March 6, 2022 Livable California on March 5 presented to its members a quick look at the 28 most worrisome/most promising laws under consideration by the California State Legislature for 2022 , including a few bills still alive from 2021. Our statewide membership, which is made up of city officials, community organizations, environmental advocates, homeowner
August 20, 2021 The California State Assembly Appropriations Committee this week sent SB 9 to the full Assembly for a vote in the coming days. A broad movement is urging a NO vote on SB 9, which will turn homeownership into a contact sport dominated by pension funds, rental giants and other deep pockets. “SB
July 9, 2021 [Letter sent by Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz urging Californians to call their Assemblymember NOW!] Dear Friends and Neighbors, IT’S NOW OR NEVER! Are we going to stand idly by and let the Big Developers convince the state legislature to destroy our single-family neighborhoods, create parking nightmares and make it even
Map: El Camino Real runs 43 miles through Silicon Valley and can absorb 250,000 housing units instead of TEARING APART our neighborhoods. The Bay Area has 16,000 acres of underused commercial lots that could absorb 1.6M new units of housing. [May 24, 2021 Editor's Note: Famed Sustainable Communities author and urbanist Peter Calthorpe is a
May 15, 2021 Fresh air from Canada, thanks to Stephen Punwasi, one of North America's top influencers in finance and risk. Writing for Better Dwelling, Punwasi explains something many California state legislators are ignorant of as they embrace the Scott Wiener ideology of forcing cities to approve dense luxury housing to help the poor. Read
The Infamous SB 50 is Hiding in 7 Bad Bills: SB 6, SB 8, SB 9, SB 10, SB 478, AB 1322, AB 1401 Sacramento "trickle-down" housing proponents are trying to revive the divisive pre-COVID legislation SB 50 through a group of 7 bad bills. Without your intervention — meaning you contacting your own senator
April 16, 2021 Deeply respected California legislative expert Dan Carrigg of Renne Public Policy Group announces that SB 9 by Toni Atkins, amended by the author on April 5 after intense and broad criticism, still lets developers pave over single-family communities to erect 6-unit projects, and possibly 8 units, where 1 home stands today. Carrigg's
Feb. 7, 2021 Vancouver's high-profile professor, planner and author, Patrick Condon, told more than 160 California community leaders at the Livable California Teleconference on Feb. 6, 2021 that "upzoning" of neighborhoods drives up housing costs and cannot create affordable housing. Many participants asked us to make his powerful presentation and his new book, Sick
By Nick Waranoff, January 20, 2021: SB 9 Fact Sheet: Understanding the proposed up-zoning law that would end single-family zoning in California SB 9 would allow 8 units where there is now one lot (one parcel). A city, however, would not be required to approve more than 6 units. Here is how this would happen.
Most journalists believed that SB 1120, California’s banner housing bill for 2020, was a modest “duplex” bill. SB 1120 failed because enough people realized it was a radical experiment to transform single-family homes into 8-unit market-rate rentals. (Google Earth photo above: SB 1120 would make single-family streets far more dense than these streets in the