“I don’t want us painted as not understanding what the problem is,” Sierra Club California Director Kathryn Phillips says. “We know there’s a housing problem. We want infill development.” Although Phillips says she supports infill development around mass transit, it’s hard…
SB 827 Senate Amendments: Affordability, Transit Lines, Height, Ellis Act Protections & More
California has a housing deficit approaching 4 million homes, and our housing shortage is a huge threat to our state’s diversity, economy, environment, and quality of life. I introduced SB 827 to create more opportunities for housing where we need…
L.A.’s land use rules were born out of racism and segregation. They’re not worth fighting for
Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to oppose SB 827. While some council members acknowledged that we need to do more on housing affordability, they also used metaphors like “blowing up” and “chainsawing” neighborhoods to justify rejecting SB…
California Has a Controversial Plan to Solve Its Housing Crisis.
“The only way we will meet our climate and air quality goals is to build a lot more housing and to do so in urbanized areas accessible to public transportation,” Sen. Scott Wiener said. There’s research to back up that…
California’s housing crisis reaches from the homeless to the middle class
There are many reasons for California’s failure to keep up with housing demand. One is the “incumbency effect” — existing residents are hostile to changes that might increase traffic, attract residents of lower income and different ethnicities, or produce other…
California’s Housing Prices Need to Come Down
Housing in California has been appreciating much more quickly than in the aggregate of the U.S. for about half a century. While rising rents and home values have benefitted many along the way, they have become enough of a burden…
Silicon Valley Execs Champion Housing Bill
At the end of 2017, 56 percent of households in the U.S. could afford the median priced U.S. house, according to the California Association of Realtors. But only 21 percent of people in the Bay Area can afford the median priced house there,…
Plan to dramatically increase development would transform some L.A. neighborhoods
Senate Bill 827, written by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would loosen or eliminate restrictions on height, density, parking and design for residential properties near major rail and bus stops. The impact could be huge. A Times analysis found…
What to know about the housing bill that has people freaking out from Marin to Compton
Memes of a mild-mannered California legislator photoshopped as a Star Trek villain. A San Francisco supervisor suggesting the city should sue the state, to “thunderous applause.” Wealthy Marin County homeowners and South Los Angeles tenants’ rights groups working as political bedfellows.…
California Housing Problems Are Spilling Across Its Borders
RENO, Nev. — A growing homelessness crisis. Complaints about traffic congestion. Worries that the economy is becoming dominated by a wealthy elite. Those sound like California’s problems in a nutshell. But now they are also among California’s leading exports. Just…