Chris Elmendorf
@CSElmendorf
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The law prof at UC Davis, not the developer in San Diego. Dad. Denizen of San Francisco. Patron of Amtrak. Tweets are my own, not statements of UC. (he/him)
San Francisco
Joined July 2009
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
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Some striking asides in this
@nytimes
story about Houston's success combatting chronic homelessness:
- 75% of homeless persons given a free apartment for a year hang on & pay market rents
- Houston has *new* SROs (what other cities allow it?)
1/2
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On Jan. 1, 2025, most lots in San Francisco's residential neighborhoods will be opened up for 4-9 unit, 100% market-rate projects.
Applicants may design their project *however they want,* provided it conforms to *some* zoning district anywhere in city.
An explainer 🧵. 1/19.
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Is environmentalism the main obstacle to infill housing in California?
Over last 2 years, I've done significant pro bono work on CA housing bills & the sausage-making I've observed points to a very uncomfortable answer: Yes. 1/🧵.
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Pictured below is a S.F. & California housing policy failure unfolding in my neighborhood.
The corner lot, upzoned in 2009, was designated in city's housing element for up to 72 units of housing.
It's now being gut-renovated for 2.
1/🧵.
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A stunner: By huge majorities, both chambers of Washington leg. have voted to exempt *all* zoning-compliant housing in urban growth areas from mini-NEPA review.
There's no project-labor mandate, BMR housing mandate, or anything else to jack up cost of eligible projects.
1/5
By 49-0, the WA Senate just passed SB 5412 that exempts housing projects from SEPA review and requires "clear and objective standards" for design review.
Thank you Senator Salomon!
Wild to see legislators geeking out so heavily on housing policy with this wonky bill!
#Homes4WA
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A Christmas Eve surprise from Court of Appeal in UC Berkeley "students are pollution" CEQA case.
tl,dr: UC Berkeley & state housing + antidiscrimination policy got a lump of coal in their stockings.
CEQA is about to get much, much worse unless the Leg or the AG steps in. 1/25
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How unzoning via California's Density Bonus Law works:
Squat ugly 12-story, zoning-compliant bldg --> squat ugly 18-story bldg w/ 50% density bonus --> magnificent 50-story building...wait, how?
1/8
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This story ⤵️ has the best graphical explainer of Prop. 13 I've ever seen. Big props to Nami & John!
Why do San Francisco's Painted Ladies have property taxes ranging from $1,000 to $44,000?
My latest story on how the iconic houses explain Prop 13, California's most important (and complicated) housing law
@sfchronicle
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Terrific
@ezraklein
column this morning.
It's an indictment of blue-state Dems that Ezra's search for "ideas about how to build state capacity on the left" has come up empty. 1/4
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A big theme is that Houston has become less affordable, but it's still WAY more affordable than big cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast.
Hard to imagine a formerly homeless person hanging on at ~$3000/month in San Francisco (vs. $886/mo. in Houston) 2/2
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In new published opinion, CA Court of Appeal says it's fed up with CEQA, lays groundwork to pare back CEQA's application to housing projects. 1/10
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Big builders-remedy news out of Santa Monica:
@California_HCD
weighs in on proposed project, says that developer's filing of "preliminary application" while city is out of compliance with housing element law "vests" the project's eligibility for builder's remedy. 1/8
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The puzzle for me is not "Should YIMBYs try to build alliances w/ tenants?" but "Are tenant advocacy orgs actually representing the interests of tenants?"
@CSElmendorf
There's a good reason for 5 year look-back--so developers are not incentivized to displace existing tenants. Buy-out $ in SoCal is not at NYC level. There is so much commercial that could be re-zoned first. Better fight to wage, and with tenants as allies.
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California to developers: Build apartments near transit! Pay union wages! Reserve 20% of units for poor people! It's urgent!
Developers to California: uh, guys, we'd lose our shirts if we tried.
Read new
@TernerHousing
's report to see why.
1/3
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New Court of Appeal holding: "Supply & demand is real."
No, this is not an Onion headline.
It's a real case rejecting left-NIMBY argument that state housing law is unconstitutional unless narrowly tailored to promote BMR, not market-rate, housing.
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A 🧵 on how California enviros lost the plot on infill housing & got rolled by sprawl builders.
trigger warning: if you give money to mainstream green groups in CA, this thread may be hard to read.
1/25
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I figured Yimby freakout over this podcast episode was probably just decontextual exaggeration. But I listened and it’s not.
Don’t think I’ve ever heard more naive/wrong answers from a prominent mainstream Democrat to Qs about housing markets.
New L.A. Mayor
@KarenBassLA
has concerns about the construction of market-rate housing. (Her 2nd answer is part of a series of "true or false" questions. She says it's "false" that market-rate housing prevents gentrification in low-income neighborhoods.)
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Whoa, the NEPA provisions tucked into the new "Clean Electricity & Transmission Acceleration Act" are like a wish list for greenmailers.
There's lots of good in the bill (⤵️), but the NEPA stuff is stunning. Come take a look.
🧵. 1/14.
This week
@RepMikeLevin
and I introduced the Clean Electricity Transmission Acceleration Act (CETAA) to debottleneck clean energy deployment and fundamentally re-think US energy policy with 74 (!) original cosponsors. Here's why we're so excited about it. Thread:
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San Francisco--which bans apartment mergers & demolition of SROs in order to preserve small units--has just denied another downtown housing project b/c the units would be "too small."
Here's your friendly reminder that bad-faith denials trigger 5X fines under the HAA. /1
In just the latest example of opting for parking lots over housing, the San Francisco planning commission rejected a proposal for 57 apartments in SOMA. This comes as the state is investigating the city’s poor housing track record. Story by
@SFjkdineen
.
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Must read
@SFjkdineen
story on SF's "inclusionary housing" program for middle-income households.
It's yielding mass vacancy rather than housed middle-income families.
Why? B/c of panoply of death-by-good-intention allocation & pricing rules.
🧵/12.
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🥳New paper! "Do Housing Supply Skeptics Learn?"🎆
Yessir, they do!
And when they do, they become *much* more supportive of market-rate housing development.
1/🧵
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Sen. Warren's YIMBY rhetoric hits the spot, but her new bill speaks to political difficulty of achieving the dream within current Dem party coalition.
🧵/8.
To lower housing costs in Massachusetts and around the country, we’ve got to build more housing—it’s Econ 101. My bill will make sure we do exactly that:
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If you made "San Francisco affordable within a year" by fixing the for-sale price of all housing at (say) $100/sqft and the for-rent price at $500/bedroom/month, what rules would you establish to allocate the stock of privately owned & now-universally-affordable housing?
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'tis the weekend for housing-policy curiosities from my neighborhood:
I just discovered that a builder has pulled off a 4-unit, single-stair condo bldg on a standard (for S.F.) 25' x 100' lot!
(see screenshots for before-and-after pics)
1/5
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The court's reasoning is devastating ammunition for racist white homeowners who would leverage CEQA to keep poor people and minorities out of their neighborhoods.
/9
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A 🧵 on why (I think) AB 1633 is a game changer for CEQA and housing.
tl;dr: formerly discretionary "exemptions" are now mandatory, and the political economy of exemption-making is itself about to be remade.
1/17
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LA's draft housing element just dropped. It's an exemplar, a huge deal not only for LA but for cities across California.
LA is the first city to realistically assess development potential under current zoning, and the results are stunning. 1/18
City Planning and
@HCIDLA
have just released a draft plan titled “The Plan to House LA” that aims to accommodate nearly 500,000 housing units over the next eight years, with over 200,000 of those units reserved for lower-income residents.
Read more at
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@California_HCD
's review of San Francisco's draft 8-year housing plan has dropped.
tl;dr: It looks like America's second most expensive city is going to spend the next 8 years in de facto land-use receivership, courtesy of state law. 1/17
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🧵 It's been said for decades that SF's city charter creates a right to Discretionary Review of any permit.
I was curious, so I poked around. Turns out, "Charter DR" is a basically a fiction, invented by city attorneys in the 1970s.
1/
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Beverly Hills homeowners hoping for kitchen/bathroom remodel in their Christmas stocking got this lump of coal instead.
J. Kin has enjoined city from issuing any building permit *unless* project adds units or bedrooms--until city adopts a compliant housing element.
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Listening to
@JerusalemDemsas
talk with
@ezraklein
about the $1.7m toilet, at the $1.7m toilet.
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🧵New paper! "Folks Economics and the Persistence of Political Opposition to New Housing," w/
@ClaytonNall
&
@stan_okl
.
We find that nearly all renters & >50% of homeowners say they want future home prices & rents in their city to be lower...
1/17
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This is the most plausible ***and the most exciting*** "fix downtown SF" idea thus far, in both its small and its large variations.
small: house 10k-20k+ UC Berkeley students in office-to-dorm conversions
big: build the 10th UC, in downtown SF
Do it!
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🧵I'm gobsmacked. The City of L.A. just lost *another* CEQA infill exemption case in Court of Appeal, w/ court relying on infamous UC Berkeley "social noise == pollution" precedent.
1/9
🧵 New CA Court of Appeal decision is going to make it harder for cities to issue CEQA infill exemptions.
Fortunately, there's an easy fix--but will
@GavinNewsom
tell
@samassefa
(OPR) and
@WadeCrowfoot
(Nat Res. Agency) to do it?
1/17
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Whoa! New court decision holds (in effect) that state law requires L.A. to approve 60-unit apartment bldg on site zoned for 1 single-family home.
This decision threatens decades of municipal practice. How will Legislature respond? A 🧵. 1/25
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Hmm, let's think this one (⬇️) through. If you were standing in shoes of
@GavinNewsom
,
@AGRobBonta
&
@California_HCD
, why might you pick San Francisco for "first-ever Housing Policy & Practice review"? 1/x
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A 🧵 on what I'd like to see on the housing front from California & other blue-state policymakers in the New Year.
In two words: relentless pragmatism.
What would this mean in practice? Read on.
1/25
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Why is LA's transit agency cowering before NIMBYs rather than invoking the new
@Scott_Wiener
-authored CEQA exemption for transit improvements?
1/7
Environmental review is now holding up ***bus shelters*** by six months.
Literally can’t even build the smallest physical infrastructure quickly.
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The Assembly has concurred, unanimously. AB 1633 is headed to
@GavinNewsom
's desk!
This is a truly momentous achievement by
@PhilTing
. Here's why. 🧵.
1/25
An incredible and historic moment I’m honored to witness. AB 1633, which curtains bad faith project denials, passed the Senate and is almost to the Governor. Everyone please give an INCREDIBLY big thank you to our champions today Asm
@PhilTing
and Sen
@Scott_Wiener
. WOW!
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When S.F. progressives say "No" to new market-rate housing, this is the market-rate housing to which they're relegating their constituents.
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What do we find?
The people want price controls! And demand subsidies! And restrictions on Wall. St. investors!
/11
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If CA wants housing for the masses, it needs to drive impact fees, "inclusionary zoning" & parking minimums down to zero.
And even then we probably won't get it with this housing typology.
Not w/o a building code overhaul or revolution in bldg tech.
/end
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🧵What is "CEQA sprawl," and is there a way to stop it?
tl,dr: It's the transmogrification of an enviro review statute into a NIMBY stop-everything (even education!) statute.
One way to fix it is w/ private right of action against legally excessive CEQA review. 1/16
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.
@Scott_Wiener
for Secretary of
@HUDgov
!
I’ve supported my friend
@KamalaHarris
back to her first run for District Attorney, when I volunteered for her.
I proudly supported her when she ran for AG, Senator & President.
She’s a rock star & I support her with all my heart. I can’t wait to call her “President Harris.”
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Another day, another CEQA attack on urban densification & reduced car usage.
(This one says San Diego didn't adequately study "environmental" impacts of lowering parking minimums near transit.)
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Looks like Spokane, WA and Sacramento, CA are fast becoming the leading prohousing cities in blue states.
This is roughly what one would expect per either of two political science theories of the housing shortage.
1/4
Must pile on:
Spokane's new middle housing rules are the best I've ever seen (sorry Portland).
Simple and permissive.
For example: on a 5k sf lot, their lowest density zone will allow a 4-story building with FAR ~2 and no limit on unit count.
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SB 1123, signed into law yesterday, is a step toward allowing "Houston style" infill throughout California.
Unfortunately, due to vestigial CA-brain thinking, it's unlikely to unleash a Houston-style infill boom w/o further legislative tweaks.
🧵/17
We want to thank
@GavinNewsom
for signing 5 California YIMBY-backed bills—SB 937 (fee deferral), SB 450 (state duplex and lot split law cleanup), SB 1123 (state starter home law cleanup), SB 1211 (ADUs), and SB 312 (student housing)—into law and inviting us to the ceremony today!
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🧵This
@SFNext
podcast w/ SF supervisor Hillary Ronen is revelatory.
Through emotion, examples & a theory of change, she conveys how SF-style progressivism has utterly failed as a mode of city governance. (And also--I think--why it's failed.)
1/
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Would love to hear what state legislators are hearing when word gets around that a lucky few thousand Californians earning $200k/year got six-figure down payments from the state, risk free, no interest owed.
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Interesting story about Boston's effort to raise the cost of building & ensure that development "isn't profit-driven" under guise of "affirmatively furthering fair housing." ⤵️
This is a movement, not an aberration. Alas.
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🥳New papers! A cornucopia! (well, 3).🎆
#1
: "What State Housing Policies Do Voters Want? Evidence from a Platform-Choice Experiment" (w/
@ClaytonNall
&
@stan_okl
)
written for a
@JPIPE_journal
symposium on political economy of housing
🧵/21
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Policymakers seeking solutions for the outlandish court decision capping UC Berkeley enrollment ought to focus on the many ways in which it was quite ordinary.
It's the ordinary parts that reveal the bankruptcy of CEQA. 🧵 1/11
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Why UC dilly-dallied about the stay is beyond me, but it's hard to imagine a better set of facts on which to ask the CA supreme court to corral "CEQA sprawl" (here, the characterization of a speculative socioeconomic impact as an impact on the physical environment). 1/2
UC Berkeley must slash new enrollment by a third unless high court intervenes
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CA builder's remedy news:
@California_HCD
has found La Canada-Flintridge in violation of HAA for refusing to process a builder's remedy project application.
I think this is first official statement by a state agency that a city has violated HAA with respect to a BR project.
1/6
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In other news, today is "Ministerial Approval Day" in San Francisco.
50+ years of city pols having free-floating "Discretionary Review" authority to deny or reconfigure any housing project for any reason has come to an end.
Thanks,
@Scott_Wiener
!
1/4
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Supervisor
@myrnamelgar
says she voted no because the district rep didn't negotiate a deal between the developer and a locally powerful nonprofit, TODCO.
I'm sorry, failing to buy a nonprofit's support doesn't count as an "environmental impact" under CEQA. /3
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SF Mayor
@LondonBreed
is rightly furious about the Bd of Supes' thwarting of desperately needed housing.
It's time to play hardball. The Mayor's got a big bat. It's called a "housing element." Here's a thread on how to swing it. 1/n
Last night the Board of Supes rejected a project with 500 new homes to replace a parking lot.
It met the criteria for approval and it would have created 100+ new affordable homes.
If you're wondering how we got into our housing crisis, this is how.
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Important new opinion holds that California's Housing Element Law is not subservient to CEQA.
#BREAKING
: The San Diego Superior Court has ruled in our favor to force the City of Huntington Beach to come into compliance with California’s Housing Element Law.
No city is above the law—local governments up and down our state should take notice.
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CEQA should be construed for consistency with the state's policy to affirmatively further fair housing, rather than to invite statistical arguments about demographics and behavior.
Friends & judges: CEQA is an environmental protection statute, not a social control law! /17
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The similarities b/t this NEPA "immigrants are pollution" case (decided last August by a very Trumpy judge) and the tentative opinion in the CEQA "students are pollution" case (issued by an all-Democrat CA court) are pretty striking... 1/9
This is awful, and something similar is happening on the federal side RE: NEPA and immigration.
See Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform (MCIR) et al, vs. Department of Homeland Security et al.
People are pollution now.
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The authors find that 100 new market-rate homes in expensive urban core --> 25-29 newly available homes in bottom-quintile places.
It's as if each new market-rate homes comes with a "25% low-income" inclusionary requirement built in. 2/2
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Nice to have this Builder's Remedy project rendering in advance of tomorrow's SF planning commission meeting to adopt the housing element. Follow state law, or else!
My latest column: Scott Pluta’s proposal to build a few apartments in his Castro side-yard was rejected by San Francisco officials. Now he’s proposing a much taller building — and if the “builder’s remedy” goes into effect, the city might have to say yes.
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🧵I'm sometimes asked what prohousing policies I do not support. Here's one: ACA 10, the "Housing as a Human Right" constitutional amendment.
1/25
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E.g., using the court's statistical-associations logic, white homeowners could argue that CEQA requires affordable housing developers to analyze & mitigate putative "gun violence impacts" from any lower-income housing project in an affluent neighborhood. /10
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🧵This is bonkers. CA Coastal Commission is opposing a state Density Bonus Law project in downtown Santa Cruz not b/c of eroding bluffs or blocked views, but b/c project doesn't have enough BMR units to satisfy CCC's tastes.
1/4
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On basis of that study,
@sfplanning
says that w/ current permitting process, impacts fees, exactions, & construction costs, the *only* kind of project that's economically feasible is a 24+ story high-rise in city's highest-demand neighborhoods. /19
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The mastermind behind the SF supes' CEQA-laundered denial of a 500-home infill project at 469 Stevenson St. finally weighs in. And puts the city in an even deeper legal hole. 1/14
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Lots of folks experienced this tweet (⤵️) as a gibe. I did not mean to offend, or to contribute to the further sewerification of Twitter.
So let me explain my concerns. 🧵.
The puzzle for me is not "Should YIMBYs try to build alliances w/ tenants?" but "Are tenant advocacy orgs actually representing the interests of tenants?"
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🧵More CA Builder's Remedy news:
New "TA" letter from
@California_HCD
to Beverly Hills interprets HAA as eliminating cities' authority to apply zoning to 20% BMR projects if city's housing element lacks sufficient sites to accommodate housing target.
This is a big deal.
1/7
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🧵CA Court of Appeal has issued final opinion in notorious "students are pollution" Berkeley CEQA case.
The opinion fixes one of the two big problems w/ tentative opinion, but not the other. Legislation needed!
1/23
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Instead of a new, tall apartment building w/ as many as 72 units, we're getting a gussied up health-care office + 2 luxe condos, all built in the existing envelope.
Once these investments are made, the site's development potential will probably be lost for a generation.
/end
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California shoots self in foot, again:
@AsmChrisWard
's bill to revisit CA Building Code w/ goal of reducing construction costs by 30% has been gutted.
It now just prescribes study of whether to allow 3-10 unit buildings under residential code.
1/12
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I have long piece on CEQA reform in Sunday's
@sfchronicle
(it's online now).
My first draft tried to make an epistemic point about difficulty of knowing how big a problem CEQA is. It didn't make the final cut, so this 🧵 explains it. 1/15
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While the the rest of the world prizes bright 18 year olds seeking university degrees, a CA judge labels them pollutants and orders UC Berkeley to cap enrollment.
Judge freezes UC Berkeley’s student enrollment at 2020-21 levels
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You know change is afoot when a state legislative candidate passed over for YIMBY endorsement sends out mailers that look like this.
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Future generations may look back on today's decision in the UC Berkeley "social noise is pollution?!" case as the turning point between "Old CEQA" and "New CEQA."
🧵/13
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Amazing that the day after
@California_HCD
started investigating the CEQA-laundered denial of 500 new homes at 469 Stevenson St, the Supervisors who explained their votes to
@hknightsf
didn't even bother to dress them up in CEQA fig leaves. 1/
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New
@PPICNotes
poll finds that Californians favor "changing CEQA as a way to make housing more affordable" by a 20+ point margin.
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Waiting for the day that equity groups start acting like they actually care about equilibrium outcomes -- rents, pollution, energy prices -- rather than profit motives or the pounds of flesh extracted from a given project.
/end
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Here's a bizarre example of mission creep, courtesy of CA Coastal Commission.
A business in coastal zone that wants to convert off-street parking space to other uses must:
- provide free transit passes to employees
- adopt on-premises "VMT reduction" measures
1/2
Thanks to AB 2097, the Coastal Commission yesterday reversed course & will allow San Diego businesses to convert off-street parking to dining or bike parking w/o requiring replacement car parking. But . . . (1/2)
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Will this prove to be greatest NIMBY own-goal in history?
Redondo Beach *would* be in compliance w/state housing element law & thus allowed to deny this builder's remedy megaproject (⬇️), except a local NIMBY ballot measure apparently requires voter approval of HE.
1/2
Leo Pustilnikov told me his massive proposed 2,300-unit One Redondo megaproject will be the state's biggest affordable housing project at the moment.
Local officials hate it but an obscure provision of state law might force them to approve it anyway
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Builder's Remedy comes to Santa Barbara.
SFH ➡️ 25 studio apartments.
To my knowledge, this is first BR project that provides 100% moderate-income rather than 20% low-income units.
Student housing crisis, solved?
@housingdefense
@Yimby_Law
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This means that even if the city jerks around developer with years of CEQA studies--and in the meantime adopts a compliant housing element--the city cannot later deny the project on ground that city had a compliant HE *at the time of denial.* /2
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In 3 words: “zone the coast.”
Urban coastal areas should be zoned for high-density development (interspersed with small parks). Rural coastal areas should be zoned for nature.
Here's an op-ed I wrote on reforming the Coastal Act:
Reforming California's landmark coastal law can restore balance between housing and environment
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Do I have this right: money TODCO gets in ongoing project-based subsidies tracks market rent?
So business model is: spend $ blocking housing -> rents ↗️ -> collect $$ from feds -> spend fed $$ blocking housing -> rents ↗️↗️ -> collect $$$ from feds? 1/2
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Cal Supreme Court's decision not to intervene in Berkeley CEQA debacle should be a win for CEQA reformers, in two ways. One way's obvious, the other not. 1/15
Just an insane decision. And note that this lawsuit is being brought under the California Environmental Quality Act, though everyone, on all sides, knows the issues here aren't environmental.
So please, stop telling me how CEQA has already been fixed.
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This use of demographic statistical associations as the basis for a conclusion about CEQA impacts is, as best I can tell, unprecedented.
(The CEQA cases about noise impacts cited by the court involve noise from the activity for which the project sponsor sought a...
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The thing people fear from development is not displacement. Rather--by overwhelming margin--it's parking and traffic congestion.
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204
San Francisco "progressives" are coming around to view that policing is a good thing after all.
Better late than never.
1/2
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198
This 🧵 from a leading state assembly candidate is so San Francisco: propose a symbolic law that’s certain to be struck down as unconstitutional. Pretend it will actually solve problems. It’s the progressive analog of banning CRT.
1
15
199
New builder's remedy decision!
LA Sup Ct. has released tentative opinion in 600 Foothill v. La Cañada Flintridge. Oral argument is happening now.
Looks like a huge win for
@housingdefense
,
@AGRobBonta
and
@California_HCD
!
🧵/12.
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195
Rather, if city was out of compliance when developer filed the preliminary application, the game is up: the city's zoning code and general plan cannot be applied to deny the project or render affordable units "infeasible." /3
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4
192
Today's the deadline for Bay Area cities to adopt their housing element.
A 🧵 on what comes next.
1/16
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25
194
#1
funny-weird phone call of the year, just received:
"A developer just proposed a MASSIVE builder's remedy project on MY STREET. I'm calling b/c I found your paper about builder's remedy published in 2020. How could my city council not have known about this CATASTROPHE!?!?"
8
1
193
Suggestion: If you or someone you know has done housing development in SF, please support state's investigation by submitting detailed, first-person accounts of delays & expected or unexpected cost-elevating demands that the city or third parties... 1/2
HCD will conduct a first-ever Housing Policy and Practice Review of San Francisco, aimed at identifying and removing barriers to approval and construction of new housing there.
What this means in the 🧵 👇🏾 1/
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186
1K
3
36
184
Ugh, another hit piece on AB 1633 from the "no building anything w/o my NGO's permission" crowd.
Not sure I should deign to reply, but seeing as how
@GavinNewsom
hasn't signed it yet, here goes.
🧵 1/9.
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25
188
Has CEQA swallowed the Housing Accountability Act?
Yes, per new court ruling in the 469 Stevenson case. Read my
@sfchronicle
op-ed.
1/2
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183
The court dropped a "tentative opinion," in advance of oral argument, that makes new CEQA law in two areas: (1) "impacts" due to demographics of new residents; (2) "gentrification impacts" of projects that locally increase the demand for housing. /2
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188