The battle over implementing SB 35 is playing out most ferociously in Silicon Valley – and in two new court rulings over the past month, both written by the same judge, developers have won the latest round. Both cases revolve around the question of how cities must apply objective design standards in an SB 35 case – and the rulings suggest that cities apply objective design and planning standards in a very clear way in order to stay out of legal trouble.

Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested this week that certain restrictions will lift soon, possibly "in a matter of days." Obviously this will be a long process. But Californians can now poke their heads out the front door and assess the damage. It won’t be visible, like a Winnebago that’s been deposited on your front lawn by a tornado, and the storm won’t clear at once. We’ll probably still be carrying mental umbrellas down the sidewalk for a long while, dipping past each other reflexively to maintain distance. That’ll be good for the obliques. The impact on cities is less certain – though strong opinions abound. Pretty much everyone has become an urban planner since the outbreak began. You think of public space and contact with your neighbors differently when you think your neighbors might kill you, I suppose. We’ve all heard all the arguments : contagion thrives on density; the suburbs are healthier; public transit is dirty. We’ve also heard that density does not equal crowding; unhoused people are especially vulnerable; walking beats driving. People who don’t even know the word “density” are wondering if our cities are too dense. Some people who absolutely know the word density are exploiting the situation to add new moral heft to the idea of some suburban utopia that has never happened and never will happen. (James Brasuell at Planetizen did a heroic job compiling pieces on the density debates—and his catalog is probably just a faction of what’s out there.) This crisis is a failure of many things. It is a failure of public health policy. It is a failure of information dissemination. It’s arguably a failure of foreign policy. It’s definitely a failure of procurement. It is a failure of leadership at the highest levels. But it is not a failure of urban planning. And don’t let anyone tell you differently. Should planners be mindful of public health? Of course. But cities should not be expected to fix, or prevent, a pandemic any more than doctors should be expected to fix traffic on Highway 101 or the poverty rate in Watts. To prepare for the next pandemic we can stock up on ventilators and masks. We can invest in virology research . We can draft pandemic action plans and quarantine guidelines.  We can shelter at home sooner. We can choose not disband the federal Pandemic Response Team. We can treat viruses the way we treat geopolitics: we can unleash the medical-industrial complex and maintain an arsenal and we can make battle plans. And the “American way of life” can go on, hopefully with a little more wisdom and a little more compassion. If we take proper precautions—at every level of government and in every government—we won’t need to end public life as we know it, and we won’t need to colonize east Riverside and north Fresno with single-family homes. If we don’t take these precautions, all the arguments about density will be moot anyway. What that means is that, while world’s armchair planners and armchair epidemiologists carry on with their debates, actual planners should remain faithful to their missions. We don’t need to “ rethink ” cities because of the virus. We’ve been rethinking cities for a long time. As USC’s famously acerbic urban planning professor Lisa Schweitzer notes, “The issue is that density and its downsides require urban innovation, and in truth people innovate around density’s downsides all the time.” In California, planners have spent the past two decades trying to reintroduce density to cities. The results: SB 375 , vehicle miles travelled metrics , hundreds of billions of dollars for transit, more ambitious housing targets, and much more. These efforts are just beginning to bear fruit. We know how many housing units we still need, give or take a half-million. And we know about the ambiguities of density. Expertise is one thing. Public relations is another. As UCLA Professor David Shulman suggested when I interviewed him about the impending housing crisis: “If this gets seared into people’s consciousness, it could reduce density. Opponents will have new arguments against — valid or not, they’ll have an argument.” The density skeptics will remind us of this virus as often as possible. In response, planners are going to have to take a cue from the state’s medical community: they’re going to have to work like crazy not only to administer treatment but also to get the word out. Many planners are low-key sorts, happy to focus on details and the often-quiet work of policymaking. In the post-covid19 world, low-key isn’t going to cut it. COVID is a crisis, but it’s also a call to arms. Planners will have to explain, more forcefully and proactively than ever, why density is good. They will have to explain, in consultation with the actual epidemiologists, why concerns about contagion are reasonable but why they should not be conflated with density nor should they overwhelm the abundant, multifaceted, benefits of density – benefits that range from economic to social to aesthetic to, yes, physiological. Planners must not merely defend their field and their principles, as they so often do. They must champion them. They must present enthusiastic visions to regain what we had two months ago and to strive for more henceforth. I know this will require a monumental effort, especially when planning departments may be under-funded and under-staffed . But it will be worth it. When we get out of this, every day is going to feel like a parade. Planners can lead it. They should march right past the naysayers, megaphones in one hand, and invisible umbrellas in the other.

Court Rules in Favor of Los Altos Development, Bolsters SB 35 In what may well be a harbinger of how courts interpret Senate Bill 35, a Santa Clara Superior Court found Los Altos violated the law when the city denied a 15-unit development proposal. The developer had sought expedited approval under SB 35. Besides the ruling itself, the decision was striking in that the lead judge in the case found that Los Altos acted in bad faith under the Housing Accountability Act by blocking the project without merit in a way that goes beyond making a "benign error." The city initially claimed the project did not qualify because it didn't have enough affordable housing. When that claim failed scrutiny, city officials took issue with the number and accessibility of parking spaces. The decision isn't binding precedent, but pro-housing advocates hope judges, developers and city officials - who are still figuring out how to interpret the relatively new Senate Bill 35 - will look to the Los Altos ruling for guidance on how the law can be used in conjunction with other state housing laws. The suit was brought by pro-housing group California Renters Legal Advocacy & Education Fund. (See prior CP&DR commentary on SB 35.) Federal Government Narrows Protections on Bodies of Water The Trump Administration has published a revised rule defining which water bodies are subject to federal jurisdiction under the “Waters of the United States” regulations. The rule eliminates protections for many ephemeral bodies of water and indicates that wetlands, an important concern of environmental lists, must touch another navigable body of water to be considered under federal jurisdiction. The Navigable Waters Protection Rule, a replacement for the Obama Administration's waters of the United States rule, was published in the Federal Register on April 21. The Southern Environmental Law Center plans to file suit against the rule, which "leaves any waterways vulnerable to pollution, fill, and destruction," said a spokesperson for the center. The revision was welcomed by the construction industry, which had complained the 2015 rule was too broad and could restrict projects. The new navigable waters rule lists four categories of waters that would be subject to federal jurisdiction: territorial seas and waters used in interstate or foreign commerce; certain tributaries; lakes and ponds; and wetlands that abut any of the other three types of waters. Wetlands must touch another navigable body of water to be considered under federal jurisdiction under the rule. In some cases, wetlands separated from waters by a constructed feature, such as a levee, might also be judged a federal responsibility. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) California Cities Fare Poorly in National Air Pollution Ranking Newly released nationwide rankings by the American Lung Association of cleanest U.S. cities had only one California city, Salinas, on its list of best cities for ozone levels, year round particle pollution. But even Salinas didn't make the top 25 for cleanest year-round particle pollution. California wasn't alone--the entire West Coast fared poorly. Out of hundreds of cities, the cleanest cities were clustered along the East coast and in mideast regions, becoming increasingly less dense west of Colorado. Only four western cities made the cleanest cities list--two of which are in Alaska. Meanwhile, West Coast cities dominated lists for worst ozone, and worst year-round particle pollution. Los Angles-Long Beach, Visalia, Bakersfield, Sacramento-Roseville, and San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad were top five for worst in ozone pollution levels. Bakersfield, Fresno-Madera-Hanford, Visalia, Los Angeles-Long Beach, and San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA were top 5 by year-round particle pollution, but fared slightly better in short-term particle pollution levels. CP&DR Coverage: Hearings Go Online Under Loosened Brown Act  Planning departments statewide have shifted their meetings and official hearings, including city council and planning commission meetings, online in order to comply with stay-at-home orders while planners carry on with business during the COVID crisis. While many departments had already broadcast public meetings via webcast and accepted public comment remotely, the Brown Act had required that official meetings take place in-person and be open to the public. Revised rules allow online meetings to proceed so long as the public has sufficient advance notification, requiring public agencies to "use sound discretion and reasonable efforts to adhere as closely as reasonable possible to the provisions of the Bagley-Keene Act and the Brown Act...in order to maximize transparancy and provide the public access to their meetings." Quick Hits & Updates  The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that San Joaquin Valley's groundwater sustainability plans are too optimistic about the availability of new supplies. Few plans focus on demand, and those that do give few details on their approach. According to PPI's independent analysis, a realistic plan to end the region's groundwater overdraft will entail fallowing at least 500,000 acres of farmland. A consultant with California High Speed Rail is under investigation by the FBI following reports that its executives retaliated against employees for bringing forth negative information about the firm. California High-Speed Rail Authority disclosed the investigation at a meeting of its Board of Directors where it separately approved a plan to help fund the modernization of Los Angeles Union Station. San Francisco, Inglewood, and Los Angeles are the biggest award recipients of the latest round of Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP) grants, worth up to $4.9 billion after matching federal, state, and local funds. BART will get a $107 million infusion for new rail cars. Antelope Valley was awarded $6.5 million for electric buses, and Inglewood Transit will direct $95 million towards an APM system. HCD released the State of California Draft 2020-2024 Federal Consolidated Plan for public comment, which has been updated to include placeholder information for potential CARES Act funds. Due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, HUD has allowed the Department an extension on submitting the Consolidated Plan until June 30. The San Francisco Planning Commission voted in favor of initiating the rezoning of Balboa Reservoir, a 17.6-acre property the city has been trying to build on since 1980. Virginia-based investment firm Avalon Bay designed and submitted a plan that includes over 1,000 homes, half of which would be affordable housing, and 150 units reserved for City College of San Francisco staff. LA Metro’s Crenshaw Line likely won't be up and running until late 2021--a year later than the expected opening date—wrote Metro CEO Phil Washington in a letter to stakeholders. Though the letter cites the project's complexity as a reason for delays, documents indicate that by Metro's own accounting, only 1 percent of construction has been completed since October 2019. As public transit ridership plunges amid the coronavirus pandemic, two major transit projects in the San Diego region are on hold. San Diego MTS announced a hold on ElevateSD, a $24 billion rail and bus extension, and SANDAG has suspended plans to release a highly anticipated $100 billion blueprint for modernizing the region's transportation system. Climate change has doubled the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires, according to an analysis led by Stanford University. Temperatures rose about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit statewide while precipitation dropped 30 percent since 1980, changes scientists say they can confidently attribute to climate change. The study noted, however, that actions to mitigate climate change can have a substantial impact down the road. California has approved over $500 million in tax-exempt financing for a high-speed train to Las Vegas, clearing a path for investors to sell bonds for the private rail project if they succeed in securing a similar bond from Nevada. The $600 million allocation - which can be leveraged into as much as $3.2 billion in unrated tax-exempt bonds - is 15 percent of California's annual bond allotment. San Diego's Planning Commission is hoping to harness the tiny house movement to quickly expand the city's housing stock without having to rely on taxpayer-subsidized homes. If the City Council agrees with the Planning Commission and approves the new law this spring, it wouldn't take effect in coastal areas until the Coastal Commission also gives its assent. Judges across California have upheld Project Roomkey, an initiative that places homeless people in empty hotels and motels to protect them from unchecked spread through encampments. In a narrow ruling, a judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the City of Norwalk to comply, ruling that on balance, the interests of the county in implementing the order outweighed any harm the city could suffer. San Diego officials are seeking to streamline approvals for new housing developments under a San Diego International Airport flight path. The new rules are designed to give developers greater certainty about what kinds of projects are allowed under a flight path by creating a special overlay zone where limits on the size of projects would account for airport rules that would typically require a City Council vote to override. HCD released a summary of the requirements that AB 686 added to Housing Element Law that local governments and interested stakeholders can use to understand the changes. The memo provides a review of the added fair housing program requirement (which started January 1, 2019), the Assessment of Fair Housing, and the sites inventory analysis for all housing elements due on or after January 1, 2021.

CP&DR Vol. 33 No. 4 April 2018

CP&DR Vol. 35 No. 4 April 2020

I logged into the New York Times the other day, doing my best to dodge the Great Bleach-Injection Debate of 2020, and was shocked and delighted to happen upon an article about an exquisite Los Angeles neighborhood that I somehow had never heard of.  Called "Belvedere Heights," it includes a perfect little main street with an unbroken row of independent stores, mixed use, low-rise buildings, and rich architectural details. There are bay windows, streetlamps, and balconies—and fire escapes! Display windows snuggle up against the sidewalk, and each building has only a single storefront, each with its own distinctive facade. Judging by the design, its heyday must have been in the 1920s, give or take a decade. (There are no street trees, though. Curious.) It seemed like it would be a cool place for me to check out, next time I’m able to check out someplace other than Walgreens. Alas, the New York Times section I was reading wasn’t the national section or the real estate section. It was the arts section. Belvedere Heights isn’t near downtown Los Angeles. It isn’t antique, and most definitely is not mixed use. It’s at Melody Ranch studio, in the Santa Clarita Valley community of Newhall. It was built in the past few months. And it’s used for one thing: it’s a set for a television show.  Nobody lives here. "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" is a new supernatural noir crime drama on Showtime, following up a 2016 rendition set in Victorian London. Noir being our endemic genre, a vintage Los Angeles location was a must. Detectives and demons alike will have a field day in their version of 1938. In one block alone, they’ll have plenty of places for mischief to play out: "empty nightclub, a shuttered cinema, a vacant rooming house." The show features undead antagonists like a shape-shifting succubus, but its themes also cover real monsters, such as the development of the Los Angeles freeway system and the violence it inflicted on minority communities.  (If the story sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen a version of it in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". "Penny Dreadful" replaces toons with actual people.) The supernatural elements provide "a fun way, a really entertaining way to tell the story of the building of a freeway," said the show’s co-producer Michael Aguilar. Fair point. In a show about ghouls, vampires, and murders, its commentary on Los Angeles’s built environment is, perhaps, the element that should give us the biggest fright of all.  New York Times reporter Alexis Soloski notes that the establishments along "Penny Dreadful’s” street are "relics of a past that never quite existed." But that’s not true at all. Neighborhoods like it absolutely could have existed, most likely somewhere in what is now downtown Los Angeles’s Financial District, which is the poster child for the notorious federal urban renewal programs of the 1960s. Old photos (such as this and these ) are shocking: the neighborhood of Bunker Hill once included low-rise mixed use Victorian and post-Victorian buildings (including some that were probably dilapidated and probably home to not the savoriest of characters). Then came HUD-funded bulldozers , and up went the high-rises, concrete plazas, and parking lots. Or, as the show suggests, maybe it was just covered up by the 110 Freeway.  The material destruction was one thing. We can’t un-demolish the past. The regulatory carnage is another matter.  Take a look at the photos ( here and here ) of Belvedere Heights and consider everything that, with too few exceptions, state and local regulations forbid today (or, if not forbidden, are rendered prohibitively expensive, in part by regulations):  Storefronts hugging the sidewalk. Gotta have setbacks .  Sidewalks with curbs. Gotta have those parkways .  Seismic codes’ Public Enemy No. 1.  Second stories. What’s going on up there? A building should do only one thing!  Third stories. Hold my sherry. I think I’m going to faint... Bars (you can’t see them in the photo, but it’s noir, so you know they’re there). Liquor licenses are literally harder to get than marijuana licenses. Attached buildings. Gotta make space for parking — and curb cuts.  A two-lane, two-way street. Most commercial zoning correlates intensity of use with traffic capacity, ensuring that the busiest retail environments will be the least pedestrian-friendly. Timely infill development. Not with bureaucratic delay and CEQA suits.  Architectural details. California has notoriously high construction costs, due in part to some contracting regulations.  Low-cost housing. Development of new affordable housing costs up to $1 million per unit.  Narrow lots. Not illegal, but often financially infeasible, partly because regulations elevate the cost of development and, therefore, developments have to be large to pencil out. "Assembly" is the name of that game.  Independent businesses. When you add up all the regulations above, it’s pretty hard for mom and pop to hang a shingle anywhere. (Never mind. Shingles aren’t allowed either. Want a billboard ? That’s no problem.)  I have to give mad props, no pun intended, to "Penny Dreadful’s” art directors. They have, with paint and plywood, created an object lesson in what is wrong with modern-day urbanism.  Behold Belvedere Heights's small storefronts and shared walls, nesting comfortably side-by-side-by-side. Compare them to the mega mixed-users, with five stories of wood on top of massive concrete podiums and underground garages, that take up entire city blocks and look like beached cruise ships. They technically engage the sidewalk with ground-floor retail (usually a City Target or a Ross Dress-for-Less), but they also tend to be hideous and oppressive. There’s not a commercial strip in California that couldn’t accommodate this type of development if it was allowed to (maybe minus the bricks). The only chief constraint is parking, in terms of number of spaces and curb cuts. Well, we can figure that out too. Maybe it’s a shared parking scheme. Maybe it’s alleyways. Maybe it’s diagonal curbside parking. Maybe it’s no parking at all.  In the real Santa Clarita, the closest thing to a main street is the Home Depot parking lot. If I had to choose between living in Belvedere Heights and the outer ’burbs, I think I’d try my luck with the succubi. This is what fiction is for, of course. Beyond its escapist frights, "Penny Dreadful" is an allegory for race relations and sociopathy. It’s showing us what we ought not do. But it’s also showing us something we ought to do — something we ought to build. But, like the proverbial debonair vampire, the true horrors do not lie on the surface. It’s easy enough to see a high-rise or to speed down a freeway and think that things are OK. But the accretion of laws, regulations, and social conventions have made it all but impossible to revive our better angels. Belvedere Heights reminds us that, to create great places, we first have to envision them. Of course, many people, including planners and developers, have been trying valiantly to undo the damage of postwar 20th century urbanism. They’ve made progress. But, to use an unavoidable metaphor, there is no silver bullet that will erase, revise, and repeal all the bad regulations all at once. My emotional reaction to Belvedere Heights tells me that we have to keep at it.  Like most things in a noir drama, Belvedere Heights will end up dead, dismantled, and recycled for lumber and props until the next period piece comes along. If only we could figure out a way to banish more of our demons and bring this urban fantasy to life.

Covid-19 Crisis Set to Cost Cities $6.7 Billion over Two Years  Even if stay-at-home orders are lifted by June 1, California cities will lose at least $6.7 billion over the next two years according to an estimate compiled by the League of California Cities. That number is likely to be far worse. Gov. Gavin Newsom and public health officials have signaled that bans on large gatherings and travel will likely extend well into summer. Already, cities are reporting budget shortfalls, prompting layoffs, furloughs and cuts to basic services. Of the $5.8 billion that went to California in the last federal aid package, most went to counties. Only Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose saw any relief money, and even they aren't allowed to use money for anything other than coronavirus-related expenses. The League of California Cities asked Newsom and the state legislature last week to help cities cover budget shortfalls. Newsom plans to unveil a new budget proposal next month. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Ballot Measures for Local Funding Slumped in March  According to a recent analysis of the March 3 election, over half of local measures on the ballot didn't pass muster among local voters, who, collectively, turned out in record numbers for a spring primary election. Among the 293 measures were 150 school bond measures including 122 school bond measures seeking a total of $17.4 billion. There were 89 city, county, and special district fiscal measures, of which 45 were add-on sales tax measures and 27 parcel taxes, substantially more than ever before in a spring primary election. The number of measures increased year-over-year from 89 in June 2016 to 111 in June 2018. Greater numbers did not translate into greater success, however. Only 96 passed, a departure from the much higher passage rates in years prior. School bonds in particular fared poorly. Over half of the measures weren't even close to passage. Forty-five passed, authorizing a total of $6.636 in school construction bonds out of the total $17.4 billion requested. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Developer Sues Sacramento County over Climate Action Plan  In an unusual role reversal, a developer is filing suit against a county government for not being environmentally sensitive enough with a project. Tsakopoulos Investments is suing Sacramento County for approving Mather South without a climate action plan in the final EIR. In the suit, Tsakopoulos attorneys note that the county has never adopted climate change significance thresholds that could provide a point of reference in an EIR for a project like Mather South. As approved, Mather South would be an 848-acre project with up to 3,522 residential units, a 28-acre environmental education campus with 200 family units, a 21-acre research and development park and 21 acres of retail. As the developer for nearby Jackson Township, a 1,391-acre project that is currently undergoing its own EIR review, Tsakopoulos has an interest in ensuring Mather South is sharing environmental impact costs. Tsakopouls is asking for a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to keep Mather South from moving forward AND set aside its approvals and EIR. Housing Advocates Identify Shortfall of 1.3 Million Affordable Homes  The California Housing Partnership has released a report that shows the depth of housing need across California. The report describes a rapid increase in rents that in combination with a dramatic decline in state and federal funding has led to a shortage of 1.3 million affordable homes. Despite the 2017 Housing Package, state funding remains well below 2012 levels; at the federal level, tax reform brought about a 13 percent dip in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit housing production and preservation. Median rent in California has increased 40 percent since 2000 while median renter household income has only increased by 8 percent, and 79 percent of extremely low-income households are paying more than half of their income on housing costs compared to just 0.4 percent of above moderate-income households. Meanwhile, California spends nearly four times more on homeowners than renters. Quick Hits & Updates San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the appointment of Eric Shaw as Director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. He replaces Acting Deputy Director of Housing Dam Adams, who had served since July 2019. Mostly recently, Shaw served as an advisor to the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services where he coordinated community planning and engagement activities associated with recovery from the 2018 Camp Fire. Prior to his work at Cal OES, Shaw was the Director of the Office of Planning for Washington, D.C. Following Oakland's "Slow Streets" announcement, San Francisco's MTA has announced its own slow streets program. Phase 1 announced 12 candidate streets up for consideration for the program, which allows for local vehicle access and maintains usual right-of-way laws. Friends of the Los Angeles River co-founder Lewis MacAdams died of complications related to Parkinson's disease. As the group's first president, MacAdams successfully lobbied the federal government for $1.6 billion to restore the LA river. Friends of the Los Angeles River has grown to 40,000 supporters, and a 7-foot-high monument of MacAdams' likeness overlooks the river's edge in a park that bears his name. The Los Angeles Department of City Planning released the framework for a new program that would simplify the approval process for sit-down restaurants seeking to serve alcoholic beverages. The proposed Restaurant Beverage Program would shorten the time for city approvals from months to a matter of weeks. The program would allow qualifying restaurants to receive over-the-counter approvals and pay approximately $4,000 for a permit to serve alcohol—significantly less than the permit’s current cost of $13,000. These measures are in line with Los Angeles’s broader efforts to help local and family-owned businesses prepare for the economic recovery ahead. Despite coronavirus concerns and nearly empty trains, Caltrain has no plans to back away from ambitious plans to electrify and double the size of its fleet by 2022. A proposed half-cent sales tax continues to wind its way through the approval process. If passed, the measure would generate $100 million in cash per year, which Caltrain would use to expand service from 92 trains a day to 168 trains a day by 2022. An analysis of climate planning documents from 23 California cities details competing policy agendas as cities have predominantly focused on mitigation strategies rather than an integrated mitigation and adaptation plan. The Mineta Transportation Institute findings suggest promising steps that both municipal and state governments can take to support integrated actions at the local level. Following years of dispute and gridlock, industry leaders, environmentalists, and community leaders came together to develop a new "transition zones” to both promote development and ward off gentrification the San Diego neighborhood of Barrio Logan . The plan involves identifying four land uses for the five-block transition zone: "maritime commercial," "community commercial," "neighborhood commercial" and residential. Faster Bay Area is on hold indefinitely amid uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus. An affirmative vote, which would have been cast this coming November, would have levied a once-cent sales tax to generate $100 billion over 40 years. Faster Bay Area will have to go to the sidelines until a future election yet to be determined, the three groups behind the initiative said in a letter. The West Hollywood Planning Commission voted to eliminate on-site parking requirements for 100 percent affordable housing developments. The vote is in line with new state law AB 1763, a directive that requires only .5 spaces per unit if the building is within a half mile of a major transit stop. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has begun an eight year decommissioning process after a radioactive leak caused the plant to cease production eight years ago. Environmental hazards will remain, however, until a suitable location for the plant's radioactive nuclear waste becomes available.

The COVID-19 crisis has shuttered council chambers and hearing rooms across the state. But the show goes on — electronically.

State Recommends Imperiled Joshua Tree for Federal Protection California's iconic Joshua tree is a step closer to permanent protected status after securing a recommendation from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Last year, the federal government denied protected status under federal law, partly because state and local programs already provide the trees some protection. Conservation groups are pushing for more protection: the hardy trees, belonging to the yucca family, thrive in the Mojave Desert's arid conditions, but climate models consistently project rising temperatures and increasingly erratic precipitation patterns that would push Joshua Trees and many other native California species into higher elevations. And the department's recommendation raises an inviting possibility: as the first species under consideration primarily on the grounds of climate change forecasts, Joshua Trees could set a precedent for other species that will be driven to higher elevations to avoid rising temperatures. It would also throw up another permitting roadblock for development projects that would remove western Joshua trees. In Housing Case, Court Upholds State Power over Charter Cities  The California Supreme Court declined to hear Anderson v. City of San Jose , bolstering the state’s authority to use the Surplus Land Act to compel charter cities to prioritize affordable housing on their surplus land. The appeals court decision, which overturned a Santa Clara County Superior Court ruling, referenced recent case law and legislation illustrating the scope of California’s housing crisis as grounds to demonstrate that the state’s interest in providing affordable housing with surplus government property is more substantial than identifiable municipal interests, therefore clearing the bar set for statewide preemption. The decision may bring clarity to similar cases. In 2017, for example, Huntington Beach prevailed in a lawsuit with arguments that closely track those made in Anderson v. City of San Jose, in which the city claimed its right as a charter city to flout state-mandated goals. That clarity and the fact the Surplus Land Act was expanded for local agencies in the fall through AB 1486 could be a bellwether for more affordable housing in the future. (See related CP&DR coverage .) Detailed Report Enumerates Effect of Sea Level Rise on Bay Area Infrastructure  An alarming 700-page report on sea level rise commissioned by a consortium of state and Bay Area agencies warns that "the Bay Area is at a tipping point, poised between a growing body of information... and the beginnings of irreversible impacts" from rising sea levels. The report is based on a rise of 48 inches, a level supported by a previous study in which that level could arrive as early as 2060. The findings highlight specific aspects of the approaching threat to how the region functions. The access points to four major bridges would be affected; runways at San Francisco and Oakland airports would be largely under water; nearly 31,000 jobs planned for north San Jose would need to be relocated; and 78 miles of protected bicycle trails would be off-limits. "All these different aspects of the region are interconnected," said Dana Brechwald, who oversaw the study's preparation. "The solutions aren't going to be one size fits all." Quick Hits & Updates  After weeks of sparring over how many hotel rooms the city should lease and who should move into them, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city's board of supervisors have agreed to lease more than 8,000 hotel rooms to house the city's homeless and frontline workers. The emergency ordinance, which received unanimous approval, requires fulfillment by April 26. Officials worry San Francisco's progress from strict shelter-in-place policies will unravel if COVID-19 takes hold in the city's homeless population. Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, the Department of Housing and Community Development's Asset Management and Compliance Branch is providing guidance related to asset management and compliance functions for projects in HCD's portfolio. Landlords and property managers can find information regarding relief requests, reporting requirements, compliance monitoring and COVID-19 response best practices. The guidance will be in effect beginning April 16 and re-evaluated on a continual basis. HCD released an updated draft of Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process Guidelines. The draft incorporates new legislation from 2019 and technical clarifications to the initial document created under SB 35, which requires the availability of a simplified approval process for developments in localities that have not yet made sufficient progress towards their RHNA requirements. The public comment period ends May 18. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced the closure of 74 miles of city streets to nonessential car traffic. City officials hope to make it easier and safer for walkers, bikers, and runners to practice social distancing. Oakland has also opted to keep its nearly 6,000 acres of parks open. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will withdraw a proposed rule that would have protected sage-grouse populations in California and Nevada under the Endangered Species Act. The decision impacts roughly 3,000 birds and the birds' habitat, which 4.5 million acres of high-desert along the California-Nevada border. Redwood City is a step closer to ferry service after the Water Emergency Transportation Authority approved entering into a memorandum of understanding with the City and Port of Redwood City. The route is backed by the Bay Area Council as a means to decongest Highway 101, along with currently ongoing projects like building a carpool lane and electrifying Caltrain. Under a new measure being promoted by a Santa Ana coalition, apartment landlords would have to cap rent increases at 3 percent, applied retroactively since November 2017, and landlords would not be able to evict teachers or students during the school year to bring in another tenant or to sell the property. The law would establish a new rent control board to enforce the new measures. Pleasanton's proposed Costco development was hit by a second CEQA lawsuit from Pleasanton Citizens for Responsible Growth. This follows a previous lawsuit that set the project back for over a year of additional environmental analysis and public review as part of a settlement over a lawsuit in 2018. Businesses along the Port of San Diego tidelands are requesting the agency waive rents for 90-days--or face financial ruin, they say. The roughly 800 tenants are largely in the hospitality and retail sectors, including restaurants, hotels, harbor tours, sportfishing, and yacht clubs/marinas. The port is anticipating $30 million in lost revenue -- many rents are sales-based -- and faces the prospect of much more if it waives minimum rent requirements.

As sales and hotel bed tax revenues crater throughout California because of the COVID-19 shutdown, local governments and their planning departments are facing an almost-unprecedented budget shortfalls . Already, cities and counties throughout the state are taking an axe to their budgets – laying off hundreds of employees and in some cases taking an axe to their current (2019-2020) budgets and next year's (2020-2021) budgets as well.. And as the real estate development industry shuts down , the fees and charges on developers that keep planning departments going appear to be withering as well.

Volume 1, Episode 2 of the CP&DR podcast features Bill Fulton and Josh Stephens discussing the impending housing crash caused by the COVID19 economic shutdown, the fiscal pain that planning departments will feel as local revenues dry up, and a few court cases related to the California Environmental Quality Act.  Click here for access on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.  Related Articles Housing Development Likely To Crash Because of COVID Planning Departments Feel COVID-19's Fiscal Pain Ban On New Mailbu Vineyards Upheld High CEQA Baseline Upheld Solvang Reconsidered

In a split decision, an appellate court in Los Angeles has ruled that using the 98 th percentile for per-day air pollution, rather than the average per day, was an acceptable method in creating the baseline for an oil refinery project under the California Environmental Quality Act,