Bay Area Land News - October 31, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
California's NIMBY-Wildfire Nexus
The Atlantic
Wildfires and lack of affordable housing—these are two of the most visible and urgent crises facing California, raising the question of whether the country’s dreamiest, most optimistic state is fast becoming unlivable. Climate change is turning it into a tinderbox; the soaring cost of living is forcing even wealthy families into financial precarity. And, in some ways, the two crises are one: The housing crunch in urban centers has pushed construction to cheaper, more peripheral areas, where wildfire risk is greater.
Green groups sue Trump administration over California drilling plan
Reuters
Two environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its plan to open up more than 720,000 acres (291,370 hectares) of federal land in California for oil and gas development. The lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity comes nearly four weeks after the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved a plan that would allow oil and gas leasing in 11 counties in the Central California coastal region.
New Modular Housing Model Tackles Affordable Housing Crisis In Los Angeles
Forbes
Slated to open in early 2020, Hope on Alvarado is a pioneering concept in affordable housing created by HBG Steel, KTGY Architecture + Planning, and Aedis Real Estate Group. Located in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (166 S. Alvarado Street), the project employs advanced modular construction to transform steel modules sourced from China into a five-story, 84-unit residential building.
San Francisco News
San Francisco Voters to Decide on Affordable Housing for Teachers
NBC Bay Area
Proposition A, an affordable housing bond, and Proposition E, which would allow the city to rezone areas for affordable housing and housing for teachers. Anabel Ibanez, political director for the teachers union, supports both. "The affordability crisis is a big issue," Ibanez said. "We believe it's in the right direction. It will provide housing to those educators who really need them."
SF District 5 candidates spar over supervisor’s eviction of low-income tenants
San Francisco Chronicle
Accusations and attack ads have been flying back and forth in the District Five supervisor campaign, as the two major candidates hope to tip the scales of the highly competitive race just days before the November election. Current Supervisor Vallie Brown and Dean Preston, a tenants rights activist, have spent much of the campaign taking jabs at each other’s policies, professional histories and bases of support. But their latest spat reaches much further back: It centers on Brown’s record as a landlord in 1994, when she evicted three low-income African American residents from her Fillmore building.
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New SF fee on office buildings to pay for affordable housing sails through
San Francisco Chronicle
In most cities, a proposal to double fees on office development would elicit dire warnings: visions of hemorrhaged jobs and empty office towers. But in San Francisco, which has seen jobs grow 38% since 2010, legislation to double a fee on office development over the next few years breezed through the legislative process, winning unanimous support on Tuesday from the Board of Supervisors.
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Supes approve fee hike on office development to fund more affordable housing
San Francisco Examiner
After some last minute adjustments, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Tuesday a higher fee for developers of San Francisco office buildings that is expected to generate $400 million for affordable housing in under a decade. Supervisor Matt Haney had spent the past five months pushing to raise the Jobs-Housing Linkage Fee, which dates back to 1996. The fee is meant to fund housing construction to offset the demand for housing that new office employment creates.
South Bay News
Google invests in affordable housing project in San Jose that will provide units for people with disabilities
East Bay Times
Google has invested $5.3 million in a large affordable housing project near downtown San Jose that will set aside units for people with developmental disabilities, the search giant and the project’s developer said Tuesday. Kelsey Ayer Station, a 115-unit project being planned for a site at 447 N. First St. near a light rail stop, has landed an investment that’s part of Google’s $250 million affordable housing fund.
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Google finances San Jose apartment project out of affordable housing fund
Silicon Valley Business Times
Google Inc. has announced it will provide a $5.3 million low-interest loan for a 115-unit San Jose housing project as the initial project funded by the $250 million Bay Area housing investment fund it announced in June. That fund is part of a larger commitment the Alphabet Inc.-owned search giant has made to spur housing development across the Bay Area, an initiative it values at $1 billion, with $750 million of that the value of repurposing company-owned land.
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Verizon breaks ground on huge San Jose tech hub
The Mercury News
Verizon on Wednesday launched a huge new tech campus in north San Jose, breaking ground on a sleek complex where the communications titan will employ thousands of people. The company’s Silicon Valley campus of the future is located at the Coleman Highline development, which is across the street from San Jose International Airport and near the Earthquakes soccer stadium as well as a Caltrain stop.
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Here's the firm Vallco has hired to market the condos it plans to build
Silicon Valley Business Times
The owner of Cupertino’s Vallco Town Center has retained a sales and marketing firm specializing in luxury homes for its huge planned mixed-use redevelopment of the old shopping mall. Compass Development is consulting on the planning of about 600 condominiums — a quarter of the 2,402 housing units that are part of Sand Hill Property Co.’s plan, which also includes 1.8 million square feet of office and retail on the 51-acre site.
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Peninsula News
Redwood City stops large rent increases
The Daily Journal
The Redwood City Council unanimously passed an urgency ordinance Monday to stop large rent increases and no-fault evictions after residents said they were getting pushed out of their homes in anticipation of a new state law that takes effect in January. “This is a tool that will help us to move forward so we can bring some stability to something that’s very, very challenging,†said Councilwoman Alicia Aguirre.
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San Mateo townhome plan gets first look
The Daily Journal
San Mateo officials weighed whether to include different types of housing units in a proposed development of 291 for-sale townhomes when the site just west of the Peninsula Golf and Country Club got its first look by the city’s Planning Commission last week. Neighbors of the project slated to replace four office buildings with nearly 300 three-story townhomes asked the developer and city officials to ensure an access road connecting Campus Drive and 26th Avenue would only be open to emergency vehicles and also to consider the project’s impact on street parking. Chair Mike Etheridge was absent from the meeting.
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Despite backlash, President Hotel owner presses ahead with hotel conversion
Palo Alto Online
The development firm that last year bought the historic President Hotel apartment building in downtown Palo Alto with the intention of converting it to a hotel made a renewed pitch for the highly contentious project on Tuesday night, even as critics continued to assail the proposal as ill-conceived and illegal.
Berman expects big legislative push on boosting housing supply
Palo Alto Online
For Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, the magnitude of the state's housing crisis hit close to home last week, when he walked out of a CVS Pharmacy in downtown Palo Alto and nearly walked into a homeless person using a plastic bag as a toilet.
Menlo Park: Caltrain protesters call for agency to pass affordable housing policy
The Almanac
Clustered together on the crisp evening of Oct. 29, protesters gathered around the Menlo Park Caltrain Station with a specific goal: to push the board that governs Caltrain to enact an affordable housing policy.
Belmont affordable housing project is moving forward
The Daily Journal
The first entirely affordable housing project proposed in Belmont is moving forward slower than initially expected, but is still moving forward, officials said. On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the City Council agreed to extend an exclusive negotiating agreement with Los Angeles-based nonprofit LINC Housing, which is proposing to build 36 below-market-rate units in two buildings on city-owned land at the corner of Hill Street and El Camino Real. The exclusive negotiating agreement expired Oct. 7 and has been extended to March 9 of next year.
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Rejected San Bruno housing plan resurrected
The Daily Journal
Following an eleventh-hour rejection of a sweeping mixed-use project in San Bruno, the developer is threatening to leverage a new state housing law to build an even bigger, more ambitious residential development. In a recent letter to city officials, Signature Development expressed interest in resurrecting a bolder version of the Mills Park project following the San Bruno City Council narrowly denying an initial proposal in July.
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East Bay News
Bid to reopen East Bay landmark theater gets big boost
East Bay Times
In a big boost to efforts to reopen the city’s Park Theater, the nonprofit formed to save and revitalize the downtown landmark has received a $2 million pledge. “This generous anchor donation is great news for the Park Theater Trust just as we begin our fundraising efforts in earnest,†said Kathleen Bowles, trust board member, in a statement. Tracey Karsten Farrell of the trust declined to identify the donor.
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