conarb
Registered User
This in the paper today:
Between codes and other government regulations we have made building nearly impossible, I was out in Dublin yesterday, it was nothing but hayfields, then became nothing but the intersection of I580 and I680, then they added a BART mass transit station, I saw three cranes sticking up in the air on high-rise apartment buildings where people will be packed and stacked like sardines, meanwhile go up in an airplane and there is all kinds of vacant land that we can't touch because it's parks or open space.
I know you guys can't affect the AHJs' zoning regulations, but you can work on getting rid of the political and special interest codes that are driving costs through the roof.
¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/05...avalanche-130-bills-proposed-in-sacramento-2/
East Bay Times said:Home prices keep rising to shocking levels around the Bay Area, while rents remain out of sight. Now, state lawmakers in Sacramento are responding with a torrent of proposals.
Legislators have introduced about 130 bills to address what has become a statewide housing crisis. The sheer quantity “is unprecedented,” said Jason Rhine, legislative representative for the League of California Cities.
“I don’t think anyone can recall a time when we’ve had this many bills on housing — or on any one thing, period,” he said.
The legislative avalanche — bills to mitigate affordability concerns, ***** housing production and protect tenants — demonstrates that the “crisis has reached its head,” said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco).
“In the Bay Area in recent years, we’ve had the highest home prices, the highest rents and the highest eviction rates in the country. But now … every pocket of California is experiencing this crisis,” he said.
California has the sixth largest economy in the world, Chiu said, adding that the state’s poverty rate is the highest in the country — 20.6 percent, when housing costs, medical expenses and taxes are factored in, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And while the state used to invest $1.7 billion annually in affordable housing, those funds have vanished due to the expiring of bonds passed to address the problem in 2002 and 2006 and the dissolving of redevelopment agencies about five years ago amid the state’s fiscal crisis.
The state Department of Housing and Community Development calculates that California on average built 80,000 homes annually over the last decade – but needed to build 180,000 each year to keep pace with demand. Now, homeownership levels have fallen to 54 percent, their lowest point since the late 1940s, and the cost of housing — $1,050,000 for a median-priced single-family home in Santa Clara County — is pricing out many middle-income earners.
With job growth dwarfing housing production in the Bay Area, the crisis is “most egregious” here, said Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy and government relations for the Bay Area Council. A March poll by the council showed that 40 percent of Bay Area residents are considering moving away because of costly housing and congested roadways.¹
Between codes and other government regulations we have made building nearly impossible, I was out in Dublin yesterday, it was nothing but hayfields, then became nothing but the intersection of I580 and I680, then they added a BART mass transit station, I saw three cranes sticking up in the air on high-rise apartment buildings where people will be packed and stacked like sardines, meanwhile go up in an airplane and there is all kinds of vacant land that we can't touch because it's parks or open space.
I know you guys can't affect the AHJs' zoning regulations, but you can work on getting rid of the political and special interest codes that are driving costs through the roof.
¹ http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/05...avalanche-130-bills-proposed-in-sacramento-2/