The average home price in California topped $400,000 in June. This news stimulated the now-familiar headlines about how even beat-up tract homes from the ’60s have become unaffordable for middle-class families. It’s getting to the point that a six-figure income does not guarantee homeownership. But what does this do for the more traditional “affordable” housing that we in California have supposedly been fighting about for the last several decades – housing not for the middle class but for low-wage workers and for the poor? Has this topic slipped off the radar screen altogether amid concerns about housing for teachers and paramedics? And when concern for poor people does emerge, will the astronomical price of housing make the cities and neighborhoods more amenable to lower-cost housing – or less? These thoughts surfaced recently when two affluent cities in South Orange County, struggled with the question of how to consider two different “affordable” housing projects. Back in January, the Steadfast Cos. gave up on an apartment proposal for a 23-acre hilltop site on Jeronimo Road in Mission Viejo after intense neighborhood opposition. The proposal called for 168 units, or about 7 units per gross acre – about the density of a typical single-family subdivision. Nevertheless, the project was designed to accommodate low- and moderate-income residents, and neighbors objected. According to the , everyone appearing before the Planning Commission opposed the project and claimed it “would bring overcrowded apartments, graffiti, gangs, drugs, and even drive-by shootings.” The perplexed developer, who had brought forth the low/mod project in response to direction from the city’s staff, went back to the drawing board. In June, the affordable housing dilemma surfaced in San Juan Capistrano when the City Council voted in closed session not to sell a 2.7-acre parcel of land to a nonprofit housing developer. Once again, neighborhood concern was the driver. As one council member said, “The neighbors were concerned about the density and the property values. I felt the complex was too expensive, too massive, and wasn’t right for the neighborhood.” In each of the two projects, some units would have been set aside for families categorized as “very low income,” which in the case of Orange County means a household income of about $37,000 per year, while others would have been set aside for “low income” families – those up to about $57,000. In each case, the city was driven by pressure to comply with the low- and moderate-income housing allocation target that resulted from the regional housing needs assessment process – the dreaded “housing element” requirement overseen by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. One of the ironies of the recent real estate boom is that it seems to have rendered the income categories somewhat obsolete. The housing element system requires jurisdictions to plan for the amount of housing required in three specialized income categories – very low income (up to 50% of median income), low income (50% to 80% of median income), and moderate income (80% to 120% of median income). The assumption is that people making more than 120% of median income can take care of themselves in the housing market. The recent debate over workforce housing has left the first two categories behind. Builders focusing on workforce housing usually say they are targeting households at 80-200% of median income – which today amounts to somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 in most parts of California. (See , July 2004.) At current interest rates, these incomes can leverage home prices of $200,000 to $400,000 – prices that were well within range just a year or two ago, but are quickly vanishing today. More significantly, the recent price run-up has increased the gap between market and subsidized housing, especially in affluent areas. Maybe a family’s “low-income” pay can leverage a $200,000 house (or rent of $1,000 to $1,500 a month). But such neighbors don’t look very attractive when the average home price in your tract is $800,000 and rising by $10,000 or more a month.. Ironically, the problem is not that everybody wants to build high-end housing instead of affordable housing. There are plenty of developers – both nonprofit and for-profit – who are trying to make “affordable” housing deals work. There are also lots of different pots of money around – low-income housing tax credits, redevelopment housing setaside, Proposition 46 funds – that can be tossed into the mix. (San Diego, for example, is considering increasing the bed tax and/or levying a car rental tax to provide funds.) And there are lots of cities and counties promoting low-income housing, either because they think it is the right thing to do or because they feel the heat from HCD. The problem, as the two South Orange County examples suggest, is the sites. A given site may look good – until the public meetings start. Cities often try to avert this problem by identifying sites that seem segregated from higher-end residential neighborhoods. In the Mission Viejo case, the 23-acre parcel was located on a hill 40 feet above street level. It was adjacent to commercial property and did not abut any residential parcel. Residents responded by circulating a flier reading “Stop the Nightmare Before It Starts,” which contained a rendering of a public housing project. So who’s being left out in the cold? Actually, it is not all low-wage or low-income people. Some folks who qualify for affordable housing are more acceptable than others – senior citizens especially. In fact, some reports suggest that because cities often use senior projects to meet their affordable requirement, there’s a glut of senior housing. In Santa Clara County, developers seeking to avoid political opposition have focused on senior housing and housing for moderate-income residents (80-120% of median income). The result? “It’s cutthroat,” says one San Jose developer, who has proposed a moratorium on low-income senior housing. This glut may not last long, and it might not become widespread. After all, everyone is predicting a boom in the elderly population in California. But it does suggest that some low-income groups benefit while others do not. And that may have peculiar consequences as well. The gap in affordable housing appears mostly to affect families with low-wage workers – farmworkers, retail clerks, and others seeking to make ends meet on one or two minimum-wage jobs. But for these groups, there is another way around the housing problem – if they’re willing to overcrowd their way into the American dream. Anecdotal evidence suggests that extended immigrant families are bootstrapping their way to ownership even in this housing market by doubling and tripling up – not only in the housing unit itself, but on the mortgage. By combining their salaries, three, four, or five low-wage earners can escalate beyond the moderate-income category and buy a nice house. It will be interesting to see how affluent neighbors react to that kind of upward mobility, because there is an inherent conflict. On the one hand, the neighbors are undoubtedly thrilled to see owner-occupied single-family homes nearby. On the other hand, they’re probably not too happy to see these very same houses overcrowded by low-wage workers. Many cities have overcrowding ordinances, so the neighbors might call the local code enforcement department. But that would mean kicking people out of houses that they own. If that starts happening, the battle over the Jeronimo Road hill will pale by comparison.

When is a historic structure not historic – or, at least, when it is not historic enough to warrant environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act? When a local government says so, because local governments are accorded deference by courts in reviewing their CEQA actions – at least in cases like this. At least that was the conclusion of the Sixth District Court of Appeal in a case involving a century-old railroad trestle in the Willow Glen neighborhood of San Jose. The case involves interpretation of a confusing section of CEQA regarding when an historic resource is subject to an EIR. In making the ruling, the court had to go deep into the rabbit hole of substantial evidence and fair argument. San Jose is planning to tear down the scenic trestle and replace it with a steel structure. In the process, the city concluded that the trestle was not an historic resources and therefore not subject to an EIR. San Jose adopted a mitigated negative declaration instead. Neighbors and historic preservationists sued over the CEQA action, claiming that there was a fair argument that the trestle was a historic resource and therefore an EIR should be required. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Joseph Huber ruled in favor of the neighbors, saying that a fair argument standard should apply. The city appealed but the neighbors tried to have the case declared moot because the city had already prepared an EIR, which it then used to re-approve the project. The court went ahead and considered the case anyway, saying the city’s could be still be required to vacate the approval depending on the outcome of the case. At issue was whether the city had to apply the “fair argument” standard to the question of whether an EIR was required under the CEQA – that is, is there a fair argument that the project would have a significant impact on the environment (in the case, on an historic resource), as required under one section of CEQA, Public Resources Code Section 21084.1. The law further says that just because a building or structure is not included in any state or historic register and doesn’t meet other criteria for historic significance doesn’t mean that the lead agency can’t still designate it as historic. The neighbors argued that this last provision should apply and the trestle should be considered a historic resource for CEQA purposes even though it had not been designated as historic in any other way. The court noted that the lead agency has to make a decision about significance based on the “preponderance of the evidence” and therefore the standard of review “logically must be whether substantial evidence supports the lead agency’s decision , not whether a fair argument can be made to the contrary.” Continuing, Justice Nathan Mihara wrote for the court: “Since the standard of judicial review for a presumptively historical resource is substantial evidence rather than fair argument, it cannot be that the Legislature intended for the standard of judicial review for a lead agency’s decision under the final sentence of section 21084.1 to be fair argument rather than substantial evidence…. “We conclude,” he wrote, “that the Legislature did not intend for the fair argument standard to apply to a lead agency’s decision that a resource is not a historical resource under the final sentence of section 21084.1.” He added: “To construe the statute otherwise would be inconsistent with the Legislature’s explicit provision authorizing a lead agency to find that a resource that was presumed to be a historical resource was not a historical resource if the lead agency found that a preponderance of the evidence supported its finding. We therefore conclude that the deferential substantial evidence standard of review is the correct standard to apply to the City’s finding that the Trestle is not a historical resource.” The court remanded the case to Judge Mihara to determine the merits of the MND’s determination that there was no substantial evidence that the trestle is an historic resource The Case: Friends of Willow Glen Trestle v. City of San Jose, No. H041563 The Lawyers: For Friends of Willow Glen Trestle: Susan Brandt-Hawley, Brandt-Hawle Law Group, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com  For City of San Jose: Katie Zoglin, Senior Deputy City Attorney, mailto:katie.zoglin@sanjoseca.gov

When Donald Trump announced his team of economic advisors – the first group, the one that was all men – it consisted, not surprisingly, mostly of real estate guys from New York. In fact, there was only one Ph.D. economist in the group: Peter Navarro, a longtime business professor at UC Irvine, who apparently captured Trump’s attention with his book and film, Crouching Tiger , which talks about the possibility of war with China and how to avoid it. And for those of you with long memories of California growth control wars, yes, we’re talking about that Peter Navarro: The guy who ran for mayor of San Diego in 1992 – and almost won – on an anti-growth platform. Navarro has been all over the place in defense of Trump’s economic policies lately – for example, with this spirited attack on Moody’s negative analysis of Trump’s economic plan. And while Trump may have stumbled across Navarro’s work on his own, it’s far more likely that he was led to it by Dan DiMicco, the former CEO of Nucor Steel, who’s been Trump’s leading who helped persuade his company to provide financial backing for the film version of Navarro’s book. So what’s a guy who once ran for office on an anti-growth platform doing as an economic advisor to a real estate developer running for president? As it turns out, this makes more sense than you might think. At first you wouldn’t think Navarro has much in common with the supposedly business-oriented Trump, but the common theme of Navarro’s thinking has been to use governmental power to create limits and walls, the better to manage things for the benefit of those inside the walls. This was the fundamental concept of 1980s-style California growth management, which often allied left-wing neighborhood anti-growth activists with right-wing anti-immigration activists. And it’s the fundamental concept of Trump’s campaign. Another way to look at it is simply that Trump and California slow-growthers are win-lose folks, not win-win folks. A lot of economioc theorists -- free-traders, for example, and real-estate development free-marketeers -- believe that the more there is, better it is for everybody. But Trump clearly doesn't believe this. To him, there are always winners and losers -- so you'd better box out the other guy if you want to be a winner or else make him pay through the nose. And the California slow-growthers feel the same way: More development creates losers as well as winners, so you'd better box out the bad development or at least make those developers pay through the nose. Navarro’s apparently a Democrat, though he has jokingly said that his political party is “economist”. He first emerged in San Diego during the anti-growth backlash to the real estate boom of the late 1980s, when a citizen initiative was adopted limiting the number of housing units that could be built per year – even though previous growth management measures sought to align infrastructure and development. In spite of the fact that he was a trained economist who taught in a business school, Navarro seemed to me like a pretty typical California anti-growth guy of that era. I first met him at a Realtors forum on growth management in Irvine around that time, and he advocated pretty standard growth control policies. When the real estate folks tried to ask him about “affordable housing,” he waved his hand in the air – as if to swat the topic away – and said, “Separate issue.” By which he meant that, to him, affordable housing was a thing you had to create via government subsidies, not something you could create via the market by reducing regulation. Navarro ramped it up in 1992 when he ran for mayor . He platform was, again, standard-issue California growth control for the time: limited growth, tying development to infrastructure and services (for example, no additional housing without an increase in police officers) and, tellingly, immigration restrictions. He deliberately rejected the Construction Industry PAC endorsement and finished first in the primary against County Supervisor Susan Golding and City Councilmember Ron Roberts, an architect who was the odds-on favorite (and is now on the Board of Supervisors). But he lost to Golding in the runoff by four points and later lost races for city council and Congress. If he had defeated – and he had managed to navigate the notoriously treacherous political waters of San Diego City Hall (trust me on this one) – he might have been a seminal figure in the history of California planning. Instead he moved to Laguna Beach, kept teaching at UC Irvine, and focused on providing corporations with assessments of geopolitical risk. Which led him to China and to Trump. He does seem to believe that the United States has to use a lot of military muscle to keep things even with China – and it’s never clear where Trump is on that question – and he does believe in better trade deals and apparently still in immigration reform. He recently argued – a la the supply siders – that Trump’s proposed tax cuts wouldn’t increase the deficit all that much because of the economic growth it would stimulate. But so far, neither he nor Trump has weighed in on the question of whether the number of housing units should be restricted or tied to the provision of infrastructure and public services. Though it’s kinda believable that they don’t agree on that one.

California has suffered plenty of perverse effects of Proposition 13: cuts to school funding, ossification of neighborhoods, general constraints on cities, etc. Most of those effects are by design or were, at least, foreseeable by Howard Jarvis and the measure’s supporters.  In Los Angeles County a new unintended consequence has arisen that, though it might prove great for the county, probably has Jarvis spinning in his grave.  This week, Measure M officially made it on to the countywide ballot for November. The successor to 2008’s Measure R, Measure M would further the region’s long-range transportation plan by augmenting and extending the county’s half-cent sales tax indefinitely (30-plus years at least) to generate tens of billions of dollars for transportation projects. Like Measure R, which paid for popular projects like the Expo Line to Santa Monica and Gold Line extension to Azusa, Measure M is a Christmas tree of projects, sprinkled around the county so that the measure will appeal to just enough voters to make it pass. And, at an estimated $800 million in annual revenue, Measure M is one big Christmas tree — Rockefeller Center big. It includes 27 highway projects, 33 transit projects, and a good deal of local return monies. Many people are excited about these projects, and with good reason.  In some ways, though, the number of projects and amount of expected funding is a direct consequence of the number of voters that Measure M has to woo. That number is two-thirds of the electorate. That’s the margin needed to pass a new tax in California. Thanks to Proposition 13. The Jarvis people thought that this provision would curb public spending and ease Californians’ tax burden. At the very least, they sought to ensure that proposed taxes were structured sensibly enough to appeal to a broad swath of voters. Measure M, though, is different.  The great thing about planning is that plans on paper cost nothing. Therefore, it costs Metro nothing — at least not up-front — to heap on project after project to appeal to different jurisdictions and different interests groups. Measure M has something for everyone: drivers, transit advocates, bike advocates; city people, valley people, South Bay people, even high desert people. Metro’s hope is that if people don’t vote for the interests of the county as a whole, they’ll at least vote for their own parochial interests. That’s why even small jurisdictions and institutions — some as as specific and localized as Cal State University, Northridge — are keeping score . As the Los Angeles Daily News reports , not everyone is happy, especially cities in south and southwestern L.A. County. Metro just hopes that enough people are happy. (Note: Now that it's on the ballot, Metro cannot directly lobby for the measure.) You could call it politicking, but Metro is doing nothing if not playing by the rules.  It’s not hard to imagine, though, that if the rules required a simple majority, the Measure R package would look much different. For starters, package that had to appeal to only 50 percent of voters would likely be smaller. It also might be more efficient. It might, for instance, omit a rail line from Torrance to West Hollywood or a highway to Palmdale, willfully sacrificing voter support in favor of projects that will be more cost-efficient and/or serve more people. It might be able to put more money into active transportation in the urban core and less money into highways serving the suburbs. I'm not making value judgements about any of these projects. I'm just saying that Metro's strategy might have been different in a non-Prop 13 world. In other words, Prop 13 compels Metro, and anyone else seeking to raise revenue via a vote, to come up with not necessarily the best spending program but rather the spending program that has the best chance of passing.  While we can be sure that many Prop 13 advocates will want nothing to do with Measure M, we can be equally sure that over the next few months transit advocates in Los Angeles will be crying “All aboard!” to rouse support for Measure M's proposed trains. Or at least, “Two-thirds aboard!”  Image credit: L.A. Metro

As this week’s DNC guests are discovering, Philadelphia is no San Francisco. It's not New York, Boston, or D.C. either. It’s not even Cleveland . But delegates who are stuck in traffic  getting out of the Wells Fargo Center would do well to take a peek down the side streets as they drive up Broad Street to their hotels and discover some of the delights of the host city. That goes double for the California delegation. Most Californians have probably never seen a rowhouse. For the uninitiated, they are a form of townhouse (or terrace house in Europe), two or three stories, often with basements. They share side walls with their neighbors. Rear overlook face small yards or patios, and front walls face the street. They’re taller than they are wide, and they’re about as deep as they are tall.  They basically look like boxes of instant oatmeal aligned on a grocery shelf.  Rowhouses superficially resemble typologies like Brooklyn brownstones and San Francisco Victorians, insofar as they too are packed tightly and share side walls. But the beauty of true rowhouses  is that they have none of the trappings of those fancier cousins. No gingerbread flourishes or imposing stoops, and no dumbwaiters or maid’s quarters. They are blue-collar shelters that came of age when East Coast cities were industrial powerhouses. Workers made decent wages — enough to enable them to escape from tenements, but not enough to move into anything fancy. Rowhouses typically have flat brick facades, occasional details like cornices or porches, and an utterly functional design. They are the Model T of urban shelter. Unlike a 100-year old car, though, those 100-year old houses still run just fine.  While rowhouses are popular throughout the East Coast, particularly in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, and parts of New York City, Philadelphia probably has more of them than any other city in the world. It has row upon row of rowhouses. As California cities agonize over how to house everyone, they are missing out on a typology with countless reasons to recommend it. Fundamentally, no typology so exquisitely balances the urban virtue of efficiency with the American virtue of individualism. Efficiency lies in the massing and use of space. Even two-story versions have floor-to-area ratios greater than 1. Shared walls mean that blocks are compact (and that heat dissipates slowly in the winter). A block that houses ten families in tract homes homes can house 100 in rowhouses. Unlike typical multifamily units, every rowhouse comes with its own address, advertising themselves as “home” to the people who live there. Rowhouses dispense with the gratuitousness of front yards, but their exteriors can express as much individualism as any lawn or feat of topiary. Some rowhouse residents plant tubs of flowers or even vegetables that put any lawn to shame. Some paint their shutters, doors, and other trim in imaginative colors. Some paint their entire facades. Others let their facades stand unadorned, in quiet conformity with their neighbors.  Suburban residents might protest that families need four walls to call their own and a freestanding structure to fawn over. Families in New York City and Los Angeles, among others, counter that two walls are better than zero. That’s essentially what you get in the multifamily dingbats and mid-rises of L.A., the mini-resorts of San Diego, and the walkups and high-rises of New York. Rowhouses promote a special kind of urbanism. The chance to walk out your front door and step immediately on to a sidewalk — in view of every other house on the block — creates a neighborliness that no apartment building ever could. Just like in the suburbs, residents are associated with their buildings and buildings with their residents. But rowhouse neighbors aren’t just fuzzy dots that scramble from front doors and into SUVs. Residents live close enough to be recognizable, but not so close that they feel obligated to each other. In very poor neighborhoods – of which there are too many in Philadelphia – squalor is contained on a house-by-house basis. It does not consume entire apartment buildings as it can in places like high-rise public housing complexes. Far from being monotonous or oppressive with their continuous facades and uniform roof heights, rowhouse streets are cozy — European, even. Streets are well framed and often lively, with subtle design flourishes that appeal to pedestrians, not to speeding drivers. There are no curb cuts to mar the sidewalks. There few streetscapes as pleasant as a rowhouse street with a canopy of mature trees. Appropriately, in the city where the United States liberated itself from England, rowhouses liberate their owners from another form of tyranny and taxation: homeowners associations. Rowhouses confer all the communal benefits of condominium living with none of the expense of HOA dues or headaches of creating and conforming with HOA regulations. Of course, if your roof leaks, you have to fix it yourself.  If entire East Coast cities are built on rowhouses, why does California have, essentially, zero? Surely culture is one reason. City founders in California weren’t about to emulate the tired, oppressive old East Coast. But those attitudes are changing. Many California cities are embracing density. Rowhouses might be perfect for low-density urban neighborhoods that really should be medium density. Except for those darn regulations. Rowhouses are basically what you get when a city wants to provide single-family homes and goes full-on libertarian. If you get rid of setback requirements, floor-to-area ratio maximums, buffer zones between structures, and height restrictions, you almost inevitably end up with rowhouses. California isn't quite there yet.  You need one more thing: no parking requirements.  When you live side-by-side in houses no wider than a car is long, there’s no room for a garage (unless you have generous alleyways). There’s also little need for a car. Rowhouse neighborhoods are generally dense enough to maximize the use of public transit. and because they’re dense, they’re usually not afraid of neighborhood-serving commercial, like restaurants, bars, and convenience stores. So they’re walkable and bikeable. If rail transit is nearby, so much the better.  For all the fleeting political proclamations that are likely to come out of Philadelphia this week, we also know that the city is capable of spawning universal, enduring institutions. We could do worse than to add a certain modest, functional, and efficient housing type to that list. Goodness knows, we all could use some modesty these days.  Photo credit: Eric Fischer via Flickr  creative commons.

A Los Angeles native and longtime journalist, Josh Stephens has covered planning, land use, and architecture as an editor and freelance journalist for the better part of a decade. He succeeded Paul Shigley as the third editor of the California Planning & Development Report in February 2010. He is now a Contributing Editor of the publication. Stephens previously edited T he Planning Report and Metro Investment Report , monthly newsletters covering, respectively, land use and infrastructure in the Los Angeles region. As a freelance writer Stephens has been a regular contributor to  CP&DR , and he contributes frequently to, among others,  Planetizen.com, Common Edge Collaborative, Metropolis, Next City, Sierra, InTransition , and Planning  Magazine.  He also writes for Planetizen's Interchange blog and contributes to its annual list of the top books in urban planning. He is the author of The Urban Mystique : Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond , published by Solimar Books, and of Planners Across America , published by Planetizen Press.  Stephens holds a bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a master's in public policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.  He formerly taught high school journalism, English, and AP Geography at the Archer School in Los Angeles. He serves on the board of the Westside Urban Forum and on the Brentwood Community Council. 

Editor & Publisher WILLIAM FULTON, AICP, founded in 1986. A former newspaper reporter, Bill has worn many hats: principal in the consulting firm now known as Placeworks , Mayor of Ventura, Planning Director of the City of San Diego, Vice President for Policy at Smart Growth America , Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research , and most recently Visiting Policy Designer at the UC San Diego Design Lab. Bill is the author of eight books, including three considered classics in their field.    L.A. Times  best-seller, uses novelistic storytelling techniques to trace the way a leading metropolis grew and developed co-authored with architect Peter Calthorpe, is a pathbreaking work that has reshaped understanding of how metropolitan regions should be planned and designed. Three decades after its original publication,   remains the standard textbook for urban planning classes. His most recent book is Bill was a member of the Ventura City Council from 2003 to 2011, serving as Mayor from 2009 to 2011. In that capacity he led Ventura’s innovative effort to promote sensitive infill development. He was active in the incorporation of the City of West Hollywood in 1984 and was one of the first appointees to the West Hollywood Planning Commission upon its creation in 1986. Bill holds a master’s degree in journalism/public affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C., and a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Even as forests thin out and die on a warming planet, a collection of trade unions are missing them for the trees.  As reported in the New York Times a few weeks ago, a coalition of trade unions has raised a stink about a partnership between the AFL-CIO and an anti-Donald Trump “super PAC" funded in part by billionaire tech investor Tom Steyer. Steyer is not just a Silicon Valley superstar. He is also — and here’s where it gets frustrating — an environmentalist.  The unions opposed to the super PAC don’t seem to have an opinion about climate change one way or another. But they do feel strongly about one teeny-tiny symbol of the fight against climate change: the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. Because Steyer is against climate change and against Keystone, he must, ipso facto, also be against unions. At least that’s how the unions’ logic goes.  In a letter addressed to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Terry O’Sullivan, the general president of of Laborers International Union of North America , calls Steyer a “billionaire job-killer and environmental extremist….his vision of leaving oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels in the ground kills jobs…and threatens to strangle our economy.” All of this to oppose a protest against Donald Trump, whose potential influence on job growth — union or otherwise — is anybody’s guess (i.e. probably catastrophic).  Of course, unions don’t have a vested interest in the substance of Keystone — except that Keystone represents potential union jobs. The same way that a prison might. Or a rail line. Or a solar power plant. Or a low-income apartment complex. Oblique as this connection is, I suppose I can’t begrudge unions for supporting a union project. Except the number of union jobs that Keystone would generate pales in comparison to the number of union jobs — not to mention nonunion — that a full-blown national and global campaign against climate change would generate.  A more measured anti-Steyer message from a separate coalition of trade unions (including plumbers, welders, masons, and roofers) says they "ensure that the employment prospects of our members are not negatively impacted in any economic and energy transition.” Forget about negative impact. What about positive impact?  Last year Mother Jones reported that the world spent $391 billion on technologies and infrastructure designed to combat climate change in 2014. It reported that the ideal amount is more like $7 trillion. Per year.  Of course, this is just a wild estimate. The real number could be a lot higher, but whatever. Just imagine how many jobs — in every industry imaginable — that $7 trillion would represent. That's about one-third the annual GDP of the United States, which has about 120 million workers, and represents about 10 percent of global GDP. If, therefore, US GDP rose 10 percent due to climate change mitigation (surely a low figure, since the US’s share of global GDP is disproportionately high, as is its share of greenhouse gases and the technologies to reduce them), it would add 12 million jobs.  Guess how many union workers there are — in every union — in the United States today? 14.5 million.  So let’s make the debate clear: A $7 billion pipeline that would create a grand total of 1,950 jobs per year for two years, according to Newsweek , is more important than a moral imperative that could create nearly as many jobs as there are union workers in the United States? In California, these jobs are palpable. Regulations like Senate Bill 375 and Senate Bill 743 promoting infill development, and the state and cities are investing billions in transit projects (not to mention highways too). Much of those monies are going straight into union workers’ bank accounts. I don’t exactly favor catastrophe-oriented economic development plans. But, really, every constituency to the left of the Ku Klux Klan should pay attention to the economic benefits of what jurisdictions like California are doing. If we end up with better cities and more efficient transportation, those benefits will persist for generations to come.  Steyer’s opponents can put that in their pipe(line) and smoke it.

The Town of Apple Valley wants to build a minor league baseball stadium. That’s not unusual in California, where stadium building seems only a slice less popular than tailgate parties with free-flowing beer. What is unusual, however, is the way that the town plans to pay– or rather, not pay – for this $20 million to $25 million project. Insofar as I can see both points of view, I have structured this analysis in the form of a dialogue between two imaginary people, Mr. Apple and Mr. Valley, both of whom are supposed residents of the community. Readers interested in textual analysis should know that, in this representation, Mr. Apple represents free market ideology, while Mr. Valley represents the principals of planning and orderly government. VALLEY: Hello, Mr. Apple. How goes it this morning? APPLE: It’s a great day for Apple Valley, I’m telling you that much, Mr. V. VALLEY: Why, have all the rascals been driven out of local government? APPLE: Ha, ha! At least we agree on that much, Mr. V. No, I mean that the High Desert Mavericks, a farm team of the Seattle Mariners baseball club, are coming to town. VALLEY: I thought our friends just up the road in the City of Adelanto had a lock on that franchise. APPLE: “Had” is the operative word. The team signed a 20-year contract with Adelanto back in ’91, and the lease is up in 2010. The team does not want to re-sign in Adelanto, however, because the city does not want to pay $3.4 million in deferred maintenance on the stadium it built 20 years ago. Seems the local city manager thinks that it would be a waste of money to maintain the stadium, seeing that the structure is only worth $3.5 million. They’re already talking about “redeveloping” the place. VALLEY (smacking his forehead): Merciful heavens! Not another swap meet! APPLE: Exactly. And so the Mavericks approached the town government back in February and asked if we wanted to build a brand new stadium for them. VALLEY: That sounds foolish. Why will we succeed financially where Adelanto failed? APPLE: Market forces, my dear Valley, market forces! Adelanto built its stadium on the outskirts of town – hardly a good way of encouraging development in the stadium area. We plan to build our stadium near downtown Apple Valley just a short drive off Interstate 15. We’re geographically close enough to the existing fan base to fill the bleachers, and new development to surround the stadium is part of the deal. VALLEY: I don’t know how we can pay for the land and the construction. APPLE: That’s the beauty part, Valley! We’re not paying a dime for the land. We actually convinced two local landowners to contribute the land. It’s genius, I’m telling you! VALLEY: Donate?! What on earth can those land owners be thinking? APPLE: They’re thinking like smart people, Mr. V. They believe the baseball stadium will encourage new development on their land. VALLEY: Isn’t that a bit of a gamble? Being a timid sort, I generally balk in the face of risk. APPLE: That’s the other beauty part! The city is going to allow the developer to build up to 1,644 townhouses and supporting retail on the leftover acreage. The developer will get rich from home sales, the land owners will get rich on the land lease for the stadium, and the city will get rich on new property tax revenues! It’s a win-win-win-win-win! VALLEY: So the city is only acting as a go-between between land owners and developers? Is this just the latest episode of “Pimp My Ball Park”? APPLE: The city, in fact, is looking into the possibility of floating some bonds based on rental income from the stadium to pay for road improvements and other infrastructure. VALLEY: Hmmm! So they’ve gotten it all figured out. Except for one thing…. APPLE: Here comes the pro-government, anti-business palaver! Go ahead, Valley, I’ve been expecting it! VALLEY: Well, government has big limitations, and business has big strengths, but what about public policy? What about planning? APPLE: Seems we’re doing pretty well without it. VALLEY: Was this acreage originally zoned for housing or stadiums in our general plan? APPLE: No, it was zoned commercial. VALLEY: Exactly. So whenever a baseball team comes to town, we just throw away all our planning goals and we say, “Build whatever you like.” As your friend Rush Limbaugh likes to say, grab your ankles! APPLE: I fail to see your problem. Local officials brokered a mutually beneficial arrangement between private businessmen. The result is that the town gets a stadium, plus a new single-family neighborhood, without having to pay for it. This is a brilliant solution. VALLEY: But doesn’t this “arrangement” set a bad precedent? We are essentially throwing away our planning process in favor of a system that literally encourages developers to build whatever they want. That seems like a disaster to me. APPLE: Where’s the disaster, Mr. V.? The city gets what it wants – a stadium and some nice housing – without having to bribe developers to build it for us. We’re not a big city like Victorville, with a wealthy redevelopment agency to make these projects happen for us. This is poor man’s redevelopment: We’ve got the dirt, you’ve got the construction loan, let’s shake hands. How can you object? Isn’t the city getting what it needs? VALLEY: Well, I’m not sure. The general plan is the way we anticipate the city’s needs. APPLE: To hell with the general plan! It’s just a piece of paper. VALLEY: This way of development opens the door to a potentially chaotic process! It’s the opposite of planning. APPLE: And what’s the matter with that? What’s planning done for us lately? VALLEY: Planning represents the community consensus on the way we want our town to look in 20 years. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to be. But as soon as someone comes to town with a fistful of money, we just kick planning to the curb. APPLE: Honestly, I just don’t see the problem. VALLEY (in great frustration): You’ll definitely see it in 20 years when you’re living in a mish-mash like Provo, Utah, or in the in post-industrial ruins like the old oil towns in Kern County! APPLE: Hell, by that time I’ll be retired on Oahu, where bargirls with eyes big as oysters will be serving me drinks with parasols in them. But right now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to see a man about a strip mall just down the street from where that new stadium is planned …

Standing only a few feet above sea level on San Francisco Bay’s Treasure Island, Gov. Schwarzenegger released the California Climate Adaptation Strategy in early December. The final version of the 200-page strategy is not significantly different from the draft version that drew criticism from environmentalists for not going far enough, and from business and development interests for going way too far “I think we have a responsibility to have a Plan B in case we can’t stop the global warming,” Schwarzenegger said. The plan cites a 2008 University of California, Berkeley, report that found $2.5 trillion of the state’s $4 trillion in real estate assets “is at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires.” The strategy recommends avoiding significant new development in areas that “cannot be adequately protected from flooding, wildfire and erosion due to climate change.” The plan recommends the state consider hazards from climate change when locating infrastructure projects, and it notes that revisions to the California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines could direct local governments “to evaluate the impacts of locating development in areas susceptible to hazardous conditions.” The plan further urges cities and counties to consider the impacts of climate change when preparing general plans and local coastal plans. The governor also named a 23-member Climate Advisory Panel to make specific implementation recommendations based on the plan by July. Among those on the panel are former Gov. Pete Wilson, former Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly, Ron Gastelum, former executive officer of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and Sunne Wright McPeak, a former Business, Transportation and Housing Agency secretary who headed the task force that prepared the adaptation strategy.

The City of Irvine has agreed to pay the neighboring City of Newport Beach $3.65 million to settle a lawsuit over Irvine’s approval of a mixed-use plan for 2,760 acres. The Irvine Business Complex plan seeks to bring as many as 15,000 housing units in mixed-use developments to an area near John Wayne Airport that is currently dominated by office buildings and industrial parks. Newport Beach and Tustin sued Irvine because of traffic impacts of the envisioned development, and a Superior Court judge in 2008 ruled in Newport Beach’s favor. Under the settlement approved in late November, Irvine will pay $3.65 million for Newport Beach to use for improvements on and near Jamboree Road. In addition, both cities agreed not to sue one another over projects permitted by their respective general plans. Negotiations with Tustin, as well as with property owners who have sued over the Irvine plan, are ongoing.

With concern rising that a private entity may attempt to purchase the Orange County Fairgrounds for development purposes, public officials are hurrying to put together bids of their own for the 150-acre site just west of the Costa Mesa Freeway. The state put the Costa Mesa property up for sale in October to help cover the state budget deficit. Bids are due January 8. In late November, the Orange County Board of Supervisors reversed itself and urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to cancel the sale. But the county is also working with the City of Costa Mesa on a potential joint bid to acquire the property to perpetuate public uses. In addition, the 32nd Agricultural District Board of Directors has formed a new nonprofit entity, called the Orange County Fair and Event Center Foundation, to submit its own bid for the property.