| | State is about to raise the bar for Bay Area housing San Francisco Business Journal Few Californians took Gavin Newsom particularly seriously when he said during his 2018 run for governor that the state should plan to add 3.5 million homes over the next seven years. After all, California has never in its history reached that pace of construction for a single year — let alone done it seven years on the trot. It turns out he might have meant it. Firing a shot across the bows of California’s cities, counties and regions last week, his administration shocked Southern Californians by telling them they will be required to make plans for 1.3 million new homes in their midst over roughly the next decade. Our housing crisis took decades to build to its current proportions. Addressing it will probably take just as long. But embracing the scale of the challenge is a good place to start. Learn More | | | | A Message from Evelyn Stivers, Executive Director of HLC When your car has a mechanical failure, do you get it fixed or just keep trying to drive a car that doesn’t work - getting more and more agitated that it won’t operate properly, but not doing anything to address the problem? Unfortunately, this has been a common approach to land use planning. “This isn’t working, but let’s keep doing it anyway.” San Mateo’s deeply flawed 30- year-old height and density limits are an excellent example of this type of thinking. Let’s look back at some of the original claims. The original measure was developed in response to a perceived crisis – a proposal to build three mid-rise buildings at the west end of San Mateo’s downtown. The proposal could and should have been disposed of through regular city processes. But the proponents of the ballot measure chose to create the specter of unbridled growth and “profligate” high rises, leading to the imposition of city-wide height and density limits. In other words, the proponents proposed brain surgery with a baseball bat. Thirty years later, as this misguided policy is set to expire, height-limit supporters San Mateans for Responsive Government (SMRG) made an error in their petition-gathering efforts. The City Attorney warned the Council that the measure was legally deficient because it failed to fully describe to petition signers what the proponents sought to achieve. So, SMRG approached the Council to fix its problem, but they were not willing to compromise on either the content or the timing. What we know now from a City-issued press release is that the city is not going to fix the legally flawed measure for SMRG, and is going to let the measure move forward so that the voters can ultimately decide. This week, the City Council chose (rightly) not to “settle” with SMRG over its deeply flawed proposal to renew the height and density limits for another ten years, which was intended to undermine the City’s effort to update its 2040 General Plan before the City’s broad-based community outreach had even begun. Even with the defects in the measure itself, we think that was the right approach so we can start to focus on the real issues that matter –namely ensuring that the City meets its moral obligation (and likely its State-imposed obligations next year) to provide enough housing to get us out of the deficit and responsibly plan for the inevitable future growth. Let the conversations begin. | | | | | | Seniors facing eviction fear homelessness and isolation as California’s housing crisis rolls on Los Angeles Times The threat of displacement and loss of community and routine can take a mental and physical toll. Experts say that’s especially true for seniors, who are perhaps the most vulnerable to California’s rising rents and evictions of any age group, and the fastest growing in the state. Households with at least one person 62 or older made up 26% of no-fault evictions in Los Angeles city rent-controlled buildings between June 2014 and May 2019, according to the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department. But even when not facing eviction, seniors who depend on a fixed income have a harder time weathering rent increases, even the modest rises allowed under rent control. Read More | | | | The Bay Area's best and worst cities for housing density San Francisco Business Journal That some California cities are much better than others at encouraging new housing is no surprise, but a key difference is density: which ones encourage or — as is most often the case — reject it. “Localities have it well within their power to allow lots more housing,” said Salim Furth, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, who co-authored the report along with Olivia Gonzalez, a doctoral student. “There’s 'can' and there’s 'will,'” he added. The Bay Area produced one home for every 3.5 new jobs from 2008 to 2018. A balanced market requires one new home for every two jobs added. “Definitely affordability is for sure the No. 1 consequence,” researchers said. “It is really a simple supply and demand framework.” In recent years, politicians from city planning commissioners to Gov. Gavin Newsom have called for solutions to the state’s housing crisis, but effective fixes are already available to cities. Read More | | | | California’s struggle to contain the housing crisis San Francisco Chronicle Assemblyman David Chiu’s bill to restrict rent increases and evictions statewide did better than survive a major legislative bottleneck recently, winning a late-breaking blessing from Gov. Gavin Newsom that strengthened the bill and its prospects of passing in the two weeks before lawmakers adjourn for the year. It was joined by state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s Housing Crisis Act, the most significant remaining proposal to address the anemic housing construction at the root of the problem. While they are steps in the right direction, the bills are also a reminder that even the Legislature’s most ambitious efforts are striving to manage rather than reverse the damage. The only state that has a similar rent limit, Oregon, also eliminated single-family zoning in many areas to boost the housing supply. California is woefully short of proposals to do anything that dramatic to address the worst housing deficit in the continental United States. Legislation such as Chiu’s might help contain the crisis, but controlling the cost of rental housing will have little effect on cities that prevent it from being built. Read More | | | | | | The Cities Where Job Growth Is Outpacing New Homes CityLab California is permitting new housing at the slowest rate since the Great Recession according to a new report released by California’s Legislative Analyst’s office, using data from the Construction Industry Research Board. “The total number of residential housing units permitted in 2018 was roughly the same as the number permitted in 1994, when the country’s population was 20 percent less than it is today,” reads the report, which was released last month. For cities and states that are trying to combat the affordable housing crisis, and especially if they are scrambling to keep up with an influx of jobs—both true of California—this spells trouble. “What you’re seeing in these dense coastal places, the residential footprint is already pretty developed, and sprawling out with more single-family isn’t really an option,” he said. But in part because of strict zoning restrictions that limit where multi-unit housing can be built, the two- to four-unit properties that typically serve the “missing middle” are lacking, too. Based on the latest report, the state of California is at pace to permit only 100,000 homes in 2019—about five times slower than it needs to if it wants to meet Governor Gavin Newsom’s goal of producing 3.5 million homes by 2025. Read More | | | | Listen In: 1A Across America: How U.S. Cities Are Tackling The Affordable Housing Crisis | | | | | | | | | |
