By Sonoma Sun : sonomasun – excerpt

At the close of a court hearing on April 26, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo ordered that the SDC Specific Plan and EIR approvals be set aside.

In a Press Release, Local environmental groups Sonoma County Tomorrow and Sonoma Community Advocates for a Liveable Environment (SCALE), a coalition of Sonoma Mountain Preservation, Eldridge for All, the Glen Ellen Historical Society, and the Valley of the Moon Alliance, announced they have prevailed in their lawsuit challenging approvals of the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) Specific Plan and the related Environmental Impact Report (EIR) process…

The Court also addressed the lawsuit’s overarching challenge to the Plan regarding its questionable “self-mitigation” approach, ruling that “purported mitigation measures in the Plan are, as a whole, ineffective, vague, and devoid of any semblance of performance standards in violation of CEQA.”…(more)

By Kevin V. Nguyen : sfstandard – excerpt

The same companies that fueled the city’s last real estate boom are also the ones contributing to its latest bust

In the 2010s, blue-chip tech firms like Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, Meta and Salesforce spent hundreds of millions of dollars opening glamorous, amenity-filled offices in downtown San Francisco, spurring a building boom that altered the city’s skyline.

After a global pandemic and a wholesale shift to hybrid work, those same firms have retreated en masse—leaving the city’s now hollowed-out downtown to pay the price…

Big Tech’s San Francisco Pullback

San Francisco’s 20 largest tech employers have cut the office space they lease in the city from 16.1 million square feet in 2019 to 8.3 million square feet today.

The 7.8 million square feet left vacant is equal to more than 15 Transamerica Pyramids, five Salesforce Towers and two-and-a-half Apple Parks…(more)

By Braden Cartwright :Padailypost – excerpt

Cities that are against state housing mandates have won their lawsuit against the state of California that challenged a controversial law allowing four homes on properties where only
one home had been allowed before. The ruling means that Senate Bill 9 has been invalidated in charter cities, including Palo Alto, according to the lawyer who won the lawsuit.

“This is a monumental victory for all charter cities in California,” said attorney Pam Lee, who represented five Southern California cities against the state and Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Charter cities have their own local constitution, or charter. California has 121 charter cities, including Palo Alto,
San Mateo, Redwood City and Mountain View… (more)

Now that LA took the lead, how many other cities will follow. San Francisco has the Senator who is doing the most damage. Depending on who wins the next mayoral election, they could oust the Senator and/or join the fight against the stat power grab. Stay tuned.

By George Kelly : sfstandard – excerpt

Only a third of registered voters think California is moving in the right direction, while 57% think the state is off on the wrong track, according to a new poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley.

A statement released with the poll results last week described the findings as “a somewhat more negative assessment than voters have given in measures taken over the past eleven years” of consistent and regular mood assessments by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, the state’s oldest public policy research center. The poll was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Still, the pollsters added that the voters surveyed were not nearly as negative as they were during the nationwide economic crisis from 2008 to 2011, when 69% to 80% of state voters described California as headed in the wrong direction.

The latest poll found that voters are split on the question of whether Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing a good job leading the nation’s most populous state, with 46% approving of the governor’s performance and 47% disapproving. However, a third of voters said they strongly disapproved of Newsom’s performance, while just 17% said they strongly approved…(more)

By J.D. Morris : sfchronicle – excerpt

Sandwiched between a hair salon and a dim sum restaurant just across Kearny Street from San Francisco’s iconic Sentinel Building, the Hotel North Beach doesn’t look like much from the outside.

But the unassuming 150-unit hotel is poised to become a new — and contested — front in Mayor London Breed’s efforts to show progress on fighting the worsening drug epidemic that caused record overdose deaths in the city last year and has frustrated the public with persistent open-air drug scenes.

Breed’s administration wants to turn the hotel at 935 Kearny St. into a sober living facility for formerly homeless people this spring. Officials say it will be a novel addition to San Francisco’s supply of permanent supportive housing, providing a previously unavailable option for people exiting homelessness who struggle with addiction and want to live in a building that’s free of drugs and alcohol…(more)

RELATED:

S.F.’s largest drug treatment provider investigated by state after two overdose deaths

California officials are investigating the recent deaths of two men who fatally overdosed while seeking drug treatment at Walden House, a longtime San Francisco facility for those struggling with addiction.

HealthRight 360, which operates Walden House and is the city’s largest provider of drug treatment, reported the deaths — one which occurred Tuesday and another three weeks ago — to the California Department of Health Care Services and San Francisco Department of Public Health, as regulations require…(more)

Not quite sure how this will work with Wiener’s plans to sell open alcohol on the streets of SF till 4 in the morning. Or how legal it is to try to control alcohol consumption, but, I guess we shall see. We expect a lot of pushback on both efforts. What is going to happen to the current residents of the hotel who are not a part of the program if they end up living in a sober housing project?

By J. K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt

For the past year, cities throughout California have grown accustomed to bad news from the state agency charged with enforcing an ever-growing list of laws aimed at increasing housing production.

But this week the small San Mateo County city of Brisbane actually got some good news from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD.

The agency ruled that Brisbane, which has fewer than 5,000 residents, did not violate state housing element laws by missing a deadline related to the massive redevelopment of the Baylands, the 660-acre railyard and former landfill planned for 4,000 housing units.

Two pro-housing groups filed a complaint over the delay, but after an investigation, HCD sided with the city, not the YIMBYs, an unusual turn of events.

HCD had required that Brisbane include a detailed timeline of when project milestones would be completed because the project is expected to deliver 90% of the homes mandated by the state in the next 8 years. That timeline said the city would publish an environmental study by October, but the city failed to do so.

But HCD determined that the city still has time to publish an environmental study on the project. While the city missed the October “milestone” it has until January of 2026 to complete all the approvals and changes needed to make the Baylands a reality, HDC said…(more)

By J.K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt

A proposed condo complex in the heart of Sausalito’s historic waterfront district is set to ignite a political and legal battle that could determine whether the Marin County city will preserve its historic status as a development no-go zone or open itself up to a new generation of housing production.

This week, property owner Linda Fotsch submitted an application to redevelop a half-acre site at 605-613 Bridgeway, now home to four storefronts. The project, marketed as Waterstreet, would consist of 41 market-rate condos as well as six “very low income” affordable units, Fotsch said.

The facades of the four existing retail spaces, part of the city’s downtown historic district, would be preserved while five stories of new condos with wraparound balconies would step back from Bridgeway. Most of the half-acre complex would be built on a parking lot that lies behind the four buildings, which house a deli, an ice cream parlor and a wine bar…

But the Waterstreet project, and the broader implementation of the housing element, will face both legal and political obstacles. The condo development is in conflict with Ordinance 1022, a 1985 voter-approved “Fair Traffic Initiative” that broadly forbids development in much of the city…(more)

This is one of those iconic tourist friendly views and waterfront promenades that will be forever changed if anything happens here. For those who have no taste or sense of history or enjoy visiting such places, losing it will be meaningless, but, for those of us who spent many warm sunny days walking along these shores it will mean there is nothing left to return to. Probably what they have in mind. Killing off the friendly passage through the village, because Sausalito is a village, to build a few tacky housing units. And of course removing as many parking spaces as they can because who needs car to get up to those steep hillsides that are only accessible via the windy hilly lanes. No doubt they will finally take out the houseboats and small slips in the harbor to make room for the over-size yachts that will soon be lining up to replace them.

By Ray Burns : lostcoastoutpost – excerpt

The State of California wants in on the City of Eureka’s fight against the Security National-funded Citizens for a Better Eureka.

The Office of Attorney General Rob Bonta today submitted a request to file amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs in support of the City of Eureka and the Eureka City Council, and it says the court should reject the Citizens for a Better Eureka’s efforts to thwart affordable housing developments downtown.

Last month, Citizens for a Better Eureka filed a series of motions seeking preliminary injunctions that would immediately block the city and its partners, including Linc Housing and the Wiyot Tribe’s Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust, from breaking ground on affordable housing and transportation projects slated for development on municipal parking lots downtown.

The motions – five, in all – allege violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), arguing that the city failed to conduct legally required environmental review not only for the elimination of public parking spaces but also for the various planned redevelopment projects, which the group says will impact traffic and air quality…(more)

RELATED:

Eureka Planning Commission Chair Jeff Ragan Abruptly Resigns, Citing ‘Grave Concerns’ Over City’s Approval of Housing Projects on Three City-Owned Parking Lots

We keep warning the Democrats that they are risking losing support in communities that are barely on their side to begin with and these efforts to reign them is is stupid and irresponsible. They stand the possibly of losing seats in the House if they continue to attack the less urban communities. Where are the jobs and where is the need for housing in Eureka? Must contact them regarding ourneighborhoodvoices.com and other state organizations who are fighting their battles with them.

By Kate Talerico : mercurynews – excerpt (includes audio)

After missing deadline, city provides blueprint to build 62,200 homes in next decade

One year late and three drafts in, San Jose has finally earned state regulators’ approval of its housing plan, a blueprint for how the city plans to add 62,200 homes over the next decade.

The state’s certification brings an end to the threat of penalties San Jose faced from falling out of compliance — including the “builder’s remedy” provision that allowed developers to ignore local zoning codes if they proposed low- or middle-income housing. The city is also eligible once more for millions in state grants for affordable housing and transit.

“We’re going to go party hard because this is a huge milestone,” said San Jose Deputy Planning Director Michael Brilliot. “It’s never been this challenging.”…

Of the Bay Area’s 109 cities, just 14 met the state’s cutoff for submitting a housing element, after many of them confused the deadline, which was Jan. 31, 2023. San Jose is the last of the three major Bay Area cities to earn the state’s blessings, after the state OK’d San Francisco’s plan in December, and Oakland’s in February…

During the time it was out of compliance, several developers used the “builder’s remedy” in an unexpected way — not to propose taller, denser towers than might otherwise be allowed, but to scale back housing proposals. A third of the 29 builder’s remedy projects submitted to the city amend a previously proposed project to decrease the number of units. The developer of the much-vaunted Berryessa BART Urban Village at the San Jose Flea Market site plans to reduce the project to 940 housing units from the 3,500 previously approved by the city.

Whether these builder’s remedy projects will move forward now that the city is in compliance remains to be seen. Chris Burton, who heads San Jose’s planning department, told this news organization in November that the city would process each of the builder’s-remedy applications “on an individual basis.”… (more)

By Calmatters – excerpt

It’s put-up-or-shut-up time for dozens of cities across the San Francisco Bay Area.

Last January, local governments across the region were required to submit Housing Elements to state regulators—future development blueprints that spell out how each jurisdiction intends to make room for its share of the more than 2.5 million new homes the Newsom administration wants to see built across California by the end of the decade.

One year later, on Jan. 31, many of those same jurisdictions are now required to turn key components of those blueprints into law. That means re-inking their zoning maps, converting thousands of suburban-style tracts into apartment-ready parcels and proving to the state that they are, in fact, going to do what they said they would do to address California’s chronic housing shortage…

The Bay Area zoning crunch is just the latest inflection point in a yearslong tussle between California’s housing agency and local governments over how many new homes California needs to plan for and where this anticipated influx of development ought to go. The Bay Area’s end-of-month due date is the first big one in a series of rolling regional deadlines. Next up: Santa Barbara County on Feb. 15… (more)

RELATED:

San Francisco Relaxed Its Housing Laws. But Don’t Expect a Building Boom