numbers of stragglers, humans and replicants alike are forced into cities, where they subsist on synthetic food and artificial light. In fact, there may be no cities – plural. From the looks of things, there may be nothing else left besides Los Angeles, with all of humanity and non-humanity crammed into a piece of land whose chief virtue is that it is not radioactive. K, the new blade runner designed to hunt his own kind, searches among tens — or maybe hundreds — of millions of Los Angeles residents, all waiting for their time to die. Areal shots depict the city’s familiar endless rows of boulevards and residential streets. The houses that dot Reyner Banham’s Plains of Id are replaced by high-rise shantytowns, made up of apartment buildings, each many stories tall, each more dilapidated than the last. Mere dingbats they are not. In this Blade Runner, the billboards walk the street, as 80-foot tall interactive holograms that shake their asses just for you. (We’ve come a long way from Angelyne.) Skyscrapers rise into the ochre fog, and all is overshadowed by the new citadel of the Wallace Corporation, the corporation that rose from the ashes of Tyrell. There’s a popular Angeleno parlor game in which you try to spot real-life locations, whether they’re playing themselves or standing in for other places. The original Blade Runner was not all fantasy. Somewhere beneath the gas flares, the billboards, and Tyrell’s pyramid are the Ennis House, Union Station, and, of course, the Bradbury Building. These locations give Blade Runner a sense of reality, at least to those of us who live in L.A. -- a chilling reminder that that the future may be closer at hand than we think. That game brings few rewards with Blade Runner 2049. Director Denis Villeneuve wisely avoided the Bradbury Building, which, in the world of Blade Runner, is as fraught and freighted as Calvary. But it was far from his only omission. In fact, not a single, structure or landscape connects fiction to reality. Villeneuve offers no ruins or repurposed vestiges of the old city. The camera catches no glimpses of a ruined Dodger Stadium, a looted Getty Center, or even a lifeless palm tree. The Wilshire Grand does not stand next to the fictional police station. We know Blade Runner 2049 takes place in Los Angeles only because of arbitrary signifiers, like the LAPD, and because of its cosmetic resemblance to the city in the previous film, not to the one that lives and breathes, evolving before our eyes. In only a single, fleeting sequence in does the cityscape of Los Angeles becomes legible. K flies his Spinner police cruiser over a recognizable, but altered, expanse of the Los Angeles Basin towards what used to be the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Tendrils of ocean creep into what used to be Venice and the other coastal communities. A metal seawall the height of the Hoover Dam and width of the coastline itself protects the city from the bloated Pacific. It’s obviously not a prescription. And yet, some among us appreciate the original Blade Runner for its urbanity: the density, the diversity, and the grit. By avoiding Los Angeles entirely, the sequel lacks that exquisite ambivalence, making Los Angeles seem less human — it is a replicant of itself. Los Angeles does not so much play itself as it stands in for the entire world, obliterated beyond recognition. Villeneuve’s vision conveys more about the future of cities in general than it does about Los Angeles specifically. (Las Vegas makes a cameo, however.) A seawall protects what is left of Los Angeles from the risen Pacific.  Interestingly, of all the reasons that Scott might have envisioned for the demise of the world, climate change surely was not one of them. Blade Runner came out in 1982, after all. If anything, he probably had in mind the Cold War, signified by passing references to our them-communist antagonists, Russia and China. So, while the fictional city hasn’t changed much, its allegorical power has changed dramatically, as the real threats to humanity have evolved (and, arguably, worsened). So, Blade Runner may yet turn out to be a prediction. If the Los Angeles of the original Blade Runner was, as Ridley Scott put it, “Hong Kong on a bad day”, the updated version is closer to Mumbai or Lagos. The misery and squalor of K’s Los Angeles of the future prevails today in plenty of real places on our own planet. Add rising seas or an unthinkable human tragedy, and more people may have to cram into smaller areas. Urban planners are going to have to be ready for that — maybe not in California, but in plenty of other places – and we’re going to need compassion, cooperation, and emotional resilience just as dearly as we’re going to need planning wisdom and technological advances. We’re all going to have to be ready to find out how human we really are. Images courtesy of Sony Pictures.

The First District Court of Appeal has concluded that a challenge to a 16-home project on Laurel Way in Redwood City is not ripe for a challenge under the Subdivision Map Act. The city issued a planned development permit, which covered the installation of infrastructure but not actual approval of the homes. A citizen group challenged the approval, claiming that the Subdivision Map Act’s grandfather provision did not apply to the 1926 Map that is being used for the project. But the appellate court ruled that because the PDP dealt only with infrastructure and not actual homes, the challenge was not ripe. Save Laurel Way v. City of Redwood City, A147942 .

In an important followup to the Berkeley Hillside case, the First District Court of Appeal has upheld a CEQA exemption for a three-unit condo project just below Coit Tower in San Francisco. Neighbors argued that the project’s unique location on Telegraph Hill represented “unique circumstances” that should have overridden the CEQA exemption. Relying on the California Supreme Court’s ruling in Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley (2015) 60 Cal.4th 1086, the appellate court disagreed. “ he project is within the density, height and bulk limitations for its designated zoning,” wrote Justice Peter Siggins for a unanimous three-judge panel. “It will also be immediately adjacent to a four unit building of similar proportion. It would be odd at best for us to conclude a development project that conforms with zoning requirements on Telegraph Hill is in and of itself an unusual circumstance that requires CEQA review. We decline to do so.” The court also rejected the neighbors’ argument that conditions of approval imposed by the San Francisco Planning Commission were really mitigations under the California Environmental Quality Act, suggesting that the CEQA exemption was invalid. But the court knocked that argument down also, creating a potentially important distinction between The case involved a plan to restore a 1,000-square-foot 1906 cottage and building three new condomiums ranging in size from 3,700 to 4,200 square feet, all on a mostly vacant 7,500-square-foot lot just below Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Although the proposed development project is similar in scale to adjacent buildings, it generated controversy in the neighborhood. (More background on the project, including photographs of the site and the proposed project, can be found in an SFCurbed article here . ) The Planning Commission approved the project in 2014 with a number of conditions of approval designed to minimize the disruption of the project during construction. Under the San Francisco City Charter, the Planning Commission has broad discretionary power to impose conditions on projects. The Planning Commission also exempted the cottage rehab from CEQA under a categorical exemption for restoration and rehabilitation, and the three condos because the project was less than four units. The citizen group Protect Telegraph Hill sued, arguing that the exemptions were wrongly applied and the conditions imposed were really CEQA mitigations that were inappropriate to be imposed in a conditional use case. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Teri L. Jackson ruled in favor of the city and Protect Telegraph Hill appealed. On appeal, the neighbors argued that, among other things, the situation involved “unusual circumstances” that should have overridden the CEQA exemptions. The neighbors called the location and site constraints “unequivocally rare,” and says the exception applies because it is the “ first among the ‘Outstanding and Unique Areas’ that ‘contribute in an extraordinary degree to San Francisco’s visual form and character.” The neighbors also argued that this unique character is reflected in the city’s general plan and urban design element. But the appellate court disagreed. “The City rejected the notion that the designation of Telegraph Hill in the urban design element supports a claim of unusual circumstances, and so do we,” the court wrote. “ The full description of the Hill in the element shows that it is lined with low, small-scale buildings with flat roofs that hug the topography. While one may argue the scale of the proposed building, this seems a question of degree rather than an unusual circumstance.” The neighbors’ other major argument was that the conditions of approval were really CEQA mitigations that the city should not have imposed as part of a conditional use approval. But the court wrote, “There is simply nothing in this record that demonstrates the Board was imposing the additional conditions in order to mitigate the project’s significant environmental effects as opposed to taking precautions to address the ordinarily anticipated inconvenience and danger that arises when significant construction activity occurs in a congested urban environment like San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill.” The Case: Protect Telegraph Hill v. City and County of San Francisco , No. A148544 (published October 13, 2017) The Lawyers: For Protect Telegraph Hill: Susan Brandt-Hawley, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com For City and County of San Francisco: Andrea Ruiz-Esquide, San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, andrea.ruiz-esquide@sfgov.org For developers of lot (real parties in interest): James Reuben, Reuben, Junius & Rose, jreuben@reubenlaw.com , and Anna C. Shimko, Burke,Williams, & Sorenson, ashimko@bwslaw.com .