Limited Land for Housing and LAFCO Control
Danielle Davenport
Davenport Group | RE Portfolio Management Entitlement, Development, and Investment. Offering Land Acquisition & Use Consulting, Disposition. Site(s) Selection to Build Out to Asset Management.
Expanding City services requires annexation to accommodate growth. Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, notes, "Limited availability of desirable land near major job centers is pushing new housing developments further into the suburbs. However, these outlying areas often lack the necessary infrastructure, creating a bottleneck for builders eager to expand their communities. This imbalance between available lots and the desire to start new construction persists, posing a challenge for the housing market."
Boundary changes for cities and most special districts are managed by fifty-eight independent Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCOs). These commissions base their decisions on broad statewide goals set by the Legislature, locally developed policies and procedures, local circumstances, constitutional rights, and state laws. LAFCOs have significant discretion in approving boundary change applications. Their decisions can only be challenged in court, and the courts have a very limited scope of review for such cases.
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