EXCERPT: FULL LETTER HERE: Livable California Opposition Letter – SB 330 August 6,... ... ... BY TIM REDMOND JANUARY 2, 2019 A Dec. 29 story by the Chron’s real-estate reporter, J.K. Dineen, who knows the market as well as anyone in town, shows exactly why the Yimby agenda will never work in San Francisco. The story dropped in the middle of the week when... Cupertino Stats – 2016 Snapshot Similar to some Bay Area cities, they’re way above their RHNA goals for market-rate units but way under for their BMR units. Population: 60,297 Households: 20,500 Employed Residents: 29,500 Jobs: 36,253 Housing Units: 21,560... By Dick Platkin : citywatchla – excerpt PLATKIN ON PLANNING-No, your eyes aren’t lying. Los Angeles is experiencing a building boom, mostly high-rise luxury hotels and apartments in a few select neighborhoods. Some are already open, others are under... By Julia Carrie Wong : theguardian – excerpt It was a beautiful winter day in San Francisco, and Zoe was grooving to the soundtrack of the roller-skating musical Xanadu as she rode an e-scooter to work. The 29-year-old tech worker had just passed the Uber... By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt Testimony looks at how ‘streamlining’ bill would cut the public out of crucial development discussions. Several members of the Planning Commission expressed concern this week about SB 330, a bill by Sen. Nancy Skinner that is... By John Mirisch : calmatters – excerpt A new Wall Street “product.” Another investment hard-sell for global capital. A timeshare sales strategy. Behind all the talk of solving California’s housing challenges and providing more homes, at the end of the day that’s... By cbslocal – excerpt (includes video) (KPIX 5) — The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is thinking about ways to reduce the traffic and housing crunch in its Plan Bay Area 2050. One of the concepts the MTC is looking at is putting a cap on office space in... By Laura Paddison : huffpost – excerpt (includes video) The ‘Out of Reach’ report shows the housing crisis is hitting renters hard, especially those earning the minimum wage. Plenty of evidence shows how widespread and devastating America’s housing crisis is,... League of Women Voters Lends Name to a Stage-Managed Partisan Event By Eric Krock The League of Women Voters has a well-deserved reputation for sponsoring non-partisan voter education events. That reputation was jeopardized on Friday evening when the League... By Eric Krock Friday evening’s forum in Palo Alto on S.B. 50 was a sham and a bust as a voter education event, but it was an outstanding opportunity to see Scott Wiener demonstrate his unethical persuasion techniques in person. Here were some of the lowlights of his... By Hydee Feldstein This article focuses on the language of SB 330 itself to show why Dick Platkin’s article on SB 330 as published here in CityWatch was correct, and the response by Senator Skinner’s office as published here in CityWatch is misleading and not an... Tech, not recalcitrant cities, is the root of our housing crisis By Eric Filseth in SF Chronicle Open Forum “Bay Area voters understand the root of our housing crisis is not local officials — the political narrative — but enormous tech demand for housing. The region... How San Francisco broke America’s heart “This is unregulated capitalism, unbridled capitalism, capitalism run amok. There are no guardrails,” says Salesforce founder and chairman Marc Benioff, a fourth-generation San Franciscan who in a TV interview branded his city... · PCASTS Can ‘SLO life’ survive when tech comes to town? By Bill Fink May 24, 2019 Photo: miroslav_1, Getty Images/iStockphoto “On Feb. 21, days after Amazon backed out of its plan to stage a second headquarters in New York City, the mayor of San Luis Obispo... Opponents of SB 50 warned of the housing bill’s impact on diverse, working-class urban neighborhoods like Los Angeles’ Jefferson Park, above. (Los Angeles Times) To the editor: While I have great respect for anyone assigned to report on Sacramento, having... A new analysis finds that liberalizing zoning rules and building more won’t solve the urban affordability crisis, and could exacerbate it. Build more. That’s what a growing number of urbanists hail as the solution to the surging home prices and stark inequality of... Oblivious to reality, Senator Wiener trips over American’s third rail “Senator Wiener’s failure to gain traction for his far left, ideological, anti-single family home crusade, most recently evidenced by the failure of Senate Bill 50 to advance in... An Open Letter to Scott Wiener: SB 50 Empowers Wall Street to Commoditize Housing By Right! by Hydee Feldstein in The Planning Report Struck by an apparent lack of evidence to support the approach of the upzoning bill and wanting answers to practical policy questions... In a series of letters to California state Senate and Assembly Committees, Livable California formally Opposed SB50, SB330 and AB1487 _____________________________________ April 14, 2019 CA Senate Governance & Finance Committee State Capitol,... Marin Post – by: Niccolo Caldararo – April 1, 2019 “But we have to ask why American cities have a glut of high rise developments and still little affordable housing? That is because builders and financiers are pursuing luxury buyers and planners and... Download Image here Link Full Article by Alfred Twu here Link Bad Policy like SB 50 assumes transit is well used so that’s where we should bulid Luxury Condos. It isn’t! Rich luxury condo owners don’t use it and displace low income people that depend on it, further undermining transit. From the study in... Scott Wiener’s SB 50 Housing Demolition Bill, a Credibility Crisis with Social Justice California By Jill Stewart March 31, 2019 State Sen. Scott Wiener, author of housing bills SB 50 and SB 827, faces a credibility crisis after convincing The New York Times and... Opponents of transit density bill find an audience in Palo Alto – Link Elected officials and community leaders band together to fight SB 50, but not everyone in the Silicon Valley enclave is onboard More than 200 people came out for an event about SB 50 and... Behind the Headlines – Mayor Pushes Back On SB50 – Video Link... Several recent articles linked here have addressed federal Opportunity Zone regulations. Concerns have been raised about the social justice and gentrification impacts of these zones. One article states “The existing regulations have made that calculation... 