In La Habra, the City Council delegated final approval of the housing element -- after negotiations with HCD -- to the city manager and didn't hold a final public hearing. An appellate court says that's fine.

But San Diego is a surprise, with significant population increase -- especially in the City of San Diego

Environmentalists, developers, business interests, and many others are jockeying for position -- but will the result be just more incremental change? 

Although an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is still possible, the reluctant city might finally have to adopt a housing element.

Mountain View approves 15-story project but Menlo Park and Beverly Hills resist.

Measure would reduce allowable new housing below the target required by the city's Housing Element.

The 682-unit project was declared exempt from CEQA and apparently met the city's objective design standards. The city council voted against it anyway.

A pair of measures passed in Sausalito and the more ambitious of two housing measures passed in Santa Cruz

This year's CEQA reform will put more pressure on cities and counties to bulletproof their housing element EIRs. But it also creates a much "cleaner" exemption for infill housing than was previously available.