January 5, 2018

California State Senator Scott Wiener proposed a trio of new housing bills on Thursday, including one that would make it easier to build taller projects near public transit.

December 18, 2017

A week before the North Bay fires broke out, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission convened a blue-ribbon committee, named CASA, to identify “game-changing regional solutions to the Bay Area’s chronic housing affordability challenges.”

October 8, 2017

To great fanfare, Gov. Jerry Brown last Friday finally signed a “package” of housing measures. The political logjam that had stymied affordable housing bills finally broke, with more than a dozen housing bills making it through this year.

Last December, we wrote about the gift that Santa Claus brought to real estate developers in San Francisco: the ability to use recent changes in state density bonus law to increase heights and densities 35 percent above the existing zoning, with no additional public benefit.

KRON4, September 4, 2017

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed 15 bills to provide more money for affordable housing and streamline regulations that can stifle construction.

Legislation sponsored by the California Apartment Association to impede voters from passing local ballot measures on key land use issues is dead for this year, thanks in part to the growing power of California’s tenant rights movement. The bill was tabled yesterday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The California State legislature is set to vote on a package of affordable housing bills as early as this Friday. Among the bills is SB 35, which would streamline the approval process for development projects in cities that are not meeting regional affordable housing goals.

Senate Bill 35, introduced by Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), aims to streamline the housing approval process by cutting red tape for certain projects.

Even 4,400 new homes may not be enough.

Sacramento leads the country in annual rent growth, a function of our rapid population growth, as the fastest growing city in California. Most of them, according to a recent Redfin report, displaced from the Bay Area due to the high cost of living.

Senate Bill 35 is a huge game-changer about to hit SF and other gentrifying cities.

Here on our San Francisco island, struggles over affordable housing and land-use policy have for decades absorbed much collective energy.

Inconvenient truths about a “Clear-Eyed Report.”

The rationale behind recently-proposed “solutions” to the housing affordability crisis that seek to reduce limits and regulation on high-end housing development policy is the theory of Filtering.

San Francisco housing activists and some city officials say a new state housing bill passed last week is a "developer giveaway."

A few weeks ago we wrote about the “by-right” development law, which Gov. Jerry Brown is pushing for approval this year, as a speedy trailer bill to the state budget with no public hearings.

Why is SF mayor backing plan that would undermine local ability to demand more affordable housing?

Developers and their lobbying organizations are currently working hard to spread a false, but profitable argument: that the way to get more housing faster is by further deregulating development approvals.

Affordable housing, the issue that has dominated San Francisco politics for the past three years, is suddenly the hot topic at the state Capitol in Sacramento.