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CP&DR Vol. 36 No. 1 January 2021

After a solid decade of urban revitalization, marked in part by excitement over density, rediscovery of urban cores, and disparagement of sprawl, the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with some key demographic and financial factors, may be sending California back to the 1950s. Ever since cities locked down in order to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, debates have raged over the epidemiological implications of density and, less esoterically, over whether center cities remain can attractive when there’s nothing to do. While many in the state do not have the means to pick and choose exactly where they want to live, the combination of remote work and pandemic ennui has prompted untold numbers of well-off urban Californians to retreat to suburbs and to exurban “Zoomtowns.” On Redfin’s list of “hottest neighborhoods” for 2021, based on data such as ratio of sale price to list price, Nos. 1, 3, and 10 went to the California regions of Lake Tahoe, Big Bear, and Mountain House, respectively. Moreover, according to a recent report by AdvisorSmith, some of the most dramatic increases in rental rates in the nation are in California. Rancho Cucamonga (up 13%) ranks third, Murrieta (11%) ranks eighth, and Chino Hills ranks ninth, with Temecula, Bakersfield, and Fresno also in the top 25. And yet some of the most dramatic reductions in rental rates also are in California. The Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale rank 4-6, with declines of over 20% each. Eight other Bay Area cities fill out the other 19 spots. In many instances, the two lists are two sides of the same coin. “We are seeing an influx of poeple coming from the coastal counties,” said Matt Burris, deputy city manager in Rancho Cucamonga. “There are people looking to get out of higher-density cities and apartments.” In the Bay Area, median home prices in several counties exceed $1.3 million. By contrast, median home prices in inland areas are affordable, even if they have risen recently. Median home price Sacramento County is around $420,000, up from $360,000 at the end of 2019. Prices in adjacent El Dorado County are even higher, at an average of $535,000, an 18% increase from the end of 2019. “Those resort markets and, to a slightly lesser extent, the suburban markets — the Inland Empire, suburbs outside of Sacramento — have done disproportionately better than the state as a whole,” said Jordan Levine, chief economist at the California Association of Realtors. “The pandemic has helped play...into those markets that had relatively more abundant housing supply and affordability.” Low mortgage rates have partially blunted (and led to) rising prices, and the difference between coastal and inland prices has led to a rapid reshuffling of households statewide. (Not to mention out-migration to states that many Californians perceive as less expensive.) The relatively new community of Mountain House, about 50 miles due east of Oakland, exemplifies the embrace of suburbanism. Development began in 2003, but Mountain House’s master plan is still only about half built-out, with steady growth over the past decade. Despite its distance from major employment centers Mountain House is nearly sold out at this point. “We developed several tracts over the last couple of years. They are building as fast as they can, and they are selling, and prices are going up,” said Nader Shareghi, Public Works Director for the Mountain House Community Services District. He estimated that 60% of new resident are coming from the Bay Area and 40% are coming from elsewhere in the Central Valley. The current demand has prompted developers to build as quickly as they can, but it’s unlikely that supply will catch up any time soon. Shareghi said that developers need to anticipate a certain number of sales before they invest in infrastructure and amenities for a new community. Prices, then, are likely to rise for the foreseeable future. Rancho Cucamonga, a largely suburban city of 176,000 in the Inland Empire, is about a generation more mature than Mountain House and is, according to its current general plan, nearly built-out. Burris said demand for housing has surged, as has demand for industrial space to serve the logistics industry, which has expanded in response to the rise in pandemic-related e-commerce. He said that demand for retail and office space is essentially nonexistent. Despite the demand, the city is unlikely to add a significant number of units in the near term. Burris said that much of the city’s construction activity involves home improvements — such as additions of bedrooms, pools, and accessory dwelling units — consistent with resident’s desire for creature comforts during the lockdown. Rancho Cucamonga is a suburb an hour east of Los Angeles. “A year ago, most of our building permit activity was around new construction, whether that be new nonresidential or new residential,” said Burris. “With the onset of the pandemic, that changed pretty quickly. Most of our building permit activity is for home improvement projects, ADUs, new pools. It’s pretty clear that people are stuck at home with disposable income.” The city is, though, updating its general plan and will likely take recent trends into account. In particular, Burris said that city needs to be more sensitive to equity than ever before, now that prices for once-affordable homes are rising. The complication is that many potential sites for lower-cost housing are in industrial zones and, therefore, might exact an undue environmental toll on lower-income residents. "Having attainable housing is an important community objective and it’s clear to us that it’s a really important part of equity,” said Burris. "But, a lot of the opportunity for new development happens to be in industrial districts. There’s some serious environmental justice and equity concerns with such an approach.” He also suggested that the city would consider flexible options for retail spaces, which the city wants to preserve in part to reap sales tax revenues. He also suggested that the demand for small office spaces might rise as residents outgrow their home offices. “Some of our retail centers could be rezoned and repositioned to evolve into mixed-use space, so we could perhaps keep our retail base but find a way to artfully thread housing into them,” said Burris. Just east of Rancho Cucamonga, and a mile above it, the mountain resort town of Big Bear Lake is becoming less of a weekend getaway and more of a full-time community. Owners of second homes have been staying all week, and home sales have been robust.; Homes sales have skyrocketed in the City of Big Bear Lake. “When people started working from home, I think what happened is that a lot of people who had second homes up here actually started to utilize them more,” said Susan O’Strander, Director of Planning & Inspections at the City of Big Bear Lake. “Instead of expecting Thursday night through Sunday to be more busy than usual, it’s busy Sunday through Thursday. There’s just more people on the mountain.” O’Strander said that more intensive use of second homes will likely cut into the city’s stock of short-term rentals.; The Town of Truckee, just north of Lake Tahoe, has experienced the same, but on a larger scale. From January 2020 to October 2020, a record 550 homes in Truckee sold for over $1 million (in a city of just over 16,000). The previous 12-month record was in 2018, when 386 were sold.; “I do think we have a percentage of people coming here who do have that flexibility,” said Denyelle Nishimori, Truckee’s Community Development Director. “I think there are a lot of people from San Francisco who couldn’t afford to buy there, and the housing in Truckee is affordable to them. I do think that’s a new draw for us.” Truckee is a gateway to the Tahoe Basin. Nishimori;said that the city is already trying to encourage development of workforce housing. The City Council recently approved a grant program whereby homeowners receive $15,000 to build accessory dwelling units that are earmarked for relatively low-income renters. She said about 300 units of multifamily housing are in development as well.; Within the Tahoe Basin, the influx of new residents and newly full-time residents poses even more complicated housing challenges. New development in the basin is severely limited, so, while Bay Area executives can afford inflated prices, there are few opportunities to provide for low-income workers.; “We are in kind of a housing crisis up here, like many other resort destinations,” said Jeff Cowen, public information officer at the Tahoe Regional Planning Association. “With the availability of disposable income within the three-hour drive of Tahoe, we’ve been seeing that the housing stock is going down and prices are going up.” This is a particular concern for TRPA, whose mission is, in part, to reduce emissions in the basin. The organization does not want workers to have to commute into the basin for jobs from places like Reno, Nev., or the Sacramento suburbs.; Cowen said that TRPA is investigating ways to prompt accessory dwelling units. He added, “the most proactive incentives for workforce housing coming forward are local plan amendments that make it easier to build mixed-use affordable housing and provide affordable housing projects more favorable parking strategies.”; Whatever challenges resort communities face, Myers cautioned that the “Zoomtown” stereotype, in which digital nomads live in splendid isolation, is likely overblown. And the trend has been concentrated in a relatively small number of cities.; “It was true around New York City. They have a lot of eligible towns,” said Dowell Myers, professor of Policy, Planning, and Demography at the USC Price School of Public Policy. “We don’t have that many here in Southern California. Because of our desert, there’s not a lot of destinations.” Wadded,;“what represents significant growth on a percentage basis for a place like Big Bear or Tahoe….are small numbers of people relative to the population base of these urban employment centers." The much larger question is whether, after younger Californians especially spent so many years living it up in cities center cities, this trend reflects short-term concerns about the virus or long-term preferences. If only the former is true, then newly expensive suburbs and Zoomtowns may be in for a crash whenever urban life returns to normal.; The latter is more likely the case.; “It hasn’t started anything new,” said Myers. “You can think of it as ‘drive until you qualify,’ extended now, with permission from employer” to work remotely.; Myers said that, as much as the virus has upended daily life for most Americans, it has not actually changed their aggregate housing preferences. A significant number of millennials, who have long been squeezed by California’s high housing prices and are reaching the age at which their desire for space outweighs their desire for an “urban” lifestyle.; “It’s a dovetailing of three trends: the pandemic and remote work, and also that of the pent-up housing demand that is bulging right now as peak millennial crosses age 30 and are thinking about buying a house,” said Myers. “The key on the market impact is to have everyone’s behaviors synchronized, and you’re getting this concentrated impact,” added Myers. "The pandemic gets them all to jump…. it has impact on destinations and origins. Friends see each other jumping. It is prodding people to make a correction that they already had in the works.” Even so, demand for housing in center cities is far from dead. Cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco still have housing shortages and relatively high rents, even if rents have dropped recently. That means that, even if the statewide distribution of housing development changes slightly, there’s still even reason to build all types of housing throughout the state.; Levine noted that gains in nearby places like Mountain House and Rancho Cucamonga are mirrored by gains in places like far-away places like Arizona, Texas, and Idaho. If the state as a whole wants to stem its population loss, housing has to be part of the solution — even if his members momentarily benefit from high commissions.; “Those same forces that make the Inland Empire or outside Sacramento attractive are the same things that draw people to leave the state completely,” said Levine. “They want homeownership. It’s more incumbent on us now than ever to get serious about new construction, especially now that people have more options.” The state has already mandated that major urban areas plan for more housing through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process. Those allocations have been predicated in part on meeting demand for housing in high-cost coastal areas an on reducing commuting distances between housing centers and job centers. A sustained trend of suburbanization, coupled with long-term remote work, could solve the commuting problem even as it upends regions’ anticipated residential patterns.; “It could have an impact on RHNA,” said Myers. “The hardest place to build housing is in the center, where you want the density. If all the demand goes to the edge, it might outweigh climate change considerations.” Even so, cautioned Myers, any long-term plans made under current circumstances may be misguided.; “The data are so crappy right now,” said Myers. “We don’t know for sure how much has happened. We don’t want to make policy based on anecdotes and panic.” Contacts; Matt Burris, Deputy City Manager, City of Rancho Cucamonga, Matt.Burris@cityofrc.us Jeff Cowen, Public Information Officer, Tahoe Regional Planning Association, jcowen@trpa.org Jordan Levine, Vice President & Chief Economist, California Association of Realtors, jlevine@car.org Dowell Myers, Professor of Policy, Planning, and Demography, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, dowell@price.usc.edu Denyelle N. Nishimori, Community Development Director, Town of Truckee, DNishimori@townoftruckee.com Susan O’Strander, Director, Planning & Inspections, City of Big Bear Lake, sostrander@citybigbearlake.com Nader Shareghi, Public Works Director, Mountain House Community Services District,;nshareghi@sjgov.org Image of Rancho Cucamonga courtesy of City of Rancho Cucamonga General Plan.; Image of Truckee courtesy of Town of Truckee.; Image of Big Bear Lake courtesy of Konrad Summers via Flickr. COMMENTS:

Sacramento Moves to Eliminate Single-Unit Zoning On an 8-0 vote, the Sacramento City Council approved the first step in the process of allowing up to four units on every parcel currently zoned for a single residence across the city. Designed to help ease the city’s housing pressures and to promote spatial equity, the policy would essentially eliminate restrictive single-unit zoning and open up the city to duplexes, triplexes, and four-plexus. Opponents, led by some homeowners associations, say the policy threatens historic homes and recommends that it be implemented in only certain parts of the city, primarily along transit corridors. Among groups that supported the policy, some encouraged the city to implement strict design guidelines to ensure that the additional units would fit with the look of existing neighborhoods. The policy will be included in the city’s 2040 General Plan update, which is expected to be adopted in about a year. If it is adopted, the zoning change will go into effect in about two years. The policy resembles a statewide bill, SB 9, that would allow duplexes on almost every residential lot in the state. (See related CP&DR commentary .) Outgoing Administration Leaves Proposal to Lift Federal Protections on 3 Million Acres Days before the Trump administration left Washington D.C., the U.S. Department of Interior released a proposal to rewrite the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which would reduce California's protected lands by 3 million acres. Despite the proposal's preliminary status, the department's Bureau of Land Management will accept public comments on the plan for 90 days. It is unclear if the Biden administration, which favors clean energy development but also preserving public lands, would seek to roll the move back. Mining, renewable energy, and grazing interests supported amending the plan, while environmental groups, California state agencies, and the Department of Defense are among those opposed to modifying the plan. Renewable energy industry stakeholders see an opportunity to make the most of high-quality wind resource areas that the new agreement would free up, as well as more than 800,000 acres of desert that could provide solar energy. California Cities See Largest Rises and Declines in Rent A new study from AdvisorSmith used Zillow data to analyze where rent prices rose and fell the most in over 500 U.S. cities. The coronavirus pandemic has caused some wild swings in the rental market across the country, but California has seen some of the biggest swings. San Francisco, in particular, saw a tremendous drop (-26.4 percent), followed closely by Mountain View (23.9 percent) and Sunnyvale (-20.8 percent). In fact, of the top 25 cities with the biggest drops in rent, California cities constitute just under half, including Redwood City, San Mateo, Oakland, Santa Monica, Santa Clara, and Milpitas. Just four California cities made the top 25 cities for rent increases: Rancho Cucamonga (13.2 percent), Murrieta (11.1 percent), Chino Hills (10.9 percent) Bakersfield (10.4 percent), and Fresno (9.1 percent). (See related CP&DR coverage .) Proposed Budget Includes Environmental, Infrastructure Spending In addition to proposed spending on housing, Gov. Gavin Newsom State Budget Proposal proposes increased investment in green initiatives, particularly around clean-burning vehicles: a $1.5 billion investment would support low-income Californians to purchase cleaner vehicles; go toward purchasing clean trucks, buses, and off-road freight equipment; as well as construction of electric charging and hydrogen fueling stations. The budget has a line item for $300 million for toxic site cleanup, in addition to incentives to clean up and develop the sites for future housing and $300 million for deferred maintenance and greening of state infrastructure. The Governor also proposed a $1 billion investment in wildfire and forest resilience. Of that amount, $323 million is proposed for early action this spring to prepare for the next fire seasons. The budget includes the following categories of investments related to fire management: $512 million for forest health, fuel management, and post-fire recovery projects; $335 million for wildfire fuel breaks; and an additional $160 million for community hardening, monitoring technology, and forest sector economic stimulus. (See related CP&DR coverage .) CP&DR Coverage: Biden and Land Use Even though Donald Trump lived in a high-rise mixed-use building in a big city for more than 30 years (Trump Tower), cities didn’t do well under the Trump Administration. But Joe Biden is an unabashed urbanist – for example, he’s a guy who made the 90-minute commute between Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., some 8,000 times during his 36 years in the Senate. So how will cities and urban life fare under a Biden Administration? The answer, almost certainly, is a lot more than the Trump Administration did. Biden will make some short-term moves and then he will probably focus mostly on transportation and infrastructure, though he may also make some moves on housing as well. Quick Hits & Updates Voters will decide whether a 3,000-home Fanita Ranch development will move forward after the Santee City Council voted to place a measure on the November 2022 ballot asking whether the project should be built. A legal challenge is now pending that may jeopardize the ballot measure; allegations have been raised that some of the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot were obtained illegally. Los Angeles County unveiled its draft update to the L.A. River master plan, the first in over 25 years. The bulk of the 51-mile corridor is used for flood control purposes, but that could change dramatically. The document identifies 56 potential projects; among them are modest changes like the Downtown leg of the L.A. River bike path, but more ambitious projects like elevated platform parks are featured as well. A  study out of UC Davis and Worcester State University used regional transportation plans for three California Metropolitan Organizations to show that the transportation accessibility and environmental health issues affecting low-income residents and people of color who have been pushed out of gentrified urban cores have not been captured adequately by current metrics. The study of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Fresno found that when allocating limited transportation funds, California MPOs reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled, but fail to serve suburban and exurban communities. A San Diego preservation group has named five sites to its annual "endangered list," a designation that doesn't carry legal weight but aims to raise awareness of demolitions or renovations of old buildings. The five new entries this year are the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, a Chase Bank, a Victorian house in San Marcos, pepper trees in Kensington and auto cottages on the beach in Oceanside. The monarch butterfly has been bumped from consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act at least until 2024. Federal officials say other species under greater threat will receive consideration first. Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80 percent since the mid-1990s, while the drop-off in the Western U.S. has been even steeper. Lockheed Martin will begin tearing down its 54-year-old marine terminal building in San Diego Bay's Harbor Island East Basin early next year following the Port of San Diego Commissioners vote to certify the project's environmental impact report. The project, estimated to cost $7 million, will cap a long-running dispute between the port and Lockheed Martin, and should ready the East Harbor Island for redevelopment. A plan for a gondola system in Long Beach known as "The Wave" could go before City Council soon despite budget setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is projected to cost between $80 million and $100 million, but from private capital sources and grants. The preliminary design shows the first station near the Long Beach Convention Center, then a second near the Aquarium of the Pacific, and ending at the Queen Mary and surrounding hotels. Capping a four-year planning effort, the Palmdale City Council has approved a Specific Plan that will determine regulations around the proposed downtown California High Speed Rail station. The plan focuses on increasing density around the future high-speed rail station and enables a pedestrian-friendly district with a mix of commercial and public uses that maintain the neighborhood character. (See related CP&DR coverage .) A new report from SPUR, A Transit Coordinator for the Bay Area, makes the case for a transit coordinator entity that could pull the Bay Area's disparate transit agencies together. The report also recommends prioritizing early actions that increase transit use and ensure that new transit investments deliver the best public value and pursuing institution reforms to align the role of transit agencies and local jurisdictions with transit coordinator functions. The Placer Superior Court denied a petition filed by a community group that would have delayed redevelopment plans for a campus in North Auburn in Placer County. The master plan update for the campus envisions new amenities like a community events center, open space, and preserving several of its original buildings in a dedicated heritage area to the campus' history. It also includes a 79-acre multi-family workforce housing development. The projected cost of tiny homes in Los Angeles--at $130,000 a pop for each 8-by-8 foot structure in one North Hollywood site--has prompted calls from Los Angeles City Council to find ways to reduce the cost. The motion introduced by one councilmember asks the city to bring the cost per unit down to the $17,000 to 22,000 range that other California communities have achieved. The City of Encintas wants to pass an update to its density bonus law that would exempt it from a AB 2345, the new state law that allows developers to build more densely if they include affordable housing. The Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, one of the state's smallest tribes, closed escrow on a $4.5 million deal with an environmental group to purchase nearly 1,200 acres of Adler Ranch in Big Sur. The area is known for its giant redwoods, which serve as an ideal nesting place for the California condor. Moreover, the Little Sur River that runs along one side of the property is a spawning ground for the endangered California Coast Steelhead. The home of the Oakland A's is now officially known as RingCentral Coliseum. RingCentral will pay $450,000 upfront and a monthly payment of $15,000 a month during the COVID-19 pandemic; once live games resume, RingCentral will pay $1.1 million a year over three years.

Even though Donald Trump lived in a high-rise mixed-use building in a big city for more than 30 years (Trump Tower), cities didn’t do well under the Trump Administration. But Joe Biden is an unabashed urbanist – for example, he’s a guy who made the 90-minute commute between Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., some 8,000 times during his 36 years in the Senate. So how will cities and urban life fare under a Biden Administration?

Say you’re my neighbor in West Los Angeles. But, instead of living in a two-bedroom apartment in my building, you live in a four-bedroom house a few blocks away. And say you live on a street surrounded by other such houses, some with three bedrooms, some with five. You get the idea.  Say you have a spouse, and some kids, maybe one kid per extra bedroom. Depending on the kids’ ages and age spread, you might have three or four cars. Two in the garage, one in the driveway, and another fending for itself. You might have a live-in housekeeper or nanny, also with a car. Maybe you have heaps of friends who have open invitations to spend weekends in your guest house, and they take you up on those invitations. That’s a well-used house!  You are living the American dream. Add a pool, and you’re living the California dream. Now imagine that, instead of one house with four bedrooms, you own one building with four bedrooms — but the building consists of — wait for it — two houses. And imagine that, instead of one family with 5-6 members, there are two families, each with 2-3 members. And imagine if some of those family members have their own cars.  This is, for some people, the nightmare. The California nightmare.  What I have just described is not dystopian fiction but rather the main provision of Senate Bill 9, which is currently making its way through the early stages of the legislative process. It would essentially abolish single-unit zoning statewide and instead require every lot in the state to accommodate up to two units. That’s a 100% increase in units!  SB 9 is Sacramento’s latest attempt to coax California’s cities into developing more housing. It will not, of course, single-handedly create the estimated 2 or 3 million units that the state needs. But, as compared to previous (failed) bills — most notably SB 50 and its predecessor SB 827 — that attempted to increase the state’s housing capacity though relatively high-density urban infill, SB 9 attempts to add housing more… gently.  The idea is, a duplex need not look any different from a one-plex. Single-unit homes can be reconfigured, or two-unit buildings can be developed from the ground up, with roughly the same dimensions and footprints as their single-unit counterparts. Duplexes need not loom over their neighbors the way apartment buildings might and they don’t encourage their occupants to adopt siege mentalities as if their homes are their fortresses. Duplexes are friendly, efficient, and unobtrusive.  Tell it to the neighbors.  Inevitably, every time someone in California proposes a new pro-housing policy, someone comes along to explain why, even though the other policies weren’t right, this one isn’t right either. Last year’s Senate Bill 50 wasn’t right because it allowed buildings that were too big and might have ruined residential neighborhoods. Senate Bill 35 isn’t right because it undermines local control. Etc, etc…. SB 9 is meant to be the anti-SB 50. But, like clockwork, opposition has arisen. It has arisen, of course, because no matter how sensible duplexes may seem, SB 9 inherently affects the most powerful, most anti-development people in the state: homeowners. I saw the opposition for the first time at a (online) community meeting a few days ago. Duplexes got roughly the reception you’d expect for nuclear waste or TikTok houses. Too many people. Too many cars. Not enough open space. Put that housing someplace else and don’t destroy our neighborhood! Never mind that “someplace else” has been attempted and rejected, plenty of times by plenty of communities already.  Many duplex skeptics are empty-nesters. Two people might occupy houses of thousands of square feet, with spare bedrooms that haven’t been slept in and backyards that haven’t been frolicked in since the Clinton administration. And yet, let’s compare the impacts of a duplex built under SB 9 to the impacts of actually using a single-family house for its intended purpose. While a duplex requires a change of law, there is no governmental prohibition against families with multiple children, live-in help, guest quarters, and cars galore. The marginal impact of duplexes on the population capacity of a neighborhood would be negligible. (As for concerns for open space — that’s exactly what a backyard is; single-family homes come with their own amenities.)  The only difference, then, between a duplex and a blissfuly detached single-unit home is the age-old anxiety about new residents who might not be quite as wealthy as the incumbent residents. One aspect of that anxiety is the assumption that if something like SB 9 passes, Bel Air will instantly turn into Duplex City (meaning it would look exactly the same as it does now). But the point of passing a statewide bill — and this is a point that opponents of these bills rarely acknowledge — is that development, or, in this case, conversion, gets distributed around the entire state, from Crescent City to National City. California currently has 6.8 million single-unit detached homes. Even if half of California’s 3 million needed units took the form of duplexes — surely an insane over-estimate — we’re talking about conversion of roughly one out of every five existing units. The other four neighbors will barely even notice.  The trouble, of course, is that living in pleasant single-unit neighborhoods insulates residents from the far more real and serious anxieties faced by people who are homeless, who can barely afford rent, who live in improvised or over-crowded units, or who feel constrained by high prices and lack of housing choices, or who feel unwelcome because of their skin color, language, or national background. I thought maybe SB 9 could be palatable enough to compel privileged Californians to finally make incremental sacrifices on behalf of the less privileged. I fear I may be overly optimistic. I don’t have an opinion about SB 9 per se. Like all laws, it surely needs revision and will surely be subject to negotiation. Regardless, if it survives January, this will be one of the big housing debates of 2021.  There is, of course, a huge irony here: For my neighbors who had 3-4 kids a few decades ago and raised them under one roof, those kids now probably can’t afford live in the type of neighborhood in which they grew up. If they can, it’s probably because their parents are helping them out. Unless California’s longstanding homeowners are expecting a baby boom, or expect their adult kids to move back in, it might just be time to consider the duplex. CP&DR is a subscriber-supported publication. This article is being provided free of charge, but most articles are available only on a premium basis. For  FULL ACCESS  to all our premium content -  Subscribe Online Today ! (If you're not a subscriber premium articles can be purchased for just $5 each by visiting our online Single Purchase Store ) COMMENTS:

Sacramento Advances Ambitious Homelessness Plan  The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously to endorse the mayor's proposal for a citywide master plan for constructing housing for homeless residents. The plan commits each council member to establishing shelter, housing, and programs within their district in the next six months. The plan includes an affordable housing bond of up to $100 million. In response to shorter-term concerns, the council also approved holding a vote for an ordinance that could designate as many as 1,700 "Safe Ground" style organized encampments. Now that the city council has approved the master plan proposal, community input workshops begin this month and continue through April; the city could finalize a master plan in time for a June city council vote. San Francisco Office Market Slumps  New leasing activity is down 71 percent from 2019 in San Francisco's office market, which had its weakest year in three decades in 2020. Companies like Twitter and Dropbox downsized through sublease listings, which now account for more than half of the vacancy rate, and almost no new large leases were completed in 2020. The largest was signed by Vir, a biotech company researching COVID-19, which took 1133,896 square feet at Dropbox's headquarters. Office projects under construction saw no leases signed last year, a marked shift from previous trends. At the same time, venture capital in San Francisco set an annual record of $27.2 billion last years. IPOs in the Bay Area set a record with 67, but it's unclear whether new funding will translate to office demand as it has in the past given the trend toward remote work. Report Identifies Opportunities for Housing on Commercially Zoned Land  A report from the UC Berkeley Terner Center examines the inventory of commercially zoned land in California's four largest metro areas to determine how much land is currently allocated to commercial uses, and where such land is concentrated. The report's key findings were that Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento have an abundance of land zoned for commercial uses -- 191,000 acres in the Los Angeles region alone -- and allowing residential development in these areas could introduce new housing in virtually every neighborhood. In particular, commercial land is as prevalent in high-resource areas as it is in low-resource communities. Yet, the amount of commercial land per capita is higher in suburban communities than in urban core areas. Commercial land is concentrated along thoroughfares and in clusters, and housing that would emerge from its residential redevelopment may therefore be similarly concentrated. The report notes that, in many instances, local restrictions make it very difficult to permit housing on commercial land.  CP&DR Coverage: Newsom's Budget Boosts Housing With state revenue projections seemingly unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic and economic challenges that many Californians are facing, Gov. Gavin Newsom released his proposed budget last week including a roughly $15 billion windfall for the 2021-22 budget. In keeping with his years-long crusade to increase California’s housing supply, he announced upwards of $8 billion for a wide range of housing-related programs, including over $2 billion in windfall monies, making it the largest windfall-related category of spending, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Among billions for bonds, homeless housing programs, and home loan assistance programs, one of the smaller line items may have the most profound impact on urban planning statewide. Quick Hits & Updates  The Berkeley City Council approved the Adeline Corridor Specific Plan - a document that lays out an ambitious vision through 2040 to reshape the South Berkeley area near Ashby BART with an estimated 1,500 housing units, commercial space, and permanent homes for cultural institutions like the Ashby Flea Market and the Juneteenth Festival. Broadly, it hopes to address the political and economic factors that displaced thousands of minority residents after the construction of Ashby BART in the 1960s. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Liane Randolph to chair the California Air Resources Board. Most recently, Randolph served as commissioner on the California Public Utilities Commission. She will be the first Black chair of the board, and will bring experience from her work on projects to reduce greenhouse gases in new buildings, as well as to formulate rules to help California transition away from using natural gas. A long-awaited hovercraft feasibility study for the San Francisco Bay was delivered to the Water Emergency Transportation Authority. The preliminary findings were that hovercraft are technically feasible to operate on San Francisco Bay, but didn't find significant advantages for the smaller crafts over their larger counterparts for emergency service duties, for example, or in terms of air quality benefits until all-electric fleets come to the market. Oracle Corp. is the latest tech giant to announce that it will move its headquarters from California to Texas, joining the ranks of Tesla and HP Enterprise, two companies that recently announced their exodus. In a press release, Oracle signaled that its move from Redwood City to Austin is predicated on a large number of employees being able to continue to work remotely. Metropolitan Transportation Commissioner planners have backed off a mandate that would have large companies make their workforce remote three days out of the work week. Instead, the commission approved a plan that calls for big companies to have 60 percent of their employees take sustainable commutes by 2035. Regional planners are under pressure to meet state mandates that require the region to cut emissions 19 percent by 2035 or lose $100 million in transportation funds as soon as 2022. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Apartment landlords are suing the City of Santa Monica, claiming a measure the council passed in September that bans short-term rentals is "arbitrary, capricious, and lacking in evidentiary support." It alleges Santa Monica is violating the California Coastal Act, and separately the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause because it hurts tenants affected by COVID who may be looking for short term rentals. The Palmdale City Council approved the Palmdale Transit Area Specific Plan that will customize the planning process, land use, and zoning regulations for future transit-oriented development around the proposed downtown California High Speed Rail station. The transit center would have bus transportation, a north-south high speed rail line, a potential east-west high speed rail line and the Metrolink station coming in to one location. Amazon purchased a San Francisco property for $200 million with the intent of expanding its massive shipping infrastructure. In 2018 the 6-acre site by the Caltrain tracks was under consideration by the previous owners for a development with over 1,000 new homes. The project size was reduced after city planners balked to the design's heights and rezoning the area for residential use from the current industrial uses. The latest development in a long-running controversy, The Santa Monica City Council approved the Fairmont Miramar hotel's redevelopment proposal after 10 years of planning, but the Santa Monica Bay Towers Homeowners Association (SMBT) filed a lawsuit challenging the approval just days later. In the suit, SMBT alleges that the redevelopment project violates the coastal land use plan (LUP) and the Downtown Community Plan (DCP), as well as the California Environmental Quality Act. The hotel is owned in part by billionaire Larry Ellison.  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the Urban Air Mobility Partnership, a first-in-the-nation initiative to make Los Angeles a leader on urban air mobility. A product of a public-private partnership between the Mayor's Office, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, and Urban Movement Labs, the effort will help Los Angeles map out challenges identified by stakeholders and visualize a "vertiport," where people can go to fly on an urban air mobility aircraft. The Salinas City Council unanimously approved a 760-acre development project that includes a large affordable component. The agreement goes a step further to ensure locals will have access to homes. The developer will notify local groups when houses will be on the market, and one out of every six built homes will be affordable housing. CP&DR is a subscriber-supported publication. This article is being provided free of charge, but most articles are available only on a premium basis. For  FULL ACCESS  to all our premium content -  Subscribe Online Today ! 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With state revenue projections seemingly unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic and economic challenges that many Californians are facing, Gov. Gavin Newsom released his proposed budget last week including a roughly $15 billion w i ndfall for the 2021-22 budget.

Southern California Counties Among Nation’s Most Vulnerable to Natural Disasters The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new National Risk Index has calculated that Los Angles is the county most in danger for natural disaster, in terms of how often disasters strike, how vulnerable the population is socially, and how well the metropolis is able to bounce back. Los Angeles County scores in the “very high risk” category for earthquakes, riverine flooding, and wildfires. With the entire county exposed to earthquakes, the monetized value of property and lives at risk is $73 trillion. Expected annual losses due to all type sof disasters in the county amount to $1.4 billion. Neighboring Riverside County and San Bernardino County are also in the top ten riskiest places, with similar risk factors. The index is new in that it calculates the toll in ways that go beyond frequency to take into account the high cost, in fiscal and other ways, low-frequency--but devastating--natural disasters incur. (not much else here). The index’s three least-risky places are Loudon County, Virginia; Chattahoochee County, Georgia; and the City and Borough of Wrangell, Alaska. (Related CP&DR coverage .)  UCSF Seeks Major Expansion of San Francisco Campus  The University of California at San Francisco, a graduate campus dedicated to medicine and life sciences, has reached an agreement with the city to boost the housing, transit, and jobs programs that are part of its massive Parnassus campus expansion plan. UCSF will build 1,263 new housing units for students, faculty, and staff, which would more than double the school's entire housing stock in the city. By 2050, 40 percent of those units will be affordable for people making less than 120 percent of the area median income,. The commitment is an increase from UCSF's earlier proposal to build 762 housing units. UCSF wants to build 2 million square feet across new buildings, including a new hospital that will replace a facility that doesn't meet the city's earthquake safety code, and turns away thousands of patients per year due to limited capacity. If approved, construction is expected to start in 2023. The university will also contribute around $20 million for transit improvement, add 4,680 jobs, and the school will seek to hire local residents for 30 percent of entry-level positions. UC Berkeley Assesses Segregation in Bay Area  UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute  released a report that seeks to identify the most segregated and integrated cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. One conclusion is that intra-municipal segregation (segregation of the residents from the larger region) is more apparent in large cities with racially identifiable areas, like Oakland. But smaller, more racially homogeneous cities, like Lafayette, segregated their residents from people of different races through municipal boundaries and exclusionary policies, resulting in inter-municipal segregation. This, the authors conclude, is the form of segregation which predominates and results in extreme racial isolation in the diverse Bay Area region. A clear pattern the researchers found were that an inordinate number of the most segregated cities in the Bay Area are smaller cities that are more than 85 percent white in Marin County. But the most segregated city in the Bay Area is East Palo Alto: a historically Black community created from redlining and racial exclusion that limited where Black families could live in the region. CP&DR Coverage: New Housing Legislation Last year’s housing production bills will see a return in the California Legislature in 2021, thanks in large part to a new package sponsored by Senate leader Toni Atkins and others. There are a few new twists, like a CEQA exemption for upzonings near jobs and transit. And – not surprisingly – a couple of bills try to beef up restrictions on housing development in wildfire areas. One of those bills might require more general plan attention to wildfires. Most of the attention is focused on four bills introduced as part of the Senate leadership’s new housing package – a followup to last year’s mostly failed package. Quick Hits & Updates  Urban planning and data science academic Karen Chapple has been named the new director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, where she will continue to amplify the school's successes in helping cities and regions grow sustainably as they face increasingly complex challenges. Chapple's research focuses on inequalities in the planning, structure and governance of regions in the U.S. and Latin America, with a focus on economic development and housing. The San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments has commissioned a $1.5 million study to create a roadmap for mass transit in the region. Expected to start next year and be completed by September 2022, the study arose from the Metro board's decision earlier this year to not pursue a proposed State Route 60 light rail alignment for the Eastside L Line extension. Thanks to a 15-city partnership , the municipalities and other public agencies in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County will have access to a 1 GB fiberoptic network for $1,000 per month--half the cost of commercial rates. The new South Bay Fiber Network (SBFN) came out of a 2016 economic development initiative, following the exodus of South Bay companies that citied insufficient broadband infrastructure among their reasons for moving. The Berkeley City Council approved the Adeline Corridor Specific Plan - a document that lays out an ambitious vision through 2040 to reshape the South Berkeley area near Ashby BART with an estimated 1,500 housing units, commercial space, and permanent homes for cultural institutions like the Ashby Flea Market and the Juneteenth Festival. Broadly, it hopes to address the political and economic factors that displaced thousands of minority residents after the construction of Ashby BART in the 1960s. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Liane Randolph to chair the California Air Resources Board. Most recently, Randolph served as commissioner on the California Public Utilities Commission. She will be the first Black chair of the board, and will bring experience from her work on projects to reduce greenhouse gases in new buildings, as well as to formulate rules to help California transition away from using natural gas. A long-awaited hovercraft feasibility study for the San Francisco Bay was delivered to the Water Emergency Transportation Authority. The preliminary findings were that hovercraft are technically feasible to operate on San Francisco Bay, but didn't find significant advantages for the smaller crafts over their larger counterparts for emergency service duties, for example, or in terms of air quality benefits until all-electric fleets come to the market. Oracle Corp. is the latest tech giant to announce that it will move its headquarters from California to Texas, joining the ranks of Tesla and HP Enterprise, two companies that recently announced their exodus. In a press release, Oracle signaled that its move from Redwood City to Austin is predicated on a large number of employees being able to continue to work remotely. Metropolitan Transportation Commissioner planners have backed off a mandate that would have large companies make their workforce remote three days out of the work week. Instead, the commission approved a plan that calls for big companies to have 60 percent of their employees take sustainable commutes by 2035. Regional planners are under pressure to meet state mandates that require the region to cut emissions 19 percent by 2035 or lose $100 million in transportation funds as soon as 2022. (See related CP&DR coverage.) Apartment landlords are suing the City of Santa Monica, claiming a measure the council passed in September that bans short-term rentals is "arbitrary, capricious, and lacking in evidentiary support." It alleges Santa Monica is violating the California Coastal Act, and separately the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause because it hurts tenants affected by COVID who may be looking for short term rentals. The Palmdale City Council approved the Palmdale Transit Area Specific Plan that will customize the planning process, land use, and zoning regulations for future transit-oriented development around the proposed downtown California High Speed Rail station. The transit center would have bus transportation, a north-south high speed rail line, a potential east-west high speed rail line and the Metrolink station coming in to one location.

Livable California , the anti-YIMBY group based on the Bay Area, is engaged in a significant Brown Act battle against the Association Bay Area of Governments – and has now won a major procedural victory in that battle.

The state can’t take away more than $12 million in redevelopment funds that Redwood City deposited in a low- and moderate-income account as a result of a legal settlement with the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, even though many of the funds were not earmarked for specific projects.

Last year’s housing production bills – most of which failed, a few at the last second – will see a return in the California Legislature in 2021, thanks in large part to a new package sponsored by Senate leader Toni Atkins and others. There are a few new twists, like a CEQA exemption for upzonings near jobs and transit. And – not surprisingly – a couple of bills try to beef up restrictions on housing development in wildfire areas. One of those bills might require more general plan attention to wildfires.

Facebook Poised to Disburse Housing Funds in Bay Area  Facebook is in talks with stakeholders in the Bay Area affordable housing world to build 2,000 units of extremely low-income housing with $150 million of the $1 billion the company pledged last year to alleviate the Bay Area's housing shortfall. Affordable housing groups say the most exciting part of Facebook's latest housing announcement is the fact it's focused on families making less than 30 percent of a region's median income. In the Bay Area, a family of four making under $45,000 a year or less would meet that threshold. Facebook's Community Housing Fund will be managed by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the largest community development organization in the country. One-third of the funding will be dedicated to Santa Clara County, but projects from Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties are also eligible to apply. The $150 million is expected to fund at least six projects by 2026. (See prior CP&DR commentary .) Report: 100 Years of Traffic Reduction Efforts Largely Unsuccessful The Luskin Center for History and Policy recently completed a report tracking the history of fighting traffic congestion in Los Angeles. The authors illustrate how authorities often revived the same traffic reduction tactics, from land use zoning in both the 1920s and 1960s and laws to modify driver behavior in the 1920s and 1980s, without success. The authors argue that "At best, officials have convinced themselves that yesterday's failures might become today's successes because the city had changed dramatically in the time since." Moreover, the perception that congestion pricing would harm the poor and non-white residents is intuitive, but not empirically supported, and works to promote the interests of high-income drivers who would have to pay dramatically more under congestion pricing than would the poor, who trend toward taking public transportation. At the same time, sales taxes that pay for transit are in general more regressive than congestion tolls--lower-income people pay more of their income in sales taxes than do higher-income people. "Nobody wants to pay for something that is currently free, but we must systematically compare a system that levies congestion prices against free streets and regressive gasoline and sales taxes, parking fees, and valuable lost time," the authors conclude. Wildlife Conservation Board Considers Controversial Development The California Wildlife Conservation Board--for the first time in its 70-year history--will determine whether a housing development will move forward on pristine land the board has been charged with protecting. In exchange for rights to build on the 219 acres of coastal sage scrub, the developer would trade roughly 339 acres of undeveloped land and place another 191 acres under a conservation easement. More than 50 land trusts and conservation groups from around California have opposed the deal, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent. Proponents have said the deal will provide housing while, on balance, benefiting the environment. The land is one of the last strongholds of the Quino butterfly, which has seen its population drop by 95 percent as humans and invasive plants have crowded the species out of its scrubland habitat. CP&DR Coverage & Podcast: Top Planning Stories of 2020 CP&DR covered the COVID-19 crisis in many ways, particularly its immediate impact on the planning profession. Our coverage of race, the other major story of 2020, revolved around commentary. Inequities in cities, from explicit policies like redlining, to the de facto racial exclusivity of suburbs, to everyday realities of Black and Brown poverty were not breaking news. But 2020 brought a heightened awareness of them and newfound willingness to discuss them, and we tried to do our part. And, of course, there was plenty of “regular” planning news to go around. Bill and Josh discuss on the CP&DR podcast .  Quick Hits & Updates  North Natomas Regional Park is Sacramento's best option for the city's zoo relocation, according to a city-commissioned study , though a second location is under consideration, contingent on the city's acquisition of the property from the Sacramento Kings. Officials now expect the zoo will be 50 acres, down from the originally planned 80 acres but still larger than the 14 acres the zoo currently occupies. Richmond City Council has green lit a mixed-use project with thousands of homes atop the potentially hazardous byproducts of chemical and pharmaceutical companies that previously operated on the property. As part of the deal, the developer has agreed to commit millions of dollars in community benefits, but the project has been controversial as activists have pushed hard for years to block development until the soil is excavated. CalBike released a detailed "quick-build" resource for cities looking to add bike and pedestrian safe improvements on a budget. Quick-build projects use materials that can be installed quickly, at a low cost, and on a trial basis. Successful projects may become permanent exactly as installed or upgraded with more durable materials than the posts, planters, and stripes of paint that make up typical quick build projects. The Los Angeles Metro board certified the Final Environmental Impact Report for a light rail line in the San Fernando Valley. The line will connect the Van Nuys Station and the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink Station with 14 stations. A federal environmental review process is expected to conclude in January, which would make the project eligible for federal funding. Google's proposed transit village, Downtown West, in downtown San Jose has received high praise from Catalyze SV, a key community group. The 4.29 points is the second highest ever issued by the group. A key quote from the report: "With activated ground floors and an extensive network of public open space, our members are excited to spend time in this fun, engaging place." The first development proposal submitted to Marin County under Senate Bill 35 has been approved for 74 apartments on a 1.1-acre lot. The project was approved by the Marin County Development Agency without review by the county's planning commission or lengthy environmental review. The site is zoned for multiple-family residential use, which maxes out at 40 units, but due to an 80 percent affordable housing density bonus, the developer is able to build 74 apartments at the site. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced plans to create a "master plan" to pre-approve sites for temporary housing rather than leaving it to individual projects to get sites permitted. Sacramento's push to build shelters have hit federal road blocks in arguments over disputes over who owns the land. The mayor hopes that in creating preapproved plots of land, that problem could be avoided in the future.