While it’s too soon to assess the full effects of recently passed legislation on housing production in the state, planners and housing advocates express cautious optimism that the new laws could help alleviate the state’s housing shortage.
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“Since 2017, the State of California has adopted over 100 new laws designed to increase housing production,” according to a brief by William Fulton, David Garcia, Ben Metcalf, Carolina Reid, and Truman Braslaw from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. The laws have an impact on four stages of the building process: planning, zoning, permitting, and building. The authors make “an effort to characterize the breadth and goals of recent legislation, and to assess practitioner experiences with using these laws to further housing production” in the state and provide “an overview of California’s housing system, catalogs recent housing legislation, and summarizes themes from interviews with stakeholders across the state.”
While the authors warn that “It is too early to know whether the full set of new state laws is having a meaningful impact on spurring increased homebuilding,” there have nevertheless been “positive, measurable impacts on construction starts within some specific housing domains, and interviewees expressed optimism that process changes could unlock significant increases in home-building in the future.”
The brief highlights optimistic developments in three areas: growing support for ADUs and subsidized affordable housing; a shift in culture around project approvals; and changes in California’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) and Housing Element law, which are spurring—despite much local opposition—zoning changes around the state.
FULL STORY: New Pathways to Encourage Housing Production: A Review of California’s Recent Housing Legislation
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Can New York City Go Green Without Renewable Rikers?
New York City’s bold proposal to close the jail on Rikers Island and replace it with green infrastructure is in jeopardy. Will this compromise the city’s ambitious climate goals?
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700-Acre Master-Planned Community Planned in Utah
A massive development plan is taking shape for lakefront property in Vineyard, Utah—on the site of a former U.S. Steel Geneva Works facility.
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More Cities Ponder the End of Drive-Thrus
Drive-thru fast food restaurants might be a staple of American life, but several U.S. cities are actively considering prohibiting the development of new drive-thrus for the benefit of traffic safety, air quality, and congestion.
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Air Pollution World’s Worst Public Health Threat, Report Says
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Placer County
City of Morganton
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Dongguan Binhaiwan Bay Area Management Committee
City of Waukesha, WI
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Indiana Borough
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