Instantly after state legislators handed the landmark Senate Payments 9 and 10 in 2021 — taking most native land-use selections away from metropolis councils and county supervisors — resentful native officers vowed to run a referendum marketing campaign and kill these new legal guidelines.
The legal guidelines basically eradicated R-1 single-family zoning in all places in California, permitting as much as six housing items on tons previously restricted to 1 and making approval automated for high-rise residential buildings on all streets fairly near mass transit.
That meant simple allowing, for instance, for buildings as much as 5 tales on any avenue the place officers instantly open a brand new bus line. It was not restricted to areas in strolling distance of rail or subway stops.
The referendum mounted by dozens of native officers by no means obtained off the bottom that yr, although, partly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic drove the price of gathering initiative petition signatures to unprecedented heights — as a lot as $16 per signature in some elements of the Bay Space.
So the promised anti-density referendum by no means made the 2022 state poll, and the landmark legal guidelines stay on the books. Neither has produced a lot motion as but, largely as a result of nobody has demonstrated that the licensed new housing can be worthwhile. There’s additionally a scarcity of building staff.
In contrast, a earlier legislation permitting “ADUs” — extra dwelling items typically known as “granny flats” — on just about all onetime R-1 properties has produced main outcomes. It's onerous to discover a important house transform or rebuild on this state that doesn't embrace one. Some cities are making ADUs main coverage devices in efforts to fulfill state housing density necessities.
Nobody is aware of whether or not most of those are occupied by renters or members of the family of the property house owners. Some longtime property house owners are downsizing into new ADUs, although, permitting their grownup youngsters and households to maneuver into their properties’ essential homes. Into this image now step a few of the identical people who vowed in 2021 that they’d repeal SB 9 and 10.
They hope to flow into petitions for a brand new initiative aimed not solely at these two legal guidelines, however the different housing density necessities now being imposed round California by means of a spate of latest legal guidelines handed by pro-density legislators led by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who has spearheaded this motion for many of the final decade. Wiener claims solely large new building can resolve the state’s housing scarcity, variously estimated at wherever from 1 million to three.5 million dwelling items by state authorities during the last 5 years.
That, after all, ignored the huge retailer of vacant workplace buildings, mini-malls and large field shops created by the pandemic. It’s less expensive and quicker to transform them to housing than constructing new items whereas combating off lawsuits and ever-inflating prices for supplies, land and labor. Held up by labor unions and legislators till not too long ago, conversions are actually taking off.
The putative new initiative would doubtless not intrude with these modifications, as a result of they trigger little variation in constructing footprints and received’t alter neighborhoods. It may stymie extra makes an attempt by the state, although, to take over land use selections which have lengthy been the purview of native governments and poll measures.
“We’d like to repair the ambiguities some individuals noticed in our earlier proposed initiative” mentioned Anita Enander, a metropolis councilmember and former mayor of Los Altos Hills within the South Bay. “Our new effort needs to be extra usually supportable. It will merely say that when state legislation and native land use legal guidelines battle, the native ones will prevail. Lots of people don’t need excessive dense housing. They simply need to stay in their very own properties.”
Added Dennis Richards, a former longtime member of the San Francisco planning fee, “Taking this area away from native authorities is a method of wiping out democracy. Folks like Wiener are saying it doesn't matter what native residents take into consideration their very own cities or how they’ve voted.”
Traditionally, native management has normally received out over centralized planning when Californians have voted on it. Sponsors of the hoped-for measure say polling signifies 60 to 65% approval. Even when it’s not really that prime, don’t guess in opposition to this effort as soon as it will get going.
E mail Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and skim extra of his columns on-line at californiafocus.web.