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The Department of Housing & Community Development has issued a wide-ranging set of recommendations to update the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process – including, most importantly, adding homelessness to the range of housing needs cities and counties must grapple with in planning for their RHNA targets.

This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . State Ceases Effort to Recoup $4 Billion in Federal Funds for High Speed Rail Henceforth, the state will no longer expect the federal government to help fund California High Speed Rail. This summer, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would renege on $4 billion in Federal Railroad Administration that had been promised for the under-construction Bakersfield-to-Merced segment. The FRA cited delays and cost overruns among its reasons for the cancellations. Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to recover the funds, asserting the the FRA had violated agreements with the state. The state recently dropped this lawsuit and will proceed using state funds, including $1 billion per year allocated from the state's cap-and-trade revenues. “This action reflects the State’s assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California," a spokesperson for the rail authority wrote in a statement, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. "As a result, the State has opted to move forward without the Trump administration. We regret that they will not share in California’s success." State Awards $866 Million for Housing & Sustainability The state is making more than $866 million in new investments to build affordable housing, expand transit, and protect communities from climate change. The awards include funding for new affordable housing in 17 communities across the state, thousands of new homes, and major sustainable transportation upgrades, with $185.6 million going to Los Angeles County as it rebuilds infrastructure after last year’s wildfires. The funding approved by SGC included more than $866 million in grant funding for 39 projects within three programs: 1. Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program – $835,318,208 for 21 affordable housing and green transportation projects(external link) in 17 jurisdictions through Round 9 grants; this round will support the creation of 2,393 new rent-restricted homes; 2. Transformative Climate Communities Program — $29,484,224 from the anticipated fiscal year 2026-2027 Proposition 4 (Climate Bond) to fully fund four Round 5 grants; 3. Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation(external link) Program — $2,051,490 for 14 capacity-building projects(external link) in 25 counties through Round 10 grants. This round of awards is the largest in SGC history, with total awards now exceeding $5 billion. Report Describes Persistent Residential Segregation in California A new report from UCLA, "The Impact of Residential Mobility on Segregation in California," leverages a new dataset — the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, which contains anonymized information for all adults with credit scores in California, including where they have lived — to explore patterns of residential mobility and their relationship to segregation in ways not previously possible. The analysis examines the characteristics of origin and destination neighborhoods for movers of different socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County as well as for the remainder of the state of California. Moves into neighborhoods in each opportunity map category (e.g., Highest Resource) and poverty category (e.g., 20-30% poverty) between 2011 and 2022 almost exactly matched substantially segregated pre-existing residential patterns by race/ethnicity. Moving and residential patterns for Asian/Pacific Islander people were similar to those for white people, and patterns for Latino people were more disadvantaged but not to the same degree as for Black people. Black movers were substantially more likely to make downward moves into high-poverty neighborhoods and were much less likely to move up into low-poverty neighborhoods, compared to other racial and ethnic groups. By contrast, white movers were the least likely to move into high-poverty neighborhoods across all regions, including only 4% of such moves in the Bay Area. The findings in this report point to the need for both housing supply- and demand-side interventions that show promise in inducing more equitable residential mobility patterns and achieving this vision of a more integrated and equitable society, as well as to the need for further research to identify the most effective strategies. CP&DR Coverage: La Cañada Flintridge Approves Controversial Builder's Remedy Project The court battle over a five-story mixed-use project on Foothill Boulevard in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of La Cañada-Flintridge once seemed likely to define the legal contours of housing element compliance. The dispute centered on whether compliance with housing element law required approval by the Department of Housing & Community Development or merely city approval. In April of 2024, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled in favor of the developer and ordered the city to process the builder’s remedy application. The city originally filed an appeal, but abandoned its pursuit of the lawsuit last spring . By dropping the appeal, the city allowed the builder’s remedy project to move forward. Quick Hits & Updates A judge sided with environmental activists in a lawsuit over Dublin's Measure II ballot measure, which opened up protected spaces to potential development, ruling that the city had an obligation to conduct an environmental review of possible development before placing the question on the ballot. In November 2024, Measure II passed with 53% of the vote, giving the city power to start commercial development in the Doolan and Collier canyons, which were placed beyond an urban limit line in 2014. New data shows that rents are rising in San Francisco, the Peninsula, and East Bay . The median rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in San Fransisco was $3,090, and the 12% increase from the 2024 median was the highest of any city in the data collected by Apartment List. While rents in the much of the Bay Area sunk during and after COVID and remain below 2019 levels, the new data suggests this trend is reversing, with rents in Berkley and Oakland rising 10% and 3% year over year respectively. The Menlo Park City council will place the Downtown Parking Plazas Ordinance on the ballot next November. The ordinance would require voter approval for the city to change the use of, sell, or lease eight parking plazas in downtown Menlo Park that have been at the center of a right over a city plan to use them for affordable housing. Hard Rock Casino Tejon , the new $600 million casino and entertainment resort, opened in November in a largely undeveloped part of Kern County near Tejon Ranch. The casino, a joint bet by Hard Rock International and the Tejon Indian Tribe, promises 1,100 regional jobs, with future plans for a 400-room hotel and a concert venue. (See related CP&DR coverage .)

Top Stories 2025  In a perfect world, urban planning and wildfires would scarcely make acquaintance with each other. Settlements would be built far from fuel, with well managed buffer zones. Building materials would be resilient. Escape routes would be clear. And humanity and nature would live in perfect harmony.  Alas.  Last year’s wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena were not the biggest by land area, nor were they the most deadly. They were, though, the most costly, the most destructive (each burned more structures than the previous record-holder), the most urban (moreso than the Oakland or Santa Rosa fires), and, arguably, the most surprising (the dead of winter). Accordingly, fire coverage dominated California’s news cycle and CP&DR’s readership in 2025. In reviewing the most-read stories on our web site in the past year, we found that two of our top four stories overall were fire coverage:  We Don't Have A Wildfire Crisis. We Have An Everything Crisis. How Planners Can Help LA Recover -- And Help After Other Disasters Too And, fire factored into many other stories: the suspension of state laws; innovative, approaches to permitting; and, a national award from the American Planning Association.  Let us hope that CP&DR gets its clicks differently in 2026.  In more conventional news, legislation -- especially SB 79 and other pro-housing bills -- dominated CP&DR’s news coverage and commentary. The single most-viewed article centered on a familiar topic -- parking, and the overabundance thereof -- on a sad occasion, the passing of legendary UCLA professor and bon vivant Donald Shoup. Bill Fulton’s remembrance went viral among the extended Shoupista universe, celebrating the professor’s activism and economic acumen in “ Donald Shoup Wasn't Just About Parking. He Was About The Economics Of Public Goods. ” Here are the rest of CP&DR’s top stories of 2025:  News   The legislature’s appetite for housing bills has not waned, and neither has readers’.   Key Wins in Builder’s Remedy Cases Reshape Cities’ Approaches to Housing Budget Bill Would Expand CEQA Infill Exemption   What the CEQA Bills Will Do   CP&DR's Quick-And-Dirty Guide to Everything the Legislature Did on Housing and CEQA   Major CEQA Reform Bill Runs Into Trouble   Commentary   Aside from wildfires, here are the top issues on readers’ minds:  Why Hollywood and the Housing Industry Need Each Other Is The Era of Swiss-Cheese CEQA Over? How Will SB 79 Affect Local Planning in California?   Frank Gehry's Star Quality Outshined His Urbanism   "Freedom Cities" Won't Liberate California Legal Digest  For all its reforms, disputes over the California Environmental Quality Act continue their romp across California’s landscape. Plus, a federal Supreme Cour decision with direct local impacts. Cities Can't Assume Infill Development Reduces VMT Cities, Housing Advocates Battle Over Builder's Remedy's "90-Day Rule" Court Rejects MND, Requires EIR To Be Prepared Over Aesthetic Issues In Sheetz Followup, Court Okays El Dorado County Exactions System When CEQA and Housing Elements Conflict

So, in the battle between the California Environmental Quality Act and the Housing Accountability Act, which law wins?

The City of Davis doesn’t have to do an environmental analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act in order to move playground equipment from one location to another.

Developer Leo Pustilnikov has won another battle in his long-running effort to redevelop the AES power plant in Redondo Beach and apparently will be able to move forward with a lawsuit claiming that the city has taken his property by not letting him develop it.

This article is brought to you courtesy of the paying subscribers to  California Planning & Development Report . You can subscribe to  CP&DR  by clicking  here . You can sign up for  CP&DR ’s free weekly newsletter  here . Push for Potential Home Insurance Ballot Measure Fizzles Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog withdrew its Insurance Policyholder Bill of Rights, which would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who fireproof their homes following the withdrawal of a competing industry measure. The competing measure introduced by brokers, The California Insurance Market Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2026 , would have repealed the law requiring approval of the Insurance Commissioner before raising premium rates. Both sides withdrew their measures, preserving the state’s existing insurance framework in Proposition 103, which gives the elected insurance commissioner authority to reject insurance rate increases. Despite this withdrawal, Consumer Watchdog has vowed to devote the next year to building support for new mandates requiring insurers to sell policies in “higher risk areas”, as insurance companies continue to drop or decline new policies to residents in burn areas. (See related CP&DR coverage .)  Schiff Introduces National Housing Legislation California Sen. Adam Schiff is proposing the Housing BOOM Act, legislation aimed at expanding affordable housing for low and middle income families through expanded tax credits, a $10 billion annual loan fund, new grants, rental assistance, and funding for homeless shelters. The bill would 1) expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a stackable tax credit which would inject the financial capital needed to spur the development of more affordable housing projects; 2) establish new programs through HUD to support middle-income and workforce housing, including a $10 billion annual loan fund and a $5 billion annual block grant program to expand affordable housing options for families earning 60-120% of Area Median Income; increase funding for HUD assisted housing programs supporting the development of affordable housing for rural and tribal communities and seniors and people with disabilities; convert underutilized hotels and public buildings into housing through creation of a federal grant program for state and local governments to facilitate these conversion projects. The legislation would also create a $10 billion annual loan fund and a $5 billion annual grant program targeted at middle-income housing development. High Speed Rail Analyzes Southernmost Segment: L.A. to Anaheim The California High-Speed Rail Authority released the Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement for a planned 30-mile rail segment between Downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim, representing a step towards full environmental approval. A public comment period is now open until February 3. The segment planned segment would link LA's Union Station and the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, using the existing freight and passenger rail corridor. As of the announcement, construction is currently underway on the 171-mile initial Merced-Bakersfield line of the planned high-speed rail project, and 463 miles of the 494 total miles of the planned Los Angeles-San Francisco system have been fully approved. State Gains New "Cultural Districts" The California Arts Council has designated 10 new California Cultural Districts, which recognize local creativity, diversity, and unique identities. The newest state-designated cultural districts include areas in San Francisco, Riverside, San Diego, Alameda, Stanislaus, Merced, Ventura, Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. The designation brings state recognition, $10,000 over a two-year period, technical assistance, and access to joint marketing and branding resources. The announcement of these new districts comes just after the release of The Future of California Is Creative, a strategic plan for supporting the creative economy in the state. The program helps communities harness cultural assets to stimulate local economies, attract tourism, preserve historic sites, and support vibrant, inclusive creative economies.  CP&DR Coverage: Santa Barbara Developer Sues in Federal Court, Claiming It Is Singled Out By New State Law A Santa Barbara developer with a pending builder’s remedy project has sued the state in federal court, claiming a new law violates the developer’s constitutional rights. The root of the lawsuit is a proposal by The Mission LLC to build an eight-story housing project behind the iconic Santa Barbara Mission. Under AB 130, passed last summer, infill housing projects of up to 20 acres are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, but under SB 158, passed later in the session and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the infill exemption cannot be applied to the Santa Barbara project. The main argument in the new lawsuit is that SB 158 singles out the project’s developer in a way that violates both the federal and state constitutions, most notably the equal protection clause and the so-called “prohibition on special legislation” in the state constitution, which prohibits passing laws that target specific individuals or corporations. The developer’s lawsuit also names the City of Santa Barbara as a defendant, claiming that the city’s overlay zone does not conform with state Housing Element law. The overlay claim builds on a recent appellate court ruling from Redondo Beach.  Quick Hits & Updates  Los Angeles City Council halted a proposal to study a climate resilience district in Pacific Palisades over concerns whether a recently affected burn area should serve as an appropriate testing ground for a novel financing tool. The proposal would have created LA’s first Climate Resilience District, a designation which could help direct future local revenues toward climate-related studies and improvements. Over the summer, the Trump administration shuttered , without announcement, a $400 million project to transform a defunct naval base in Alameda into an outpatient clinic and columbarium for veterans. Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft says that city officials received no prior warning to the shutdown, finding out the clinic by way of a Veterans Administration memo that was sent to some members of congress in August. The Department of Fish and Wildlife has recommended granting Southern California mountain lions threatened species status, citing freeways, rat poison and wildfires as a threat to the population of roughly 1,400. San Francisco officials in Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office proposed a parcel tax to address a $307 million annual budget deficit that threatens to send Muni, the city’s local transit, into financial collapse. The tax aims to spare middle-class households and small businesses by splitting the parcel tax into three groups scaled by income, with 96% of single-family homeowners paying a flat fee of $129 annually. The Tribal Council of the Colorado River Indian Tribes has recognized the Colorado River as a legal person under tribal law, marking the second such recognition after the Yurok Tribe recognized the Klamath as a person in 2019. The decision was taken, after community input from trial members, in order to help better recognize the river's welfare when planning for the future of water usage and preservation regarding the river. The California High-Speed Rail Authority released the Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement for a planned 30-mile rail segment between Downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim, representing a step towards full environmental approval. A public comment period is now open until February 3. The segment planned segment would link LA's Union Station and the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, using the existing freight and passenger rail corridor.  Attorney Robert Silverstein, who famously opposed development in Hollywood, died November 13 at the age of 57. For over two decades, Silverstein advocated for more scrutiny in the city planning department’s review of new real estate projects in legal battles including halting of construction of a Target on Sunset Boulevard and the overturning of the city’s approval of the Millennium project, a pair of skyscrapers that had been planned next to the Capitol Records building. (See related CP&DR coverage .) San Jose city council approved a plan to streamline the approval process for housing development and renovation projects on vacant or underused lots. This process eliminated the need for public hearings or CEQA reviews provided the projects meet a list of certain criteria, prioritizing construction of mixed-use commercial and urban residential projects. The San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation has received over $60 million in funding from donors including Google and OpenAI. The nonprofit public benefit corporation was launched in April by Mayor Daniel Lurie with the goal of reviving San Francisco’s city center. The developers of Midway Rising, a proposed plan for 4,200 apartments with 2,000 rent-capped, 14 acres of public space and a sports stadium in San Diego's Midway District, say they are undeterred by a an appeals court's recent overturning of a city election vote to remove Midway's 30-foot height limit. The developers say the court ruling does not affect mixed-use housing developments, which are governed by state density bonus law.

Having already prepared one environmental impact report that was set aside by a court, the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea undertook a new EIR for the purposes of evaluating the impacts of the city disposing, by sale or lease, of a historic mansion.  In 1971 and 1972, the city acquired the Flanders Mansion and surrounding preserve property. Constructed in 1924, the mansion was a "two-story Tudor Revival English Cottage," designed by a prominent architect Henry Higby Gutterson. The city had used the property for various purposes: including residential, gallery, and office space, but had been vacant since 2003. Facing ongoing ownership of a property with significant deferred maintenance, the city proceeded with an EIR to deal with disposition options.  Pursuant to the EIR, the city's primary objective was to divest itself of the mansion, with secondary objectives of (1) preserve the mansion as a historical resource; (2) put the mansion to productive use; (3) provide that ongoing use of the mansion would not impact the surrounding neighborhood; (4) protect the public's enjoyment of surrounding preserve; (5) protect the environmental resources and (6) provide the public as many park benefits as are practical.  The DEIR included four alternatives: no project; residential lease; public use lease; sale with conservation easements and mitigations. The DEIR concluded that all the project alternatives had fewer environmental impacts than the project as proposed, but only the sale alternative would meet the basic objective of divestment. The administrative record, although not the EIR, included an economic feasibility analysis of the various options. One of the letters on the DEIR commented on the feasibility analysis, the Surplus Lands Act, and the alternative of selling the home on a smaller parcel. The FEIR responded to the first two, but not to the third comment in this particular letter.  In May 2009, the city adopted various resolutions certifying the EIR, adopting a mitigation monitoring and reporting program, adopting a statement of overriding considerations, and approving the project (sale with conservation easements and mitigation measures). Following the CEQA challenge, the trial court held that the EIR failed to consider the impacts of selling the property in compliance with the Surplus Lands Act as well as failure to respond to one comment. The city appealed and the Flanders Foundation, the petitioner, filed a cross appeal implicitly to prevent the city from relinquishing ownership of what it considered an important public resource. The appellate court ruled for the city on all issues save one.  First, the court concluded that while the Surplus Lands Act applied to the sale, the evidence was that the development of an affordable project was unlikely. Therefore, sale to another government agency—at anything resembling a fair price—was irrelevant and, therefore, there was no requirement to study this potential scenario in the EIR. The appellate court also concluded that there was no obligation for the lead agency to include the economic feasibility in the analysis, and in a detailed critique, that the evidence contained within the analysis constituted substantial evidence. Notably, the court held that analytical framework in the study of what a reasonable prudent property owner would do, as compared to what the city could afford to undertake, was appropriate.  The court writes, "The Foundation insists that…restoration and maintenance of the Mansion property ‘can be achieved" without selling the Mansion property. This argument ignores the fact that…substantial evidence supports the City's finding that it would be economically infeasible for the City to retain ownership of the Mansion property." The appellate court also rejected the foundation's challenge to the statement of overriding considerations, after determining that there were multiple independent grounds stated in support of the override (and that the opponents failed to demonstrate a lack of substantial basis for each one). The appellate court did concur with the trial court that the City's non-response to the question regarding the viability of mitigation to park impacts through the sale of a smaller parcel (along with the home) warranted a response, and that the "City's certification of the FEIR was therefore invalid." The Case:  Flanders Foundation  v. City of Carmel-By-The-Sea (January 4, 2012, H035818) ___Cal.App.4th ___

An annexation and zoning plan that would constitute the most dramatic expansion of a California city in recent memory will, most likely, be more incremental than monumental. Last week, the Fresno City Council considered the proposed Southeast Development Area (SEDA), a 9,0000-acre swath that would annex farmland for urban development, including up to 45,000 residential units.

Last week, state demographers reported that California’s population had increased again in 2024 – if only slightly – making the third year in a row the population had gone up. That’s a market change from the pandemic years, when the state’s population dropped significantly for the first time ever.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Angelenos of a certain age may remember Allan Malamud, whose column in the Herald-Examiner , and later the Los Angeles Times , was called “Notes on a Scorecard.” He jotted down scattered thoughts and observations—some amusing, some profound—over the course of nine innings and shared them with readers. I recently attended the annual journalists forum at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , which entailed two days of discussion on all things land use around the country. Based on panels, keynotes, and side conversations, here are a few notes on the proverbial tract map. *** A reporter from the East Coast asked me what the one-year anniversary story on the Los Angeles fires will be. At first, I said there was no story. Almost nothing has broken ground yet, and no vision for Pacific Palisades (in the City of Los Angeles) or Altadena (in unincorporated Los Angeles County) has been announced or adopted. The sniping about whose fault it is—Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom, the LAFD, or Prometheus himself—will probably persist forever. (Rarely discussed: the inherent dangers of developing and living alongside an eminently flammable, drought-prone landscape.) The real story centers on decisions: What have homeowners, 12 months into exile, decided to do? What can they afford to do? Rebuild and move back? Rebuild and sell? Cut their losses? Go bankrupt buying insurance?  *** The federal government has clawed back $80 million in funding for wildlife corridors nationwide to help various fauna move about their habitats in the face of incursions by roads, development, and other uses. I couldn’t help doing the math: that’s exactly $12 million less than the cost of the soon-to-be-finished Wallis Annenberg Crossing near Calabasas, in western Los Angeles County. Over 150,000 people will drive under the crossing every day, so hopefully that outsized investment will be good PR. Otherwise, as much as Los Angeles loves its mountain lions, it sounds like a lot of money to help a few cats on the prowl. *** The Lincoln Institute has undertaken an impressive study to identify the owners of every single residential parcel in the United States, called “ Who Owns America? ” to discern, in part, how much real estate has been purchased by corporate entities. Even Wall St. is priced out of California I was not previously convinced that the specter of corporate ownership wasn't overblown. I was wrong. In some cities, corporations own up to 20% of the housing stock (St. Louis and Baltimore among them), disproportionately located in low-income and minority-majority neighborhoods.  Importantly, corporate investors tend to overpay by 4%, meaning they push up prices for everyone. California appears relatively unscathed. For once, our high costs work in our favor: real estate is too expensive for capitalist speculators to take a risk. *** An interlude with Providence, Rhode Island:Providence, RI, Mayor Brett Smiley took a question about his measured approach to bike lanes, which has disappointed many bike advocates in Providence. He argued that the development of bike lanes should be commensurate with use: currently less than 10% in Providence, and almost 0% at certain times of year. (Smiley has recently been in the news for far sadder reasons.)  Adaptive reuse in Providence Even allowing for induced demand, investment in bike lanes has to be sensible and strategic. I think everyone in California can name a newly installed bike lane that is both controversial and under-utilized. A lane on Venice Blvd. basically sunk the career of an L.A. City Council member a few years ago, and I’m really not sure that permanently shutting down all of San Francisco’s Great Highway is such a good idea.  Bike advocates should lobby as hard for biking—to help other people adopt biking and use those lanes—as they do for the lanes themselves.  Providence puts California to shame in an unexpected way. The city has declared itself a “city of design,” partly because of the Rhode Island School of Design and partly because it’s converting old mill buildings into inexpensive live-work spaces.  Thus, Providence’s creative economy is on the rise at the very moment when Los Angeles’ is being sold off for parts (cf. Netflix’s intended acquisition of Warner Bros., announced recently). With the exception of former Mayor John Bauters of Emeryville , I don’t think I’ve heard a mayor in California speak as enthusiastically about development as Mayor Smiley of Providence did. Rather than speak in hushed tones about “fair shares,” “following guidelines,” and “upzoning in appropriate places,” Smiley said, “People can choose where to live. We want them to choose Providence.” Full stop. So, California, what do we want?  *** Our keynote speaker was Michael Sandel, Harvard professor of political philosophy and teacher of the near-legendary course “Justice.” I asked him whether cities should be obligated—as a moral principle—to accommodate any and all people who would like to live in them. Sandel did not declare a categorical obligation, but he posited that if a city was to acknowledge such an obligation, it should also adopt a land-value tax, echoing 19th-century economist Henry George. Sandel reasoned that speculation in real estate leads to scarcity whereas a land-value tax promotes development and is infinitely expandable to match revenue with demand for services.  That recommendation was gratifying to the Georgists in the room. The institute’s founder, John C. Lincoln, was an enthusiastic Georgist, as are many current staff members.  (Side note: Sandel forbids screens in his classrooms. That strikes me as a pedagogically sound policy as well as an inherently pro-urban policy, insofar as human connection is one of the purposes of cities.) *** “States should set housing targets and enforce them.” With apologies to Huntington Beach , California is doing at least one thing right. *** Lincoln Institute President George McCarthy, an expert in local tax policy, mentioned that, for a while, Bogotá, Colombia, invited residents to voluntarily add to their tax payments if they wanted to support the city. On its face, this sounds insane. Who would voluntarily pay a tax? But let’s face it: most cities are not as nice as residents want them to be, and some people understand that a desire without a commensurate willingness to pay is tantamount to whining. There’s no better place than California to experiment with this approach. Why? Prop. 13 ensures that many Californians pay a fraction of their fair share. I’d like to think that at least a few of them would recognize their good fortune clearly enough to chip in. My proposal: whatever bonus a homeowner adds to his or her tax payment, half should be spent in the immediate neighborhood and half should be pooled and allocated to underserved communities. Dare I call it a win-win-win? *** Here’s something I didn’t know: A “Corruption tax” is a premium imposed by lenders on localities that do not have robust press coverage.  What does press coverage have to do with lending liability? Lenders know that the absence of a civic watchdog makes their investment more precarious than it would otherwise be. So, developers, support your local newspapers ! (Even if they annoy you sometimes.) *** For every local mayor and councilmember who is incensed over preemptive pro-housing legislation from Sacramento, they are in good company in almost every state in the country. This chart, compiled by the Mercatus Center, indicates around 400 total housing bills. These bills represent 33 states, according to the Mercatus data.    Bills, bills, bills. That’s a torrent of bills, for sure. But by our count, at least 200 of those bills are from Sacramento, in pretty much all 13 categories. *** A ballot measure to reduce local taxes or otherwise alter a locality’s revenue model “is only one half of a conversation” and therefore perilous, at least compared to legislation. “At least legislators have to think about other arguments. Ballot measures don’t need balance.” This is, of course, how you end up with measures like Los Angeles’s Measure ULA transfer tax. *** One discussion focused on state preemption of local land-use control, which is basically the story of California for the better part of the past decade. Cities have understandably carped about unfunded mandates and the burden that new housing places on them—with dubious fiscal benefits. Speakers had two major recommendations: 1) provide funds for planning; and 2) link intergovernmental transfers (i.e., funds the state sends to cities) to the production of housing: “Until growth is a promise that common pool resources will be invested in where growth is happening, we are never going to be able to solve the housing crisis.”

Treasure Island has nearly every necessary feature to make it the most exciting new residential development in San Francisco. This 403-acre island between San Francisco and Berkeley has superb views of downtown San Francisco, Alcatraz and Angel islands, and the Bay Area’s ridgelines. It has dozens of acres of green fields and an environmentally sensitive coastline, to make it a regional eco-attraction. And Treasure Island and its 125-acre companion, Yerba Buena Island, are large enough to become a self-contained community while still enjoying close proximity to the city. What could be lacking? Only design. For some reason, the developers are proposing something that looks like a suburban office park. Among the housing choices are four high-rise residential towers, which seem absurd on this small island, more than half of which is to be protected coastline and open space. The plan has an orderly grid, but the residential streets have a casual zig-zag look that is at odds with the developers’ avowals to emulate the streetscape of San Francisco. There is a 20-acre farm smack dab in the middle of the island, which is to be a demonstration farm for city folks who have never seen a real, live farm before. The developers plan to spend $20 million to build a new ferry terminal, only to greet visitors with a conventional shopping center. Living close to nature has its costs, apparently. Treasure Island is an odd place. Built by the city during the late 1930s to accommodate the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939, the man-made island was converted to military use during World War II. The island has been the object of discussion among local planners and city officials since 1997, when the Pentagon gave the rectangular island back to San Francisco. On-site conditions include a smattering of ex-military buildings and about 900 houses and rental units. Water-borne wind and fog are downsides of the site. The most difficult issue, however, is access. Treasure Island is accessible to cars only by a hair-pin exit from the Bay Bridge. (Muni buses do serve the area.) In a city in perpetual need of new housing, Treasure Island joins Mission Bay as one of San Francisco’s two largest home-building opportunities. A specially created agency, the Treasure Island Redevelopment Authority, is overseeing a group of developers selected by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to build on the island. The developers include Kenwood Investments (which includes political lobbyist and Democratic Party fundraiser Darius Anderson) and Lennar Corporation, the giant homebuilder that is already involved in the redevelopment of three other former bases: Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, Mare Island in Vallejo and El Toro in Orange County. The newest partner is Wilson Meany Sullivan, which led the restoration of the ferry building in downtown San Francisco. After a dozen years of planning and public discussion, the goals for Treasure Island are clear: a community that is compact, environmentally respectful and easily accessible to the mainland. Many of these basic assumptions behind Treasure Island are rational. To maximize solar gain, planners have created a grid that maximizes the exposure of rooftops to the sun. To minimize the breezes, planners have proposed a “staggered” grid, where buildings block open pathways that could otherwise become wind tunnels. Plentiful tree-planting would provide a natural wind-screen. To make the island accessible to San Francisco, the developers want to build an entirely new ferry terminal on the southern tip of the island, which is a 10-minute boat ride to the city. The developers are planning between 3,500 and 5,500 units – depending on the final height of the apartment buildings – with a density somewhere between 90 and 110 units per acre. The housing would take the form of low-rise, mid-rise and several high-rise towers. Each housing cluster would have its own small park. In the name of creating a “self-sustaining community,” the developers propose 200,000 square feet of retail space, or enough stores to make it unnecessary to leave the island to buy anything smaller than a pickup truck. There is also a 400-slip marina and 600 hotel rooms. What is lacking here is any sense of urban organization. While it is commendable that the developers want to build compactly, the plan is not orderly. Visitors and returning commuters to Treasure Island are met with a hotel and a conventional, open-air shopping center, not by a coastline and spectacular views of the city. Disembarking ferry riders need an open space to orient themselves once they reach the island. An old-fashioned public square with civic buildings like post offices and satellite city offices would be in order, along with some smaller retail buildings. The proposed “grand plaza,” surrounded by retail, is overscaled and lacks the sight lines needed for visitors to get a sense of their location. Another factor that is disconcerting here is the presence of tall buildings – we still do not know how tall – in the casually planned residential streets. These residential swards (one can’t really call them blocks) could be likened to fields of grass (the low rise buildings) upon which grow some hedges (the mid-rise buildings) and occasional tall oaks (the high rises). Mixing density and height is good, but neither Feng Shui nor the Kabbalah can explain why the high-rise buildings poke out of the earth where they do on this plan. Moreover, I don't think tall buildings are appropriate on a site that has no other tall structures to provide context. I appreciate the need to keep the development compact, and the high-rises may be unavoidable if we are to achieve these ambitious densities. But they could make the island look overloaded, like a bunch of Gullivers strolling around a tropical atoll. High-density housing raises, at least for me, another issue, which is usable open space. In my view, high-density housing represents a loss – a loss in personal outdoor space, the direct relationship with both the soil and the street – that must be compensated for. In a mature city, those compensations could be stimulating street life, delis and bakeries, coffee houses, bars and museums. Equally important for high-density urban dwellers is active open space suitable for impromptu soccer matches, picnics, birthday barbeques and Fourth of July parties. Treasure Island has ample open space. The trails that circle the island and connect to Yerba Buena would probably be great for walking and bicycling. But the lack of active open space — the fields for softball and soccer — is the greatest failing of this plan. And even if Treasure Island contains adequate open space, the current plan suggests that high-rise dwellers would have to walk a considerable distance to get to a park. Ideally, open space — not only retail stores — should be literally at residents’ feet. The hierarchy of open spaces begins with one’s own yard, and then moves up in scale to neighborhood courtyards or mini-parks, then to civic parks and regional parks. The proposed farm occupies exactly the place where a large, urban park should exist.. It is fine that the developers of Treasure Island have adopted the right set of environmental values. Now they must rethink their plan to make a place that would be worth living in.