Free Republic

The town of Woodside in San Mateo County has found a way to thwart new housing development: invoking the supposed endangerment of mountain lions. Woodside, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau has a median household income of more than $250,000, has blocked any new development under Senate Bill 9 under a clause in the bill prohibiting development in the habitat of an endangered species. SB 9 was an attempt to encourage more housing development in established neighborhoods by allowing property owners to split large lots and bypass public hearings. Advertisement “We love animals,” Mayor Dick Brown told The Almanac....

In a bold move to address its affordable-housing crisis and confront a history of racist housing practices, Minneapolis has decided to eliminate single-family zoning, a classification that has long perpetuated segregation.

A property owner who illegally demolished a 1936 Twin Peaks house designed by a renowned modernist must rebuild an exact replica of the home rather than the much larger structure the property owner had proposed replacing it with, the City Planning Commission ruled this week. In a unanimous 5-0 vote late Thursday night, the commission also ordered that the property owner — Ross Johnston, through his 49 Hopkins LLC — include a sidewalk plaque telling the story of the original house designed by architect Richard Neutra, the demolition and the replica. The commission directive, unprecedented in San Francisco, comes more...

Oakland's sleight-of-hand play to sell the obsolete Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center back to the city for a quick $29 million may have backfired - leaving the cash-poor town with an even bigger deficit to eliminate.As you might recall, Mayor Jean Quan pushed through a deal to sell the old convention hall to the city's own Redevelopment Agency last summer - just before Sacramento eliminated such agencies and sucked their money into the state's ailing budget.The goal was to help erase the city's $58 million deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Oakland thought it had beaten the deadline,...

California's redevelopment agencies officially are out of business, effective today. But that doesn't mean that the future of affordable housing is wiped out in the state. The loss of new tax funds will make the process of providing future low- and moderate-income housing for the state's residents much more difficult – but not impossible, experts say. The end of redevelopment money for housing "has everybody in the affordable housing community working to figure out how we continue to do the projects that we've been doing," said Steve Gall, senior vice president in Roseville for USA Properties Fund, "especially since economic...

Oakland unveiled an austere budget Monday that calls for sweeping cuts to community favorites like Children's Fairyland and the Oakland Zoo but keeps police services intact. In all, more than $28 million will be sliced from the budget, mostly from the $388 million general fund. The cuts are due to the loss of redevelopment funds, which Oakland used to fund services and programs across the city. "It's not clean and neat. We wish it were," said Mayor Jean Quan. "For California's older, larger cities, like Oakland, losing these redevelopment funds has been very, very tough." The City Council will discuss...

In a landmark victory for private property owners in the Golden State, the California Supreme Court today upheld a statute abolishing the nearly 400 redevelopment agencies across the state. The court also struck down a law that would have allowed these agencies to buy their way back into existence. The final outcome of the case is that, in 2012, California’s decades-long redevelopment nightmare will finally come to an end.California redevelopment agencies have been some of the worst abusers of eminent domain for decades, violating the private property rights of tens of thousands of home, business, church and farm owners. The...

The end of redevelopment agencies affirmed Thursday by the state Supreme Court deeply affects the East Bay. "This will be devastating to local government," Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer said. The agencies have been a major source of revitalization, jobs and budget support, and most of its cities have redevelopment. Contra Costa itself oversees five districts in unincorporated areas. Oakland's prognosis is particularly poor. Redevelopment this year paid for 171 positions, including 17 police officers and nearly 100 other employees. The ruling also could doom a new stadium for the A's near Jack London Square, where redevelopment funds were...

In a significant budget win for Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday the state can eliminate the local agencies that subsidize construction in blighted areas. The decision strengthens the state's ability to take funds from redevelopment agencies for the current budget. It also provides leverage for state leaders to use more than $1 billion annually in redevelopment property tax dollars to balance future budgets. The court called the elimination of redevelopment "a proper exercise of the legislative power vested in the Legislature by the state Constitution." But justices ruled invalid a second bill that would...

State budgets used to be fairly simple documents, fundamentally allocating whatever financial resources the state might have at the moment among its various, well-delineated responsibilities. No more. Proposition 13, enacted in 1978, had the indirect effect of centralizing major financial decision-making affecting local governments and schools in the Capitol. Those decisions were affected by subsequent ballot measures, and volatile revenue swings put the budget in a more or less permanent deficit condition. Today's budgets are complex packages not only of appropriations but of legislation to legalize, or so it's assumed, the political decisions. And that inevitably means that after budgets...

Castro Valley, Calif., is the spot where the East Bay meets the 1950s. In the old parts of town, there's a white rock lawn on every block. First names are big -- as in Al's Food Market, Gigi's Florist and Pete's Hardware. Residents boast about the parks and go fishing at Lake Chabot. Castro Valley is famous for its diners. No dinner crowds -- they close in the afternoon. If you're looking for fast food, you can find it on Castro Valley Boulevard. There are no high-end retail outlets or chichi restaurants. You don't see pairings of pedestrians enjoying a...

In December 2003, Bruce Ratner, a real estate tycoon and part-owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, held a press conference in New York City to announce his latest project, a 22-acre "urban utopia" called the Atlantic Yards. The idea was to transform downtown Brooklyn by erecting 16 office and residential skyscrapers, a luxury 180-room hotel, and a fancy new arena for the Nets. Standing by Ratner's side that day was the architect Frank Gehry, who told the press he was particularly excited "to build a whole neighborhood practically from scratch." It was a revealing statement. After all, the...

California's plan to dismantle redevelopment agencies was put on hold today by the state Supreme Court, which plans to decide by January whether the state's elimination of the program is legal. The court agreed to allow a lawsuit, which challenges the legality of the elimination of redevelopment, to move forward, and said the program can continue to exist while the case is pending. It also set an expedited schedule, saying it plans to issue a final opinion by mid-January on whether the Legislature had the power to eliminate the economic development program. And while the decision allows redevelopment agencies to...

In Sacramento, Governor Jerry Brown is planning to close California’s $26.6 billion structural deficit through spending cuts and tax extensions. Opposition has been spirited but less contentious than expected, probably because of the size of the budget hole. But one item of Brown’s plan—something that would save about $1.7 billion annually—has generated heated debates between local officials and the new administration. The governor has proposed eliminating California’s approximately 400 redevelopment agencies (RDAs). In theory, RDAs spearhead blight removal. In fact, they divert billions of dollars from traditional services, such as schools, parks, and firefighting; use eminent domain to seize property...

California Gov. Jerry Brown won the blame game and lost the budget. Brown began with a proposal to put a measure on the ballot to extend the 2009 tax increases on income taxes, sales taxes and the vehicle license fee. It was a gamble. Voters rejected a similar tax measure in 2009. Most GOP lawmakers have signed no-new-taxes pledges. Even Brown didn't dare campaign on today's tax plan -- and he's a Democrat.Then came the bargaining. Republicans say that Brown wouldn't give on spending dear to the public-employee unions that helped elect him. The Brownies say that the Party of...

The problem with government as it has out-grown its intended and justified limits is not that it’s become too Democrat or too Republican. The problem with it is exemplified in California’s redevelopment laws. They are welfare for corporations, for business interests picked to win by politicians, for tax burdens to be shouldered by you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer...

With $7.4 billion worth of budget slicing behind them, Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders will try again today to secure the Assembly vote for redevelopment cuts that eluded them Wednesday. Here was Brown's take on the day's work: "Lot of good work on the side of the Senate Republicans. Great work by the Democrats in the Assembly. But for the Republicans, for some reason, known only to them, they don't want to balance the budget with cuts. And they don't appear to want to balance it with new revenues. So they must want a profound, continuing unbalanced budget. And...

Lawmakers took their first bite out of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget Wednesday, cutting about $7.4 billion across state government and clearing a significant share of the $26.6 billion deficit. But Democratic leaders, and Brown in particular, spent much of the day behind closed doors in an unsuccessful effort to persuade reticent legislators to eliminate roughly 400 agencies that fund redevelopment projects and save the state another $1.7 billion. Cities have mounted a fierce campaign to block the proposal, fearful of losing control over billions of dollars that would flow to schools, counties and public safety instead of civic projects. Democrats...

Why are so many people who are opposed to development nevertheless in favor of "redevelopment"? The short answer is that development involves decisions made in the market by large numbers of people in the general population, in their own personal interests, while redevelopment involves taking decisions out of the hands of the population at large and putting the power to make those decisions in the hands of elites. Developers who build housing to sell to the public are the focus of many denunciations by elites in places like coastal California. But developers would not even exist if there were...

Local redevelopment agencies have pushed through nearly $690 million in bonds sales during the first two months of this year -- that's more than half of the $1.2 billion in debt those agencies took on in all of 2010, according to figures the state treasurer's office compiled. Furthermore, given the shaky market, local governments are borrowing money at high rates -- increasing the amount of property tax revenue that will go to lenders, said Tom Dresslar, a treasury department spokesman. "They're flooding the market with these bonds at a time when the market sucks from an issuer's perspective," Dresslar said....