Someday a city on the San Francisco Peninsula will embrace growth. It will recognize the pressures of the Bay Area’s housing crisis and fully capitalize on the economic juggernaut of the region’s tech industry. Today is not that day. And the city is definitely not San Mateo. The narrow passage of Measure Y, a ballot item extending previously implemented height and density caps on developments in San Mateo, could hinder the city’s quest to build more housing and alleviate the severity of its housing crisis, critics say. More legalistically, the measure’s passage may make compliance with San Mateo’s housing target under the Bay Area’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, expected to be around 5,000 units, all but impossible. The measure, which won by 43 votes out of 45,000 cast, caps citywide building heights at 55 feet (about four stories) and residential density at 50 units per acre. It also mandates that 10% of any development be affordable housing. Measure R, an alternative measure that would have provided the City Council with more flexibility in allowing dense development around transit stations, failed despite receiving vastly more financial support. Measure Y has a long lineage. It is an extension of Measure H, passed in 2004 as an extension of Measure P, originally passed in 1991 in response to the approval of a series of 12-story developments in San Mateo’s downtown, according to San Mateo City Attorney Shawn Mason. (Nevertheless, San Mateo’s population density is over 8,000 per square mile, considerably higher than that of most of its neighbors.) Height and density caps existed in San Mateo prior to 1991, Mason said, but Measure P “ratcheted them down.” Proponents of the caps say they ensure controlled development in San Mateo, warding off developers and large property owners with interest in “over-developing” the city’s downtown. The same group that had originally lobbied for Measure H in 1991 and Measure P in 2004 successfully collected enough signatures to place Measure Y on the ballot in 2020, according to City Clerk Patrice Olds.

The other day I spent the afternoon writing up an appellate court ruling involving the California Environmental Quality Act for publication in CP&DR . In this particular case , the Fifth District Court of Appeal, interpreting a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling , ordered Fresno County Superior Court judge to order the Fresno County Board of Supervisors to throw out their approvals of the Friant Ranch development project – an action that occurred nine years ago – and start over again with the CEQA analysis.

Now that California both faces a multimillion-unit housing crisis and, for essentially the first time, a credible set of statewide housing regional mandates, a new front in the perennial battle over growth has opened up in Southern California.

UC Davis Moves Ahead with Major Medical Complex in Sacramento  The University of California Board of Regents voted to move forward with a $1.1 billion addition to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. The first phase of the " Aggie Square " project includes four new buildings--three for lab, classroom and research space and one for retail and student housing. According to a report released in July, the university plans to build 285 units of student housing, which will rent for $1,900 a month per unit. The board approved an amendment to ensure at least 200 beds of affordable housing for students be included in the development. The Sacramento City Council plans to approve a $30 million tax break to fill a funding gap for the project, along with an additional $37 million intended to spark new affordable housing in the area. Under the mechanism, called an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, a portion of the new property tax revenue that would normally go to the city's general funds will instead be routed to the developer for necessary infrastructure build-out. The project will also include a community benefits agreement, and a $37 million tax break will go toward efforts to spur new affordable housing in the area and cash to keep renters from being displaced. Nonetheless, critics say will fuel gentrification. OPR Releases Advisory Document to Help Cities Defend Against Wildfires  As California grapples with the most extensive wildfires in the state's history, the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) has released the draft updated Fire Hazard Planning Technical Advisory (Fire Hazard Planning TA), which includes specific land use strategies to reduce fire risk to buildings, infrastructure, and communities. The updated TA is a tool for local planners and stakeholders updating general plans as they balance new construction with the associated dangers of extending neighborhoods into fire-prone areas. Among the recommendations are a plan for community outreach, particularly with vulnerable and disadvantaged communities; incorporating avoidance and risk minimization policies and development review procedures in the land use element for high-risk areas; integrating land use and risk avoidance measures with conservation and open space element policies; and identifying the homes, businesses, and community assets at highest risk and instituting policies to "harden" homes or infrastructure. The document also features sample policies and programs, case studies, and potential funding sources. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Over 13,000 San Diego Affordable Housing Units in Peril A study that shows San Diego will likely lose more than half of the city's affordable housing stock unless city officials take action has spurred an aggressive new plan to spend at least $6 million annually on preservation incentives. The City Council unanimously approved a seven-part action plan that creates a regional "preservation collaborative" to tackle projects. The goal is to save the 13,450 affordable units that would be easiest to preserve--4,200 deed-restricted units and 9,250 units of "naturally occurring" affordable housing. The at-risk units would typically be sold to a private developer, which decreases the likelihood of deed restrictions getting extended. The law requires owners to alert city officials and nonprofit affordable housing developers before putting the property up for sale, and would require the owners of deed-restricted rental properties to provide both a "right of first offer" and "a right of first refusal" to qualified nonprofit developers of subsidized housing. CP&DR Legal Coverage: Fresno County Must Throw Out Friant Ranch Approvals After almost 10 years of litigation, an appellate court has ordered Fresno County to set aside its approvals of the 942-acre Friant Ranch project and prepare a revised environmental impact report providing more detail about the potential air quality impacts of the project. The Fifth District Court of Appeal’s ruling is a followup to the California Supreme Court’s ruling in the same case in 2018. In that ruling, the Supreme Court said the EIR in the Friant Ranch case didn’t tightly link the project’s air quality effects to actual human health consequences. Quick Hits & Updates Santa Clara County, which is home to a disproportionate number of California's 400,000 to 800,000 migrant farmworkers, will relax zoning laws and streamline the permitting progress for homes intended for agricultural workers. The county will reduce costs from $14,000 to a special permit costing between $500 and $6,000, depending on whether the project is for short-term of long-term housing. Fortress Investment Group is postponing plans for Desert Xpress, its high speed rail project that would connect Las Vegas and Southern California. Investors failed to sell $2.4 billion in debt that was to be financed through agencies in California and Nevada, postponed until market liquidity improves. California has given Fortress until Dec. 1 to sell the bonds. San Diego voters approved Measure E, a proposition that allows taller buildings in the Midway District by striking the area from the city's coastal zone, but the victory introduces the possibility of a legal battle that could invalidate the measure altogether. Nonprofit group Save Our Access filed a California Environmental Quality Act challenge before Measure A passed; a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the Midway District for the foreseeable future. As stores struggle, Palo Alto prepares to let offices fill retail spaces--but city council is split over whether proposed zone changes would help or hurt retailers amid the pandemic. The proposal would modify the city's definitions of "retail" uses to encompass medical offices, educational uses, banks, law firms, accounting firms and real estate agents, among other types of offices. It also calls for imposing size limitations to make sure offices don't occupy too much space in commercial corridors. The Trump administration announced it is removing gray wolves from U.S. Endangered Species Act protections--leaving California with reduced ability to track the species as its population grows, and prevents the state from criminally charging people who kill wolves. Since wolves returned to California, there have been at least 20 confirmed or probable cases of wolves attacking livestock. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's office  launched a $100,000 design challenge that invites architects to submit design models for appealing low-rise, multi-family housing in Los Angeles. The challenge is supported by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the James Irvine Foundation, and Citi, and calls for a focus on sustainability and confronting racial injustice. The competition is informed by a research project that solicits community feedback that will then be used by entrants to shape their designs. The BART Board of Directors selected a development team to build a long-awaited housing project that will add 780 units of housing to land adjacent to the El Cerrito BART Station. The project would be about 49 percent below market rate, with 37 percent of the units affordable to families of four making less than $104,000 a year. The plan will have to deal with the realities of commuter parking, which will inevitably decrease, but board members have expressed optimism for public support due to nearby street parking and an existing alternative parking lot.

After almost 10 years of litigation, an appellate court has ordered Fresno County to set aside its approvals of the 942-acre Friant Ranch project and prepare a revised environmental impact report providing more detail about the potential air quality impacts of the project.

Click link to download pdf: CP&DR Vol. 35 No. 11 November 2020

San Jose Envisions Intensive Residential & Commercial Development Downtown Downtown San Jose is poised for a dramatic uptick in development and activity from a transit-rich neighborhood that goes beyond Google's proposed Downtown West project near the Diridion train station and SAP Center. City officials released a development plan--to be phased in over 12 years--that would add 13,000 residential units, up to 13.7 million square feet of office space, 1 million active use and retail square footage, and up to 300 hotel rooms. The amount of office space could accommodate 55,000 workers. The development vision for the Diridion Station area calls for a diverse range of building heights and a push for much greater densities. Buildings could be as high as 290 feet tall, while other sections would have buildings no taller than 65 feet or 90 feet. The city report recommends a goal of 25 percent of all housing to be affordable once the western downtown area is completely built out--well above the city's generic goal of 15 percent affordable housing. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Klamath River Dam Removals Set to Proceed  A new agreement between Berkshire Hathaway's Pacific Corp, Oregon, California, and the Yurok and Karuk tribes has revived plans to remove Klamath River Dam in 2023. The project would reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border and restore the salmon population that once flourished and sustained native tribes. In July, U.S. regulators stalled plans, concerned that the nonprofit entity formed to oversee the project wasn't equipped to handle budget shortfalls or accidents. The new plan adds Oregon and California as equal partners and adds a buffer of $45 million to the project's budget. The agreement retains the liability protections for PacifiCorp's customers that were established in 2016's Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, and allows PacifiCorp and Berkshire Hathaway to walk away from the aging dams without installing expensive fish ladders to modernize and bring the structures into compliance with current regulations. Audit Finds Inefficiencies among State Housing Agencies  In a newly released report, state auditors eviscerated California's housing agencies' approach to planning and financing affordable housing. The report points to cumbersome and at times misaligned requirements between the 4 agencies: Housing and Community Development (HCD), the Housing Finance Agency, the Debt Limit Committee, and the Tax Committee. Auditors called for eliminating one agency altogether by merging the Debit Limit and Tax Committees, citing overlapping and redundant review processes. At the same time, HCD lacks adequate enforcement authority to ensure that jurisdictions comply with state law when they review affordable housing projects. The lack of a comprehensive plan allowed one agency to mismanage and ultimately lose $2.7 billion in bond resources. Since developers routinely cobble together resources from multiple funding streams across agencies, the misaligned requirements can slow development and increase project costs. The report is categorical: "The State needs a timely enforcement mechanism--such as an appeals process developers can use--for situations when local jurisdictions fail to approve eligible affordable housing projects. Without substantial changes to address these issues, the State will continue to face a patchwork of local housing efforts that limit Californians' access to affordable homes.” Los Angeles Planning Commission Runs Afoul of Housing Accountability Act  District Square, a 577-unit residential project planned in South L.A., must be allowed to go forward and was denied "in bad faith," according to Superior Court Judge James Chalfant. The South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission turned down a developer's application last year, saying it lacked affordable housing and would spur gentrification. Lawyers for the project's developer said in their lawsuit that city planning rules do not require any affordable housing on the District Square site, which is planned on an empty lot next to a light rail station.The commission's lawyer stated publicly that without a more concrete rationale, the decision was in violation of the Housing Accountability Act. The judge also criticized the Department of City Planning, saying staffers failed to complete a determination letter on the commission's decision within the legal deadline. CP&DR Commentary: Calculating California's Housing Need  A report recently released by the Embaracadero Institute contends that California's housing need has been dramatically overstated, giving possible ammunition for slow-growth advocates. Bill Fulton unpacks Embaracadero's methodology, saying it might be correct -- but probably isn't -- and that the state needs both market-rate and affordable units. Josh Stephens throws up his hands, arguing that a precise calculation is beside the point. A housing crisis is a housing crisis, and California needs a lot of units no matter how you run the numbers. Quick Hits & Updates  A review by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that opened up over one million acres of California land to oil and gas drilling is being challenged in a lawsuit. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Governor Gavin Newsom, among others, filed the suit in which they said the review underestimates the percent of new wells that would be drilled using fracking, ignores the best available science in evaluating the impacts, and doesn't mitigate the impacts of oil and gas. Conservation groups filed a notice of intent to sue over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to lift protections for gray wolves. The notice argues that the basis for the decision is unscientific and lacks sound legal theory. It cited a peer review commissioned by the government that was at odds with the delisting proposal. While the gray wolf population has grown substantially, their current roaming range is a small fraction of the wolves' historical habitat. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission appears likely to back off from a telecommute mandate that would have encouraged Bay Area employers to make 60 percent of their workforce remote on any given workday. The MTC will consider a revision to the mandate that would instead require companies to shift their commuters from cars to other modes, setting a cap on a company's workers traveling to the office in a car at 40 percent by 2035. The  Riverside City Council took a first step toward bringing a zero-emission streetcar to Riverside's Innovation District. The proposal seeks to secure the funding of a feasibility study by November 2020 to analyze possible alignments, estimate ridership projections and begin community engagement. As part of the proposal, TIGm, the manufacturer would commit to moving their headquarters to Riverside. A wildlife crossing that will span 10 years of the 101 Freeway at Liberty Canyon is set to break ground next year. Experts who study big cats and other endangered fauna in Southern California have sounded the alarm for years that busy freeways are devastating for wild animal populations. In the case of mountain lions and pumas, not only do many die when they try to cross the freeway, inbreeding is a problem wildlife crossings may resolve. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Using funding from California's Project Homekey program, Los Angeles City Council has voted to convert a series of largely vacant hotels into housing. The properties will provide shelter for up to 536 unhoused persons when operational. Separately, the City's Housing Authority is acquiring five additional buildings to create 214 interim housing units, while Los Angeles County will purchase nine hotels to housing more than 600 people. Brightline has revealed more details about its planned high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and Vegas. Plans on a newly launched website show work on the rail line is expected to begin this year and culminate in 2024, but the project schedule is reliant upon Brightline selling $3.2 billion in bonds toward the $8 billion project by Dec. 1. Otherwise, California will put the funds back into the state's affordable housing fund. A state audit of the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) indicates that a lead contamination cleanup surrounding Exide, a former lead battery recycling facility in Vernon , is behind schedule, over budget by millions, and woefully insufficient. The audit estimates approximately 100,000 people live in the area surrounding the facility and are thus at risk of lead exposure. DTSC's data indicate that a significant majority of properties had dangerous levels of lead contamination. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have released the draft environmental report for a proposed North Hollywood-to-Pasadena rapid bus line. The $267 million, 18-mile project is open for a public review period through early December. If all goes according to plan, the line will be in operation by 2024, connecting the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. The Public Policy Institute of California has come out with recommendations for partnerships between Southern California cities and San Joaquin Valley farms that it says could help alleviate groundwater overdraft in the valley while building drought resilience in Southern California. PPIC explores ways to ease the San Joaquin Valley's transition to groundwater sustainability, while shoring up Southern California's ability to withstand droughts. San Diego will ease nearly a dozen taxi regulations to help the industry survive both heightened competition from rideshare services and the falling demand since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The City Council lowered requirements for experience for cab drivers, eased parking rules, and allowed for the use of older vehicles, among other issues.

Monterey County can’t pay for public amenities and administrative costs associated with the redevelopment of Ford Ord from leftover redevelopment funds, an appellate court has ruled. Meanwhile, the market-rate housing portion of the project has moved forward, while the county has permitted a delay in the affordable housing portion.

When I was a kid, every McDonald’s sign included a, right below the Golden Arches, a tagline that read “...Billion Served,” preceded by a number that ticked inexorably upward. Presumably, someone at the home office in Illinois kept track of every hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, McDLT, and Royale with Cheese sold around the world and periodically told the franchises to advance the number.

There’s been a lot of debate in recent months over a report from the tiny, Palo Alto-based Embarcadero Institute suggesting that California’s housing need isn’t as great as the state claims it is.

State Casts Shade on Controversial San Diego County Development  Attorney General Xavier Becerra is urging the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to deny, at least temporarily, approval of a large South County development because of concerns about impacts to wildlife. In a letter to the board, Beccera points out that the Otay Ranch project is just one of many large new developments within the same "very high fire hazard severity zone." In June, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve Village 14, a 1,226-home and development in Otay Ranch. The current project, known as Village 13, would add 1,938 residential units, 40,000 square feet of commercial space, a 200-room resort, parks and a fire station to the vicinity. Beccera questioned the county's reasoning for not creating a robust evacuation plan, but stops short of making demands or require a particular course of action. "We appreciate your consideration of our comments and respectfully request that you refrain from certifying the FEIR (final environmental impact report) and approving the project until the FEIR is revised accordingly," Becerra wrote. Sweeping Changes to Bus Service Coming to Los Angeles County  The NextGen plan to restructure Los Angeles' Metro bus system was approved by the Metro Board of Directors on a 10 to 1 vote. The plan, which has been in the works for nearly three years, will increase frequency of buses and restructure bus routes to put more buses in areas with the greatest demand. Metro will make changes to service over its next three planned service changes in Dec. 2020, June 2021, and Dec. 2021. When the plan is fully implemented, the number of Los Angeles County residents who could walk to bus lines running every five to 10 minutes is projected to more than double to almost 2.2 million. To fully implement Next Gen, Metro will need to increase service back to pre-pandemic levels. Metro staff are due to deliver a plan to the Board later this year on how the agency plans to increase service while dealing with funding issues related to the pandemic. Bay Area Considers Housing Options for 4 Million More Residents San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) investigated what it would take to house the estimated 4 million people who will move to San Francisco by 2070. The resulting report, Model Places, used land use data to assign every part of the nine-county Bay Area to one of 14 "place types" based on urban patterns that occur throughout the region--from urban spaces and residential suburbs to industrial areas and dense downtowns. To keep pace, and make the region more affordable, the Bay Area will need almost 2.2 million housing units by 2070. Among the report's key findings: roughly 84 percent of the land in the nine-county region is in rural and open space or agriculture. Twenty-six percent of that land is already protected as parks or habitat. About 75 percent of the urbanized land lies in primarily single-family residential neighborhoods, representing 69 percent of the region's total housing stock. Additionally, the kinds of dense, mixed-use areas that support walking and high-quality transit make up only 1 percent of the urbanized area but are home to 5 percent of residents and 29 percent of jobs. Attempts to overturn the ban have failed over the years, but a campaign that started last year and picked up speed with calls for ending systemic discrimination prompted a compromise: opening the park to a limited number of non-residents for a year before putting the ban to a public vote in 2022. CP&DR Coverage: Planners Confront Wildfire Danger  California’s wildland-urban interface (WUI) — liminal zones where homes and streets give way to forests and chaparral — has expanded, largely in the forms of suburbs on the urban fringe. Research firm Corelogic estimates that, of the 10 most fire-prone metro areas in the country, seven are in California, led by the Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego metro areas. All told, an estimated 11 million people live in the WUI statewide. Nearly 2 million homes worth hundreds of billions of dollars are at “elevated risk” statewide. Sprawl is thus, simultaneously, the cause and victim of climate change. And those numbers are growing. Since 1993, roughly half of California’s new homes have been built in the WUI. The combination of development patterns and increased incidence of fires means that an average of 5,000 homes are lost to fires each year in California, a tenfold increase from that of the second half of the 20th century. Planners are waiting to see whether this year’s disasters prompt soul-searching. Quick Hits & Updates  An alliance of trade groups and the high desert city of Hesperia are suing to block protections granted to western Joshua trees by state authorities. The lawsuit is not challenging the merits of whether Joshua trees should be protected. Rather, it argues that the original petition to protect the species did not meet minimum requirements of the California Endangered Species Act. The California Construction and Industrial Materials Association is the lead plaintiff.  The Better Market Street project, which envisions turning San Francisco's iconic street into a car-free thoroughfare, will still be implemented but likely in a scaled-back version. Under a new proposal, the city will keep the current curb, and bicyclists will share a lane with vehicles rather than ride on a protected sidewalk lane. The proposed changes will save the city $63 million, but it will still cost nearly $130 million. The Los Angeles Metro Board of Directors  approved a motion to delay its 605 Freeway Corridor Improvement Project, and to study alternatives that would preserve more homes. In August, Metro announced that the project would impact more than 1,200 properties - including more than 200 homes in the city of Downey. The Port of San Diego released its Port Master Plan Update (PMPU) and is soliciting public comments until mid-November. Specifically, the plan update addresses allowable land use and activities by providing a mix of goals, policies and standards. The next step is a public board workshop to present feedback and to obtain direction on the revised update. Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT) received the National Parking Association's 2020 Innovative Organisation of the Year award for innovation in its approach to parking in the city. LADoT's Community Assistance Parking Program (CAPP) allows individuals to pay off parking citations with community service or a commitment to supportive services like job training. Since 2017, 3,600 citations have been resolved via CAPP. Major changes to a proposed light rail line between Van Nuys and northern San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles may be in the works. The final environmental impact report indicates that LA Metro is now considering building the East San Fernando Valley line in two phases due to increasing construction costs expected to total up to $2.2 billion, versus the $1.6 billion identified through local and state sources. Conservation groups sued the City of Santee for approving Fanita Ranch, a 2,600-acre housing development that would put 3,000 homes in an area designated as a "very high fire hazard severity zone," by CalFire. In addition to the fire danger, the plaintiffs cite concerns about the projects impacts on sensitive species and wildlife connectivity; the site is designated critical habitat for multiple "threatened and rare species.” A coalition of government agencies and environmental groups has completed an $18 million deal to purchase Tilton Ranch, an 1861-acre property in South Coyote Valley near Morgan Hill. The region has been a flashpoint for battles between developers and open space advocates dating back to the 1980s, but now the property will be preserved for wildlife habitat, hiking, horse riding, and mountain biking. California emitted 425 million metric tones of carbon dioxide in 2018, about 1 million more than 2017, an Air Resources Board inventory found. The uptick in 2018 was mostly due to a decrease in the use of hydroelectric power due to dryer conditions in the winter of 2017-18, said a board spokesman, who said that was partially compensated by increases in solar generation and other green measures. California house prices hit their fourth consecutive record high after a 17.6 percent year-over-year gain. The median sales price for an existing single-family house in California was $712,430 in September versus $605,680 a year earlier. Realtor groups say historically low mortgage rates and the pandemic's push to own larger living spaces are fueling the rise in home prices. The Oakland City Council unanimously approved a controversial policy that prohibits homeless people from encamping within 50 feet of playgrounds, parks, sports fields, places of worship, schools, houses, or businesses. Beginning in January, if encampments are shut down, people will be offered a temporary shelter bed and 72 hours notice before an encampment is removed. The Walnut Creek City Council approved "Rethinking Mobility," a transportation strategy plan aimed at increasing the use of BART, ride sharing apps, dockless scooters, bicycles, and the city's bus network. Among the plan's 13 goals are working with businesses to offer special discounts for transit riders, adding dedicated bus lanes, adding more amenities for cyclists, and reducing the number of parking spaces required for new housing developments.