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.

At the heart of things, according to county prosecutors, are Councilman Jim Ayers and developers Stephen Holgate and Robert Osborne. Prosecutors say the developers funneled a combined $200,000 in campaign contributions through a variety of intermediaries into Ayers’ unsuccessful 2006 campaign for Assembly and his successful 2008 council re-election bid. Ayers was among the councilmembers who voted to approve projects for both developers, including a 700,000-square-foot shopping center and a 464-unit apartment building and storage facility for Holgate, and two small housing subdivisions and an office complex for Osborne. Ayers also voted for a final tract map for Holgate three years after agreeing to buy a house in the subdivision. Earlier this year, Ayers, who works for the Riverside County Economic Development Agency, abstained from voting on a proposal to rezone 13 acres owned by Holgate to “general commercial” along the route where a freeway is proposed. The three other indicted city officials – Mayor Dale Stubblefield and Councilmen John Mansperger and James Potts – did vote for the rezoning, which greatly increased the value of property the county may need to acquire for the freeway project. It is not illegal for an elected official to vote on matters affecting campaign contributors. The question is whether the developers hid the source of campaign funds that exceeded the limit for an Assembly election, and whether the developers received improper favors in exchange for the funds. A new citizen group has formed to collect signatures to recall the four indicted officials.

Yuba and Butte counties aren’t usually seen as political bellwethers for California. But their hard line on marijuana-related land use issues in the June election means that not everyone is in lockstep as the state progresses towards another statewide ballot measure that could legalize recreational marijuana. Yuba County voters soundly rejected two pro-marijuana measures: one that would have legalized cultivation and another that simply would have legalized medical marijuana dispensaries, which are already common throughout the state. Meanwhile, Butte County approved two anti-marijuana measures, one that excludes the crop from the county’s “right to farm ordinance” and another that places explicit restrictions on its cultivation. Add to these measures an overwhelming defeat of a measure to include marijuana dispensaries among San Jose’s land use designations. Butte County voters made it harder to pull something else out of the ground: hydrocarbons. Voters there overwhelmingly approved a ban on hydraulic fracturing, 71 percent to 29 percent.  Rounding out voters’ opinions on au courant topics, Nevada County voters broke with a recent trend to limit short-term rentals. They defeated a measure that would have beefed up an existing city ordinance regulating STRs.  Among more traditional issues, multiyear trends held sway. Voters in San Francisco approved funding for open and recreational space, and they continued their trend, from last November, of supporting affordable housing. An infrastructure measures passed in the City of San Diego. And the nine counties of the Bay Area soundly approved, 69.3 to 30.7 percent, a parcel tax to protect the ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay and mitigate the effects of climate change on it. The measure required a two-thirds majority. A rare multi-county effort, the measure had backing from such diverse groups as Save the Bay, Audubon Society, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Bay Area Council, PG&E, Google, and Facebook. Some property rights group opposed the measure, in part because they felt that areas without much bay frontage should not pay the same rate as other areas. Of several planning and development questions on local ballots, only one was a clear victory for pro-growth interests : a small housing development in Pleasanton. Results in El Dorado County were mixed. Measure E, designed to reduce the board of supervisor’s powers of discretionary approval, passed. Measure G, arguably even less friendly to development, failed; it would have expanded open spaces rules to restrict development near agricultural lands. Both are the latest volleys in a longstanding debate about growth in the county. In 2014 voters rejected a trio of growth-control measures, which themselves were responses to a 2004 decision to uphold a relatively permissive 1996 general plan update that was restricted by a 1999 court order. In Dana Point, a council-sponsored measure to guide growth of the city’s village-like downtown lost out to a more restrictive citizen-led initiative. The following are complete results, with vote tallies that were available as of press time.  Pleasanton ( Alameda County)  Measure K Lund Ranch Development Project Referendum Shall the Lund Ranch project in Southeast Pleasanton, which consists of 43 single-family homes on approximately 17 acres and 174 acres for permanent public open space and 2 miles of public trails, be approved? Approved Yes 6,852 50.94% No 6,598 49.06% Butte County Measure E Fracking Ban Initiative Shall the ordinance entitled "Ordinance Imposing a Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing Within Butte County" be adopted?" Approved Yes 34,772 71.54% No 13,836 28.46% Butte County  Measure G Marijuana Exclusion from Right-to-Farm Ordinance Referendum Shall Ordinance No. 4106, an Ordinance of the County of Butte amending Sections 35-2 and 35-5 to Chapter 35 of the Butte County Code entitled the "Right to Farm Ordinance" be adopted? This measure would clarify that the cultivation of marijuana is not an agricultural operation that is subject to the benefits of Chapter 35 of the Butte County Code, known as the “Right to Farm Ordinance.” Approved Yes 27,952 59.47% No 19,053 40.53% Butte County  Measure H Restrictions on Cultivation of Medical Marijuana Referendum  Shall Ordinance No. 4107, an Ordinance of the County of Butte amending Sections 34A-2, 34A-3, 34A-4, 34A-13, 34A-16 AND 34A-19 of Chapter 34A of the Butte County Code, entitled "Restrictions on Cultivation of Medical Marijuana" be adopted? Approved Yes 28,218 58.54% No 19,982 41.46% Richmond (Contra Costa County),  Measure N Riviera Residential Development Initiative Shall the ordinance to amend the Richmond General Plan 2030 to allow a 59 unit single family detached project on a site south of the intersection of Marina Way South and Hall and approve a development agreement and related actions be adopted?  Rejected Yes 4,009 34.35% No 7,663 65.65% El Dorado County  Measure E Road and Traffic Congestion Policies Initiative Shall the ordinance be adopted amending the El Dorado County General Plan to (1) change when and how El Dorado County mitigates impacts to traffic levels of service, (2) impose restrictions on use of tax revenue and mitigation fees and on formation of infrastructure financing districts, and (3) require El Dorado County to make findings of compliance with those policies prior to approving any residential development project of five or more units, as more fully described in the proposed ordinance? Approved Yes 24,487 51.81% No 22,776 48.19% El Dorado County  Measure G Land Use and Zoning Policies Initiative Shall the ordinance be adopted to (1) add, amend, or delete fifteen distinct policies in the El Dorado County General Plan concerning land use, agriculture, mixed use, cultural and historical resources, and water supply and (2) preclude El Dorado County from approving any future discretionary project until it implements twelve enumerated General Plan policies related to community design guidelines, cultural and historical resources, water supply, and scenic corridors, as more fully described in the proposed ordinance? Rejected Yes 22,964 48.76% No 24,132 51.24% Lassen County 51st State of Jefferson State Split Advisory Question Advisory vote on forming State of Jefferson. Rejected Yes 2,288 42.26% No 3,126 57.74% Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) Measure K Residential Care Facilities Amendment Shall the City approve amendments to the City Charter, General Plan, Coastal Land Use Plan, and Coastal Zoning Ordinance to conditionally allow residential care facilities for the elderly in the P-CF zoning district on properties over one acre in the Coastal Zone pursuant to a request from the School District to rezone surplus school property? Approved Yes 8,271 64.55% No 4,542 35.45% Pomona (Los Angeles County) Measure Y Billboard Zoning Ordinance Amendment Shall the Pomona zoning ordinance be amended to authorize the installation of outdoor advertising signs within specific freeway adjacent corridors and to impose planning regulations and restrictions concerning the number and location of the outdoor advertising signs, and to establish development fees to be paid to the City of Pomona in an amount of $1 million for each billboard installed? Rejected Yes 6,819 48.25% No 7,313 51.75% Nevada County  Measure W Voter-Approved Outdoor Marijuana Cultivation Ban Shall an ordinance be adopted which (a) bans outdoor cultivation, commercial cultivation and other commercial cannabis activities, (b) limits indoor cultivation to 12 plants per parcel in residential and rural areas, (c) prohibits indoor marijuana cultivation in unpermitted structures and areas used or intended for human occupancy, and (d) allows marijuana cultivation only by qualified patients and primary caregivers and only for medicinal purposes? Rejected Yes 11,585 42.23% No 15,845 57.77% Nevada City (Nevada County)  Measure Y Short-Term Home Rental Ordinance Shall the recently enacted hosted short-term rental regulations resulting from adoption by the City Council of Nevada City of a prior voter initiative (effective January 8, 2016) be repealed and replaced with the more restrictive provisions of an alternative voter initiative permitting on-line type home-sharing short-term rentals of two units in a single-family residence or small guest house only if the owner occupies the main dwelling and off-street parking is provided and making related General Plan amendments? Rejected Yes 400 34.69% No 753 65.31% Dana Point (Orange County) Measure I Town Center and Public Parking City Council Referral Shall the Town Center and Public Parking Improvement Measure, which ratifies the Town Center Plan previously approved by the City Council and the California Coastal Commission, as well as the amendments thereto approved by the City Council in 2015, be adopted? Rejected Yes 3,251 41.05% No 4,669 58.95% Dana Point (Orange County) Measure I Town Center and Public Parking City Council Referral Shall the Town Center and Public Parking Improvement Measure, which ratifies the Town Center Plan previously approved by the City Council and the California Coastal Commission, as well as the amendments thereto approved by the City Council in 2015, be adopted? Rejected Yes 3,251 41.05% No 4,669 58.95% City of San Diego (San Diego County)  Proposition H Infrastructure Fund Establishment Amendments Shall the Charter be amended to require certain unrestricted General Fund revenues to be deposited in an Infrastructure Fund used exclusively to pay for capital improvements including streets, sidewalks, bridges, bike paths, storm water and drainage systems; public buildings including libraries, recreational and community centers; public safety facilities including police, fire and lifeguard stations; and park facilities, but expressly not used for new convention center facilities and new professional sports venues? Approved Yes 109,768 64.63% No 60,063 35.37% City of San Diego (San Diego County) One Paseo Development Project Veto Referendum A referendum on the contentious One Paseo development qualified for the June 7. The city council pre-empted the popular vote by rescinding the targeted project ordinance directly. San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority Measure AA  (Nine Counties) 'Clean and Healthy Bay' Parcel Tax To protect San Francisco Bay for future generations by reducing trash, pollution and harmful toxins, improving water quality, restoring habitat for fish, birds and wildlife, protecting communities from floods, and increasing shoreline public access, shall the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority authorize a parcel tax of $12 per year, raising approximately $25 million annually for twenty years with independent citizen oversight, audits, and all funds staying local? Asked in Alameda, Contra Costa, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties. Approved (required two-thirds supermajority) Yes 826,352 69.32% No 365,650 30.68% City & County of San Francisco  Proposition B Park, Recreation, and Open Space Fund Charter Amendment Shall the City amend the Charter to extend the Park, Recreation and Open Space Fund until 2046 and give the Recreation and Park Department each year a minimum baseline amount from the General Fund in addition to the Fund set-aside of2 1/2 cents for each $100 of assessed property value? Approved Yes 101,816 60.35% No 66,901 39.65% City & County of San Francisco  Proposition C Affordable Housing Requirements Charter Amendment Shall the City amend the Charter to increase affordable housing requirements for private developers of new market-rate housing projects of 25 or more units until the Board of Supervisors passes an ordinance changing those requirements and also authorize the Board of Supervisors to change affordable housing requirements by ordinance? Approved Yes 113,129 67.27% No 55,049 32.73% City of San Jose (Santa Clara County)  Measure C Medical Marijuana Collectives Initiative Shall an ordinance be adopted amending the San Jose Municipal Code to include Medical Marijuana Collectives as an allowed land use in agricultural, commercial pedestrian, commercial neighborhood, industrial park, light industrial, heavy industrial zoning districts, and certain planned development zoning districts, and to establish a registration process and zoning code verification certificate process? Rejected Yes 44,506 35.13% No 82,180 64.87% Davis (Yolo County),  Measure A Nishi Property Land Use Designation and Development Project A yes vote is a vote in favor of changing the land use designation for the Nishi property from Agriculture to University-Related Research Park and establishing requirements for the residential and mixed-use development of the Nishi property Rejected Yes 7,395 49.01% No 7,693 50.99% Yuba County  Measure A Medical Marijuana Cultivation Act of 2015 Shall the ordinance that would increase the number of medical marijuana plants that may be cultivated on parcels of land greater than one acre and allow for cultivation of medical marijuana outdoors and within residences be adopted? Rejected Yes 3,139 36.17% No 5,539 63.83% Yuba County  Measure B Patients Access to Regulated Medical Cannabis Act of 2015 Shall the ordinance that authorizes licenses medical marijuana dispensaries that will provide medical marijuana to qualified patients and primary caregivers in a retail setting be adopted? Rejected Yes 3,728 43.03% No 4,935 56.97%

Amid all the alarming news about housing in California, here’s the one piece of information that really stands out for me:  The average home price in the United States is about $180,000. The average home price in California is about $440,000. Not just in San Francisco, or Oakland, or Los Angeles, or Orange County, or San Diego. The entire state. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported last year , California has always been somewhat more expensive that the rest of the country. In trying to understand the housing price gap, the LAO’s office took a very long view – charting the increase over the past 75 years. And the gap’s been getting worse for decades. In 1970 – the year, incidentally, that the California Environmental Quality Act passed – California housing was about 35% more expensive than the nation. By 2000, that gap had doubled, to about 76% more. And now it has doubled again, to about 144%. Median home price is a pretty blunt statistical measurement. It masks a lot of things: median income, interest rates, crazy market run-ups, market crashes, lack of capital, changing household configuration. But what the LAO found is a pretty consistent pattern: For three-quarters of a century, California housing has been getting more expensive relative to the national average.  Most housing experts will say there is only one reason for this kind of a prolonged run-up: California is not building enough housing. Environmentalists, preservationists, and neighborhood advocates have been fighting this idea for decades. But here’s an undeniable fact: It’s true. For the first half of the 75-year period that the LAO examined – 1940 to 1980 – California’s population grew by 16.6 million people and the state added about 6.9 million new housing units. That’s about one new house for every 2.4 people added. For the second half of the period – 1980 to today – California’s population grew by almost the same amount: 15.3 million people. But the state during this period the state added only about 4.6 million housing units. That’s about one new house for every 3.3 people. There’s an important blip along the way that I’ll come back to in a minute. But overall it’s reasonable to estimate that California is a couple of million housing units down from where it should be, given the population growth over the past half-century.  Furthermore, at a time when housing prices were rising faster than the national average, incomes were stagnating, and coastal areas were running out of buildable land, the state built more single-family homes than before. Since 1980, California has built about 60% single-family detached and another 10% townhomes, compared to 53% and 5% between 1940 and 1980. Meanwhile, the percentage of units in flats – five or more units – has declined from about 28% to about 21%.  In short: California has not built enough housing for its people for decades, and it has consistently built the wrong kind of housing.  It’s easy to blame all this on CEQA and other land-use regulations, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple. The story of California since the 1970s has been the story of a state that has put a variety of barriers in the way ways of doing business – CEQA, Proposition 13, etc. – and then figured out how to end-run the barriers. ‘ Nobody in the 1980s would have guessed, for example, that by the 1990s voters throughout California would be routinely passing school bonds by the two-thirds vote required by Proposition 13.  And nobody would have guessed in the 1990s that between 2000 and 2010, California would build 1.4 million housing units That’s one housing unit for every 2.3 new residents, which is better than we ever did in the 1940s, ‘50s, or ‘60s. Even with CEQA. That housing boom ended with the Great Recession and has never come back. Since 2010, California has added more than 1.5 million people – yet built only 244,000 housing units. That one unit for every seven people. But here’s the weird thing: During that time the median home price has only gone by 8%. By contrast, between 2000 and 2010 – when production of housing was, relative to population, higher than anytime since World War II, the median home price went up 40%. (This is reminiscent of the 1970s, when population growth slowed to a halt, more housing was built relative to population than housing than ever before, and yet California experienced its first housing price run-up.) These decade and half-decade totals, of course, mask the huge run-up of the early 2000s and home price crash after 2008. But they help to make an important point: Building lots of housing didn’t lower prices. And then building very few housing units hasn’t increased the price all that much.  That’s because, at least in the short run, production and price are not simply a result of supply and demand. They result from a complicated stew of regulation and the entitlement process, the availability of capital, interest rates, creditworthiness of prospective homebuyers, and a whole bunch of other things.  Homebuilding went up in the early 2000s because mortgages for more expensive houses were easier to obtain even for buyers with marginal creditworthiness, which increased the price of new houses, which in turn made it worthwhile for homebuilders to navigate California’s complicated regulatory system and build new houses. (It’s also true that cities got bolder about using CEQA exemptions for more and more projects.) Homebuilding went down because all this stuff got unwound: the mortgage collapse made it hard for people to obtain mortgages, especially for expensive houses, so home prices went down, meaning lenders no longer wanted to finance new housing projects and therefore homebuilders didn’t build houses. At the same time, of course, lots of people defaulted on their mortgages and were then bought by investors, thereby turning owner-occupied units into rental units. The point here is that the housing market is a whole lot more complicated than just CEQA and regulation. Yes, California has been under-producing housing for decades. Yes, regulation has a lot to do with it. And yes, a lot of the regulation has to be cleaned out.  Local governments need both carrots and sticks to produce more housing. Surprisingly, as our blogger Adam Christian pointed out not long ago, a little money from the state will go a long way. And, as far as sticks go, Gov. Jerry Brown, for example, has proposed a state override of local approval of certain affordable housing projects. But even if the carrots and sticks line up – and housing production goes up – that doesn’t mean prices will go down tomorrow. The housing market’s more complicated than that.

Like 45 percent of other Californians and 52 percent of other Angelenos, I live in a home owned by a stranger. It’s not quite the American dream. Nationwide, 65 percent of households own the units they occupy. But it suits me fine. The question I’ve asked myself lately, though, is, am I a renter or am I a tenant? I happen to be both, so the point is moot. For renters who aren’t yet tenants, or who want to be a tenant someplace else, the difference is more important than you might think. A few months ago I spoke on a panel on affordable housing, sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners . The panel included Larry Gross, the executive director of the grimly named Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) and longtime Los Angeles-area housing advocate. I contended, based on study and anecdote, that relief from the city’s crushing rental rates will come only from increased housing production – for residents of all socioeconomic strata. I recalled this discussion as I did my reporting for this month’s article on rent control in the Bay Area. CES primarily lobbies not necessarily for more housing but rather for housing policies like, among others, rent control, which is his signature issue. As he stated his case for rent control, I found us speaking different languages. They aren’t mutually unintelligible. But they reveal fundamentally different ways to approach the problem of housing affordability. I think of renters expansively, as more than just parties who signed a piece of paper. Renters are demographic group, and an enormous one at that. They are people who, by necessity or choice, are committed to the lifestyle that renting connotes. Renters might be new in town. They might be inherently transient. They might like low-maintenance situations. They might not be able to afford to purchase a home, or they might simply have better things to do with their money. The renter demographic has notable subsets. All those Millennials we hear about who are repopulating center cities? Almost all of them are renters. Seniors who want to downsize? They might be renters too. Minimum wage workers? Surely renters. Same with young families, and many others. Whatever their reasons, they approach the housing market as customers. In theory, the more choices they have, and the lower the cost for their choices – at any given level of quality, location, and amenities – the healthier a city’s economy and urban environment will be. A tenant is defined by a contractual relationship. They are people who live in someone else’s property and pay rent. Policies that support them, such as those advocated by CES, are crucial. But they confer narrow, isolated benefits. Legal protections generally serve only the tenants in question and then only when disputes arise. (Though they surely deter malfeasance.) Many tenant protections, including rent control, reflect philosopher John Rawls’s maxim of the “Veil of Ignorance” by which any action must serve those who are least well-off. And they generally uphold negative rights: they prevent bad things from happening; they do not cause good things to happen. I’ve rarely heard from an economist who didn’t argue that rent control drags down an urban economy. Those arguments are well known. Granted, they mean little when a family is faced with an unfair eviction. I am pretty much the poster child for the perverse effects of tenant protections. I live in a rent-controlled apartment in a part of Los Angeles where rents are, to use the technical term, bonkers. I can afford more. I’d be glad to try a different part of town. But I can’t afford that much more, and I’m not that eager to move. So I stay put. I get to enjoy my market distortion as a tenant and yet I feel trapped as a renter. The dire, immediate perils that tenants face have given rise to organizations like the Coalition for Economic Survival. As well they should. They do crucial work. But make no mistake: groups like CES, and rent control itself, are necessary primarily because housing, both market-rate and affordable, has been unnaturally suppressed for decades. The slow-moving renters’ crisis, because it is enormous and amorphous have had no such advocates. Until recently. Groups like the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation (with everyone’s favorite schoolyard acronym, SFBARF ) has enthusiastically taken up the cause up north. Similar groups are quietly forming in Los Angeles (disclosure: I am involved with one of them), and there’s even going to be the first-ever YIMBY  -- Yes In My Backyard -- conference in Boulder, Colorado, next month. As rent control spreads like wildfire across the Bay Area, even its advocates admit that it’s not a complete solution. It is a solution for tenants, of course. But it will only create a game of musical chairs in which many of the state’s renters end up without a seat. (Literally – once you’ve paid your deposit and first month’s rent, how can you afford furniture?) As the renters movement grows, I hope renters and tenants will ultimately find themselves on the same page and speaking with common voice. Ideally, that page is a brand-new lease, listing a rent that everyone can afford. This article has been updated since its original publication.

Medical marijuana in California may be a pretty intense battleground, but at the same time, to mix metaphors, it usually looks like a policy cul-de-sac. Advocates of access to medical marijuana are generally single-issue folks who don't care much about any other local issue. And advocates of strict regulation - who include a vast number of local elected officials throughout the state - don't break down along traditional ideological grounds. But the fact of the matter is that the controversy over access to medical marijuana could soon become a driving force in shaping policy around the state on land use and ballot measures. The reason is goes something like this: Because most local medical marijuana regulation amounts to zoning, that means most medical marijuana disputes are land-use disputes. And because the battle is so intense, neither side gives up easily, so the disputes are more likely to go to the ballot and wind up in appellate court. Just in the last month, appellate courts in California have issued four different published rulings having to do with medical marijuana. Curiously, all four came from inland California, including three from the Inland Empire and one from Kern County. All had to do with land use and ballot measures. And although neither side has swept the decisions, it's clear that there is a strong temptation on the part of the local governments in particular to engage in heavy manipulation in order to keep medical marijuana dispensaries out of their jurisdiction. That's likely to make important law on both land use and ballot measures, and not in a way that makes it easier to regulate dispensaries. The four cases represent an interconnected swirl of issues around zoning, initiatives, and the California Environmental Quality Act. Here they are: * In City of Palm Springs v. Luna Crest Inc. , a dispensary opened without seeking city permits and argued that federal law (which, remember, outlaws marijuana) pre-empts local regulations. The Fourth District Court of Appeal said no. * In California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland , the Fourth District ruled that Proposition 218 doesn't apply to an initiative to overturn the city's ban on medical marijuana. The case had to do with the timing of the election, but it could have broad implications for a two-thirds vote requirement. * In a second case from Upland, Union of Medical Marijuana Patients v. City of Upland ,  the Fourth District ruled that the city's codification of an ordinance banning mobile dispensaries was not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act because the city did a CEQA analysis on the previous ordinance.  * Most recently, in a complicated case from Kern County, County of Kern v. TCEF Inc . , the Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled that the county had impermissibly undercut a pending referendum that would have overturned a dispensary ban by repealing the ordinance the referendum had targeted - but also repealing the previous ordinance that the referendum sought to reinstate. The case had a CEQA angle too, because an alternative measure placed on the ballot to counteract the referendum had previously been invalidated because the county didn't follow CEQA in putting the measure together. You can see what's going on here: Local governments that want to ban dispensaries so desperately they'll stretch the law to do it, and a medical marijuana community so desperate to avoid regulation that they'll fight back hard in court - and, in some cases, make far-fetched legal arguments - to try to stop them.  In the federal pre-emption case, for example, the plaintiffs argued that federal law does not permit local governments to adopt an ordinance requiring dispensaries to subject themselves to testing of some marijuana products - which is not surprising, considering that marijuana possession is illegal under federal law. In the Upland CEQA case, the plaintiffs argued that the city had the obligation to examine the traffic impacts of a mobile dispensary ban, including, among other things, the increased traffic due to the fact that medical marijuana patients would have to drive to other cities to obtain marijuana and the possibility that more personal growing would lead to pollution. The court said these arguments were too speculative. The Kern County case was the one in which the local government - which, alone among all these cases, was the plaintiff - stretched the limits of its actions. The sequence of events went something like this: The county adopted an ordinance requiring the sheriff's approval; then replaced it with an ordinance permitting dispensaries in commercial areas; then, after 30 dispensaries opened, replaced that with a prohibition. Then local activists qualified a referendum to overturn the prohibition. At that point, the county repealed both the ban and the previous ordinance permitting operation in commercial areas and also placed a measure on the ballot to permit dispensaries in industrial zones only. The ballot measure passed but was subsequent invalidated on the CEQA argument. (An initiative is exempt from CEQA, but a ballot measure cooked up by elected officials isn't.) Then, with the ordinance permitting dispensaries in commercial zones repealed, the county sued a dispensary operating in a commercial zone. Which won the case on appeal. So, thanks to the recent appellate cases, we now know that you can't require a CEQA analysis based on extremely speculative possible impacts; an initiative isn't subject to the two-thirds voter approval requirement and other provisions of Proposition 218; and if you rescind an ordinance in response to a referendum you can't essentially reinstate that ordinance afterward.  Crafting any ordinance on a controversial issue is a complicated balancing act, and you can see in that each of these cases it wasn't easy to find the right balance. In Palm Springs - a city where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans two to one - the city allowed dispensaries but tried to put safeguards on them. In Kern County - where social conservatives live alongside libertarians - the Board of Supervisors couldn't figure out what to do at first. But, faced with 30 dispensaries once they were let in, the county engaged in a desperate attempt to get rid of them and keep them out - which put them on the wrong side of the Court of Appeal ruling. One thing about the medical marijuana cases: They reveal a lot of ugly sausage-making. And this is probably just the beginning. And, by the way, none of the medical marijuana advocates were represented by lawyers with experience in appellate land use law - with the exception of the California Cannabis Coalition in Uland, which was represented by Roger Jon Diamond, who has done battle against local governments for decades on behalf of the adult business industry. So who knows where the next case is coming from, and which lawyers are going to be involved.

I would like to buy Joel Kotkin a beer. I vote we try a gastropub downtown. Or maybe a rooftop lounge. I'll take the subway, and he can take a taxi. That way, neither of us has to drive. Wherever we'd go, I'd like to invite some of my urban planner friends along. That's because, judging by his new book, "The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us," Kotkin may never have met a planner before. According to Kotkin, planners today are "largely in favor of cramming people into ever-denser spaces." Kotkin describes contemporary planning trends so you can smell the body odor: "people clustering in ever more crowded cities, living atop each other, may fulfill the ambitions of corporate leaders, urbanist visionaries, and planners." Kotkin has long been a contrarian and critic of contemporary planning - sometimes a perceptive and welcome one, especially when urbanists, myself included, have gotten too cute or too smug. "The Human City" is probably his most comprehensive critique and surely his most off-putting.  Normally, provocative claims that form the basis of an entire book would warrant extensive citations, surveys, data, quotations, interviews, analysis, and literature reviews. Kotkin alludes to "scores of interviews and-survey data" but reports none of it but for occasional factoids. By keeping them "anonymous," Kotkin gets to mischaracterize planners and crusade against nonexistent threats. Kotkin digs at "creative class" theorist Richard Florida for being a "retro-urbanist" (whatever that means), and credits New Urbanists for favoring "a somewhat human scale." Most surreally, though, Kotkin suggests that the theories of early 20th century visionary Le Corbusier "are widely shared-by many urban thinkers today," as if everyone still wants to build towers in parks. That's what they were doing in the 1960s. In fact, legions of planners have been working for decades, by promoting infill and the like, to undo the damage that the Corbusians did. That damage has little to do with density per se; it has to do with the evisceration of street life. "The Human City" mainly concerns American cities, though it takes an early one-chapter detour into "megacities" of the developing world. This enables Kotkin to introduce a terrifying statistic: Dharavi, the densest slum in Mumbai, has 1 million people per square mile. Kotkin presents this as a cautionary tale, never blinking in his accusation that planners in the United States view Dharavi as a model. Never mind that Dharavi is an illegal settlement on nobody's blueprint. You'd have to be a serious antigovernment fanatic to think that any bureaucrat would favor that kind of cityscape. You'd also have to be terrible at math. If the entire population of the United States crammed within the city limits of Los Angeles, they still wouldn't achieve 1 million people per square mile. (Especially not with all the botox.) Interestingly, the density of Mumbai as a whole is roughly equal to that of New York City as a whole, at roughly 28,000 people per square  kilometer. And yet, Kotkin says that "planners" celebrate Dharavi's density. He includes Harvard's Ed Glaeser, who is actually not a planner but an economist and the kind of free-market thinker about cities that Kotkin ought to like. Kotkin doesn't actually quote Glaeser directly, though, so I emailed Glaeser. Glaeser confirmed that he believes in the economic potential of megacities. Kotkin just left out the part about how Glaeser "warn(s) of their dangers - the demons of density." As a gradient and not an absolute, density is relative. It's not like we have to choose only between formless void and black hole. To favor greater density in, say, Kansas City (1,474 people per square mile, in the center city, or one-tenth of 1% of Dharavi, ) or Jacksonville (1,142) means favoring "greater than what is already in Kansas City or Jacksonville." It doesn't mean "greater than Mumbai." (Kotkin proposes a breezy solution for India: it should develop its mid-sized cities. That's a swell plan, except that it ignores the ultra-corrupt, hyper-bureaucratic entity known as The Government of India.) But enough of the developing world. "The Human City" mentions it mainly to scare the bejesus out of "us" and make us thankful for America's abundance of bedroom communities. The "us" in Kotkin's divisive title refers to nuclear families: husbands and wives who dutifully bear sons and daughters. They are, claims Kotkin, the ones whom cities ought to serve. They have no use for monumental statements like towers and superblocks nor for fripperies like parklets, bike lanes, street festivals, and loft conversions. And they certainly don't want their children having to share personal space with "them," whoever "they" may be. Families are people too, though. It's not unreasonable to claim, "the question of what families need and prefer should be central." But Kotkin explores this question only as far as his preconceptions will let him. In asserting the preferences of some 122 million people (including many children who probably had no say in the matter), Kotkin makes no effort to distinguish desire from resignation. The status quo does not tell us whether they "want" to live in suburbs or whether they are merely willing to do so because that's where most housing units have been built over the last century. Kotkin's veneration of the suburbs centers on three reasons: typology, typology, typology. Kotkin insists that families inherently prefer a "small home in a modest neighborhood-where children can be raised." Adorable, right? To hear Kotkin tell it, a house in bankrupt San Bernardino is always more family-friendly than an apartment in booming Koreatown. I'm sure that's true for some parents. Others are happy for their kids to have ready access to culture, mobility, astounding diversity, and neighbors who are less likely to be cooking meth in their garages. In writing about suburbs, Kotkin is at his most appealing and most convincing when he's describing their hidden diversity or celebrating the small businesses that thrive there. He rightly points out that, with the dispersion of job centers, it's not all hour-long commutes on clogged highways. Meanwhile, he also has a legitimate critique of some progressive cities that "are actually becoming whiter and less ethnically diverse as the rest of the country, particularly suburbia, diversifies."  He's also written perceptively on America's coming population growth .  Kotkin undermines these observations by concocting a rivalry between suburbs and center cities - going so far as to proclaim "the war against suburbia"  -- and by equating suburban living with families while equating center cities with hipsters, singles, the wealthy, and the foreign wealthy. (He scarcely mentions the urban poor, many of whom also are families.) These are the inhabitants of cities that Kotkin calls, variously, consumer cities, legacy cities, elite cities, and, most damning of all, "luxury cities." Kotkin cites compelling demographic data indicating that in some of these cities - especially San Francisco and Manhattan - children are disappearing from the census data. Luxury cities are too expensive for families and, of course, they're too darn crowded. For a free-market guy, it's odd how Kotkin ignores the true meaning of high real estate prices: that demand is outstripping supply. Believe it or not, a great many people, families and singles alike, "want" to live in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City. If high prices are bad and density is bad, cities are in quite a pickle, aren't they? Kotkin clearly thinks that cities shouldn't build more high-rises and other multifamily dwellings. Of course, plenty of cities can accommodate more suburban-style houses, which is fine. But they aren't the cities that Kotkin is concerned about. He willfully ignores the predicament that the highly desirable like New York, San Francisco, and even Los Angeles are facing: They have basically no undeveloped land. Either they build multifamily or they build nothing at all. Kotkin imposes on them an impossible choice - and blames planners for failing to sort it out. Planners in center cities focus on downtowns, multifamily housing, commercial pockets, and certain amenities because, well, that's what they have to work with. Density is what a city  is  - especially "luxury cities." Being for or against density is a silly question. Managing density and making it work, for families and everyone else, is the real question. In truth, a suburban preference doesn't necessarily connote a preference for suburbs; it connotes a preference for things that suburbs tend to offer. No matter their densities, cities can, if they try hard enough, meet suburbs halfway, with better schools; affordability (per unit if not per square foot); safety (unban crime is generally down); and even "community" - as long as your definition of "community" doesn't equate only with "middle class white people." Americans might prefer suburbs less if they had more great cities from which to choose. By demonizing big-city planners, Kotkin ignores another crucial part of the housing story: they have nothing whatsoever to do with the production of suburban housing. Kotkin writes, "Urbanists would be far better off if they considered taking a more human-city approach: improve life not only in the core, but in the extensive areas that have developed around them." First, there's a contradiction here: if the suburbs are so great in the first place - such that families should always choose them over cities - then what exactly would make them "better off"? Second, Kotkin is entertaining another fantasy: he implies that we need to eliminate jurisdictions, hire region-wide planning directors, and give each of them enormous magic wands.  Many center cities are dysfunctional precisely because they have been competing with suburbs for decades - for population, development, jobs, and, of course, tax dollars. The suburbs have been winning by a landslide. As Kotkin points out, "between 2001 and 2011, detached houses accounted for 83 percent of the net additions to the occupied U.S. housing stock." Whether composed of palatial dream homes or acres of ticky-tack, the suburbs have prevailed for decades. So what, exactly, is Kotkin complaining about? Really, Kotkin isn't complaining so much as he is pandering. Kotkin could be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Instead, he has written a dog whistle to the supporters and consumers of sprawl. In fairness, Kotkin admits that "we need both geographies." It's just an odd thing to say at the end of a book largely bashing one of those geographies. If Kotkin likes families so much, he should love urban cores. He should love shaded sidewalks where people can catch each other's eyes. He should love bars where they buy each other drinks and share Instagram handles. He should love small apartments to which they can stroll arm-in-arm. If, a few years later, those same couples need another bedroom--well, good for them. And if those bars are too "crowded" with young singles for Kotkin's liking, I'll grab some friends and we'll drive out to Applebee's. The Diet Cokes are on me. The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us Joel Kotkin Agate B2 Publishing 304 pages $18.76 April 12, 2016

Whereas a Berkeley resident can cross from exuberance of Telegraph Avenue into the heart of the Cal campus in a few steps, UCLA is an auto-oriented campus surrounded by a moat of driveways, green space, and city streets. Its neighbors are some of the wealthiest and orneriest an institution could ever have the misfortune to live next to. The university, for all its academic heft, retreats from the city, and the city from it. UCLA was an ironically illustrative venue for a talk by Michael Storper, lead author of " The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies ," that I attended recently. Contrary to its expansive title, Storper's study concerns only Los Angeles and San Francisco. Given that both are booming Pacific Rim metropolises, it may be hard to figure out which is the "rise" and which is the "fall." Until you consider this: In 1970, the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas ranked, respectively, numbers four and one in per capita income in the United States. In 2009, after both areas grew by more than 50 percent in population, they were, respectively, numbers one and twenty-five. You don't have to have a Ph.D. to wonder: What happened? Some of the reasons for the divergence of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he defines by their multi-county metro regions, are obvious. L.A.'s aerospace industry crumbled along with the Berlin Wall. Steve Jobs happened to grow up in Cupertino. Et cetera. Hollywood is Los Angeles' superstar, except that it represents only 2.6 percent of the area's economy, compared with tech's 11 percent in the Bay Area. Those factors are just the start. For virtually any given job function, and controlling for all sorts of variables, Storper, who teaches at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, finds that a worker in the Bay Area makes more money and does more complex work than her counterpart in Los Angeles does. In other words, they're not just making more in the Bay Area. They're making better. This patterns holds for educated and uneducated, immigrants and non-immigrants, and it trickles down even to unskilled workers. These are the statistics that back up San Francisco's smugness . Riveting as they are, they describe the only effect but not the cause. The Intangibles L.A.'s and the Bay Area's divergence depends largely on what Storper referred to as the "dark matter" of public policy. Lurking behind every data point and every policy are forces like curiosity, relationships, open-ness, diversity, civic self-image, and values. These factors are often disregarded by short-sighted wonks and bureaucrats not because they're not crucial but because they aren't easily quantified. Storper argues that people in Los Angeles are lousy collaborators. Scholars in L.A. cite each other less often. Patents made in L.A. refer less frequently to other L.A.-based innovations. Los Angeles' great universities � UCLA, USC, and Caltech � are not nearly as entrepreneurial as Stanford, Berkeley, and UCSF. He cites L.A.'s Amgen as a successful, once-innovative biotech company but says that it's nothing compared to the Bay Area's biotech cluster . And it's in Thousand Oaks -- nowhere near a major university. Storper's analysis indicates that networks of civic leaders in Los Angeles are often mutually ignorant of each other. The Bay Area Council, the region's preeminent civic organization, is three times more "connected" than its closest equivalent in Southern California, the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. I know what Storper means. I've been to events at the Chamber, presided over by civic leaders of a certain generation. Storper said the phrase "new economy" appears in none of L.A.'s economic development literature in the 1980s. At the same time, San Franciscans were shouting it from the rooftops. Poverty & Pavement These attitudes are fatal in an era when ideas, and not Fordist production, are the order of the day. Echoing Enrico Moretti's theories about innovation economies, high-wage jobs generate a multiplier that tends to take care of the workers at the bottom. "If you play to weakness (i.e. poverty) you get a weak economy," Storper said. Interestingly, he said that there's essentially zero good data on the efficacy of any public-sector economic development programs of the last 45 years. He chided Los Angeles' leadership for its obsession with the low-paying logistics industry. A rising tide lifts all boats. Unless the boat is a container ship. If an individual, firm, or government doesn't have the knowledge or the capital to realize their dreams, so be it. But if they fail because they're not open to the wisdom, energy, diversity, ambition, and creativity of other human beings, well, that's something else. Los Angeles' economic failing is not just a business failing or a policy failing. It is a moral failing. What else do you call it when 25.7 percent of residents in the biggest county in the richest state in the richest country in the world live in poverty ? Storper didn't say so explicitly, but L.A.'s economics sins arise, in part, from our built environment. The two regions have plenty in common, especially in their outlying counties. But insofar as the center cities set the tone for their regions, the differences are striking. We have dingbats, setbacks, curb cuts, mini-malls, chain stores, McMansions, Pershing Square , streets like freeways, freeways like parking lots, and other elements of our landscape that push Angelenos away from each other. How can you collaborate with someone when they're in your way, making your drive longer, pouring pollution into your face? How can you feel as optimistic atop an asphalt sheet as you can strolling down a sidewalk lined with Victorians? How can you make friends when you can't walk to a watering hole ? Los Angeles is like a party full of beautiful people who have nothing interesting to say to each other. Atonement Atoning for our economic sins must include being a better Los Angeles. We might not be able to trade Facebook (headquartered in Menlo Park, with 10,000 employees) for Snapchat (headquartered in Venice, with 200 employees). Nor can we can we trade Google for Disney, or the Transbay Tube for the Sepulveda Pass. But we can emulate some of the Bay Area's urban sensibilities. We can use transit more often. We can build more mixed-use projects. We can embrace public space. We can build to the property line. We can plant trees. We can take advantage of our space rather than squander it. As our city changes, so can its culture. The great news is that improvement is afoot, with downtown development, new transit, new types of development, and an optimistic corps of young planners. By the time Los Angeles comes into its own, today's tech titans might be old news, just as Northrup Grumman and McDonnell Douglas are today. Something will have to replace them, and maybe they'll reside in Los Angeles. We just need to give them a better home. Postscript: Fortress Westwood UCLA being what it is, many people who should have attended Storper's talk � captains of industry, thought leaders, and everyday citizens interested in L.A.'s prosperity � are the ones who are least likely to actually have made the trip. Storper was preaching to a choir, mostly of fellow academics and urban nerds. After the talk there was a reception. Hors d'oeuvres, wine, the usual. It provided a chance to do some of that mixing and mingling that elude us in L.A. I would love to have stayed. Maybe I'd have developed new ideas or made new connections. But I had to go. My meter was running out.

The February 9 Legislative Analyst Office report on California "serious housing shortage" ends on a decidedly depressing note: "Bringing about more private home building - would be no easy task, requiring state and local policy makers to confront very challenging issues and taking many years to come to fruition." The report, which focuses on low-income housing, follows a a March 2015 companion that officially - if obviously - summarized the state's skyrocketing housing costs.  Note the new report's use of "would," not "will." Experts agree that California suffers from a chronic underproduction of new housing that stretches back several decades: an estimated 180,000 to 210,000 additional units would be required in Los Angeles County alone, and 170,000 additional units in the Bay Area, to restore some semblance of a balanced housing market in the State's major urbanized areas. In a well functioning market, this kind of shortage would make new home production a foregone conclusion -- future tense -- not something to be hoped for in the conditional tense. Among the key challenges is the lack of incentive for cities to achieve their Regional Housing Need Allocations, the amount of new housing that cities would need to build to accommodate anticipated growth. Currently, there are no penalties for non-compliance with RHNA targets. For many cities, new residential uses are seen as a fiscal drag: capped by Proposition 13, property taxes increases do not keep pace with the cost of providing services to new residents. As a result, many cities are loath to approve the housing they need. In the absence of penalties, one logical solution would be to reward cities that achieve their RHNAs. It turns out that the state experimented with this elegantly simple approach through a pilot program launched in 2001.   Administered by Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the  Jobs Housing Balance Incentive Grant Program  (JHB) provided modest financial incentives to jurisdictions that voluntarily increased their permitting activity. To qualify for funding, cities were required to achieve a 12 percent increase over a baseline average in permitting activity from the previous 36-month period. If, say, an average of 1,000 units had been permitted annually over the prior 36 months and a given city that issued permits for at least 1,120 units during the pilot period would qualify for incentives. The pilot produced near-term, cost-effective results. A follow-up report on the JHB Program, issued in 2006 to the Legislature, estimates that participating cities permitted an additional 24,624 units of housing in 2001 compared to their rolling 3-year average. Eighty-six percent, or just over 21,000, of those permitted housing units had been built and occupied five years later. Critically, many coastal communities permitted more housing as a result of the JHB program. The per-unit grant incentives were relatively low - ranging from $500 to $1,300 per unit ($670 to $1,740 in 2015 dollars), with high-density employment counties receiving higher per-unit incentives. The total award pool was $25 million; the largest award of $3.5 million went to the City of Los Angeles. The JHB program allowed award recipients to spend the funds on new housing-related infrastructure and amenities, creating a virtuous cycle of investment in growing neighborhoods. We should put these numbers in the context of both the current depth of the state's housing need and the relative effectiveness of other housing subsidy programs: Proposition 46 of 2002 and Proposition 1C of 2006 together provided $4.95 billion for the construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of 57,220 affordable apartments, at a cost of over $86,000 per unit. Prior to their elimination in 2011, community redevelopment agencies produced only 10,000 affordable housing units over their multi-decade existence. The Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program spent $122 million last year to subsidize the construction of 1,924 units statewide, at an approximate cost of $63,400 per unit. The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has produced around 7,000 new rental units annually, at an average cost of $165,000  per unit in coastal communities.   Assemblymember David Chiu's (Dist. 17 - San Francisco) proposed AB 35, to expand the California Low Income Housing Tax Credit, would have spent up to $100 million per year to leverage an estimated $1 billion in additional funds. The bill passed but was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. Since subsidized affordable housing projects often receive funding from multiple programs, the total per-unit subsidy is likely higher than the amount shown for any single program. By comparison, the average cost per unit for the JHB program was around $1,180 ($1,580 in 2015 dollars) -- less than the state incentive on some electric cars. On the one hand, it's kind of amazing that cities would be willing to do an about-face on housing approvals for so little money. On the other hand, if that's all it takes, it could be a wise, efficient investment for the state.  Let's address two obvious arguments with these comparisons: The HCD follow-up report can't quantify how many of these units would have been permitted anyway due to the real estate upcycle then occurring in 2001, and how many of these permits were directly attributable to the incentives . True, but even if only a fraction of the total unit production were directly attributable to the incentives, the JHB program is still dramatically more cost-effective than its next closest peer. It is also more transparent and simple to administer. This comparison is a case of "apples and oranges:" the cost of permitting a unit of market-rate housing and the cost of producing a unit of affordable housing are not directly comparable or equivalent in their social impact . The Feb. 9 LAO report provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Increased production of market-rate housing would have broad-based affordability benefits for households at all income levels. Strikingly, the LAO report found that cities with abundant market-rate housing production were far less likely to displace low-income residents than cities with slow growth policies. While targeted subsidies for very low- and low-income households will continue to be both morally and economically necessary, everyone wins with an increase in overall supply of housing. This premise is at the heart of the JHB Program.  Whether rooted in NIMBYism, environmentalism, or the fiscalization of land use wrought by Proposition 13, many local governments are reluctant to approve new housing. The JHB Program shows that this reluctance, at least in the near term, may be most easily overcome with cold hard cash. There might even be greater receptivity to such an incentive program now than there was in 2001. In an era of dwindling state and federal assistance to cities, many communities-whether coastal or inland, affluent or low-resource-are highly motivated to pursue every discretionary dollar out there. In resuscitating the JHB Program, or creating a new program like it, the state wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel - there is already a statutory mechanism in place; it would just need a dedicated, sustainable funding source. While many sources could be considered, there would be a strong policy justification for using a portion of cap and trade funds for this purpose. The construction of new housing in job-rich areas would directly support shorter commutes, a reduction in household VMT, and hence a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. And, of course, new units means more property tax monies going back to the state, even if taxes are constrained by Prop 13. Ideally, cities should not have to be bribed into approving new housing. But we are not living in an ideal world. Given the urgency of California's affordability crisis, a program with the potential to produce near-term, cost-effective results deserves to be resurrected from the state's policy graveyard. Adam Christian is a senior consultant in infrastructure funding and finance at HDR, Inc and the founder of Urban Insights.