[HN Gopher] Court overturns state ruling on San Francisco's infa...
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Court overturns state ruling on San Francisco's infamous 469
Stevenson project
Author : jseliger
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-11-02 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfchronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfchronicle.com)
| beautifulfreak wrote:
| https://archive.ph/fqPVC
| jmyeet wrote:
| For those not following the California housing crisis and the
| government's response to it, I would urge you to do so. This is
| an issue of national significance and Newson is actually trying
| to do a lot. The article mentions the Berkely case but let me
| highlight it [1]:
|
| > That's essentially what Alameda County Superior Court Judge
| Brad Seligman ruled this week when he froze enrollment increases
| at UC Berkeley in response to a lawsuit by a local NIMBY group
| called Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods. The judge found that the
| university failed to account for the impact of increased
| enrollment -- including late-night parties and crowded parks --
| in its plans to add more student and faculty housing, in
| violation of the California Environmental Quality Act, known as
| CEQA.
|
| Well-intentioned laws (ie environmental impact) are effectively
| being weaponized for the benefit of rich people.
|
| There have been some victories in Newson's push. A notable
| example is Santa Monica. The city is quite famous for fighting
| development to going back decades. Now the state mandates cities
| have to have a "Housing Element", which is a plan for increasing
| affordable housing. Santa Monica fought this but got out of
| compliance. This allowed developed to bypass the city and get
| _thousands_ of units approved. The city is now in compliance but
| is lookking at legal options for fighting the approvals.
|
| Santa Monica, like many wealthy cities, also fought against the
| Westside rail extension into the city [2]. Why? "Crime" of
| course. What this really means is "undesirables", which itself
| means "poor people".
|
| You really see the awful cruelty of some people in all this.
| Rampant NIMBYism and the impact it has on housing supply and
| affordability is a key contributor to homelessness, poverty and
| property crime. Oh well, I guess we'll ship everyone off to
| Martha's Vineyard. Problem solved.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Edito...
|
| [2]: https://la.curbed.com/2013/7/16/10219386/westside-nimbys-
| han...
| pirate787 wrote:
| Santa Monica is not the source of the state's housing crisis,
| and in a democracy where power should rest at the local level,
| the people of cities like Santa Monica should be free to
| determine their future in terms of railroads and housing
| density.
|
| There's an element of tyranny and expropriation in the YIMBY
| movement.
| dlg wrote:
| The YIMBY's are asking the individual property owners be
| allowed to decide what to do with their own properties. Not
| letting government dictate what people do doesn't seem like
| "tyranny" or "expropriation" to me.
| [deleted]
| thebradbain wrote:
| Actually every city in California is mandated to present a
| realistic plan to satisfy their Regional Housing Needs
| Allocation (RHNA) every 10 years if they wish to keep access
| to state infrastructure funding in addition to local control
| of city zoning. That is a law from 1970 reaffirmed and
| strengthened in 1990 and 2019.
|
| Santa Monica has refused to do so for the past 10 years. This
| year they just had their entire zoning code essentially
| overturned by the state (again, per that law) until they were
| back in compliance. In the 3 months they were deemed
| noncompliant before they got their act together, applications
| for 4000 units were filed and now must be approved
| ministerially, which goes a long away to satisfying their
| 8000 unit shortage as determined by RHNA!
|
| Beverly Hills and Pasadena just had their housing elements
| (zoning) thrown out for the same reason. San Francisco,
| Berkeley, and Palo Alto will be next unless they get their
| act together. No city itself is the source of the state's
| housing crisis. But Santa Monica is one part of it.
| mdavidn wrote:
| A lot of California's NIMBYism is rooted in Proposition 13,
| passed in 1978. Many homeowners cannot sell their current home
| and buy one elsewhere in the state without significantly
| increasing their annual property tax burden. (Prop 19 in 2020
| carved out an exception for homeowners over 55.) When a house
| is a family's single largest investment, and Prop 13 makes that
| asset even more illiquid than in other states, stiff opposition
| to any nearby development should surprise nobody.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| You often hear of courts issuing _injunctions_ but not so often
| _writs of mandamus_. That 's because a judge can easily order
| someone NOT to do something, and police show up and prevent them
| from doing it. Ordering them TO do something gets more
| complicated.
|
| That's not to say the courts can't make things happen, but it's
| harder. The relevant party can say "look, I'm doing it!" and the
| court then has to rule "no, you're not."
| singleshot_ wrote:
| The reason why you do not hear of courts issuing writs of
| mandamus against someone to compel them to take some private
| commercial action is because that is not what a writ of
| mandamus is.
|
| A writ of mandamus obligates a government official do do his
| job. If a court wants to order "someone" (read: a citizen who
| is not a government official) to take some positive action they
| issue what is known as a positive injunction which is, as the
| name suggests, a type of injunction.
|
| When a court issues a negative injunction, the enjoined party
| can say, "Look, I'm not doing it!" and the court still has to
| decide whether or not that is true, so I'm somewhat unclear of
| the nature of your argument against positive injunctions.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| where do I say "private commercial action"? We're talking
| about government agencies, which a writ of mandamus CAN apply
| to.
| bombcar wrote:
| Besides ordering specific performance the most common way is
| for the court to say "You need to have done this by this date"
| which then can cause another hearing when that date passes and
| it hasn't been done.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| As you said: "another hearing."
|
| And probably, when that date passes,
|
| 1) someone has to complain to the court
|
| 2) the court has to schedule a hearing, where both parties
| are represented.
|
| In other words, time goes by. Not saying it's impossible.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| For those who are curious, the appellant that is holding up the
| 469 Stevenson project is the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium
| [1], an LLC run by Tenants and Owners Development Corporation
| (aka TODCO) [2]. TODCO plans and develops new and rehabilitated
| senior and SRO housing, with 968 units completed in eight
| properties since 1977 [3].
|
| According to Wikipedia [4], "Since the early 2000s, the
| organization has not built more housing. The organization derives
| resources from the rising value of its properties, which is a
| consequence of skyrocketing property prices in San Francisco."
|
| EDIT: more context from the Wikipedia quote: "The organization
| has used these resources to lobby against housing construction,
| as well as fund various other propositions. The organization has
| been criticized for using the windfalls of its operation on
| political advocacy rather than on its properties and resident
| services."
|
| In other words, they're basically the real estate equivalent of
| patent trolls, except you can't pay them to go away.
|
| 1.
| https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5127075...
|
| 2. https://www.todco.org/advocacy
|
| 3. https://yellow.place/es/todco-group-san-francisco-usa
|
| 4.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_and_Owners_Development...
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > except you can't pay them to go away.
|
| Has anyone tried?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Looks like SF's equivalent of LA's Aids Healthcare Foundation,
| which spends less than 10% of its budget on treating AIDS or on
| healthcare, and instead spends nearly all of its money fighting
| construction in Hollywood that would interfere with the
| sightlines of the AHF HQ.
| thebradbain wrote:
| This ruling is frustrating (to say the least) in the short term,
| but overall I think this ruling going to tremendously backfire in
| NIMBY's faces. This judge just unintentionally put the state's
| spotlight on CEQA -- previously, the dearth of housing laws
| passed this year were careful to navigate within its framework
| without attempting to change it.
|
| Newsom has demonstrated he takes housing starts seriously
| (Really! The fact that virtually every commercial lot is now
| zoned for ministerial housing approval statewide, abolishing
| parking minimums statewide, passing SB9 to allow 2-4plexes on
| single family parcels statewide, and passing SB10 to exempt
| apartments of less than 10 units from CEQA, and directing the
| housing authority to decertify rich cities' zoning codes that
| flout RHNA housing obligations like Santa Monica is huge) and I
| don't expect him to let up.
|
| > State housing laws, she ruled, do not apply to a project until
| after a city "certifies" the project's environmental review.
|
| > Although CEQA puts a one-year limit on environmental review,
| the court held that this deadline is just advisory
|
| If these rulings stand, you can absolutely bet that CA state
| housing laws in 2023 will now turn their focus toward CEQA. At a
| minimum, expect that "advisory" deadline to be formalized,
| shortened, and certification expedited or even exempted if the
| project falls within certain categories. Bike and bus lanes were
| just exempted from CEQA this session, and I absolutely imagine
| housing that is X% affordable will be soon, too.
|
| In fact, really all California has to do is expand SB 330 or
| their 2019 Builders Remedy Law (which itself gave an existing
| state law from 1990 teeth) which states that developers are
| guaranteed ministerial approval regardless of zoning in any
| municipality determined to have a non-certified housing element
| to include expedient and ministerial CEQA approval. What would
| once be considered unthinkable politically a decade ago is now
| just a legislative hop and a skip away.
| tsycho wrote:
| I really really hope you are right.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| > it would be fairer to call the judge's decision tone deaf
| rather than outrageously wrong
|
| It isn't a court's job to evaluate tone or make policy decisions.
| If laws lead to bad outcomes, the laws are the problem. Not the
| courts.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221102211129/https://www.sfchr...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| California's _Tax revenue alone_ ($250B) is about the size of
| Finland's GDP.
|
| Imagine if they spent that on improving the housing situation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Try to keep the scale in mind. Even if the state spent 100% of
| that revenue building housing the most optimistic production
| rate would be half a million dwellings per year which, while
| substantial, is essentially treading water and will do nothing
| to address the accumulated deficit from the last 40 years of
| under-building.
|
| Whenever someone says "image a billion dollars" just remember
| that amounts to 1000-2000 small apartments at best.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Whenever someone says "image a billion dollars" just
| remember that amounts to 1000-2000 small apartments at best._
|
| A billion dollars for a thousand apartments is one million
| per apartment. Even in corrupt, dysfunctional California
| that's crazy high.
|
| The cost should be a few hundred dollars per square foot to
| build, plus land cost. Anything over that is overhead
| California forced on itself.
| bombcar wrote:
| And you can find _houses_ for $500k in California right
| now, so clearly they can build them, but where people want?
|
| Don't know if this will work, but Zillow found 285
| properties between 475-500k built in 2022 that are houses:
|
| https://www.zillow.com/ca/?searchQueryState=%7B%22paginatio
| n...
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is clearly not in accordance with the state's adopted
| climate and energy policies to build five million houses
| in sprawling car-choked desert hellscapes.
| solardev wrote:
| You forgot the high-speed rail line to every apartment.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Plus land costs" is doing a lot of work in your analysis.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| This isn't quite a million, but a current candidate for San
| Jose mayor, Matt Mahon, makes the point that the "housing
| solution" for homelessness is now costing over $100K per
| new unit. He has a proposal to build them for $8K / unit.
|
| Is that realistic? I don't know, but it seems clear that
| any real solution has to be cheaper than what's being spent
| now.
| danudey wrote:
| Imagine if you spent that billion dollars on improving the
| situation around housing to add incentive for affordable
| housing projects, purpose-built rental, and multi-tenant
| dwellings, so that the path of least resistance (and most
| profit) would be to build the housing that the community
| needs.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Whenever someone says "image a billion dollars" just
| remember that amounts to 1000-2000 small apartments at best.
|
| No, small apartments do not cost $500,000-$1,000,000 to
| construct in CA. In dense urban cores (whuch are very small
| parts of even major metro areas) they may cost that much to
| _buy_ , but that's not construction costs.
| astrange wrote:
| > AB2656 made it through the Assembly and the policy committees
| of the Senate, only to be killed without a vote by the chair of
| the Senate Appropriations Committee.
|
| This is a common fate for laws in CA; they don't like voting down
| things when they can silently kill them. In this case it'd be
| popular, as all YIMBY laws are, but was killed by building trade
| unions. Unions and activists alike rely on a lot of "trolling"
| features in state law where they just annoy developers to death
| with process and fake lawsuits until they agree to negotiate with
| whatever their demand is today. It's probably not a good way to
| do things.
| tssva wrote:
| > This is a common fate for laws in CA
|
| 1st to be pedantic, this was a bill not a law.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBpdxEMelR0
|
| 2nd, this is the fate of many a bill in all 50 states and is
| not something unique to the legislative process in CA.
| thebradbain wrote:
| AB2656 may have also been killed because it was a victim of
| compromising too much and the proponents did not see much value
| in trying to get it across the finish line.
|
| A developer having to (1) wait a year after submitting the
| approval to then "call into question" the deadline and then (2)
| wait another 3 months for a decision after that and then (3)
| sue the city for a court order to proceed
|
| is not a "streamlined" process. In fact it's more or less what
| the process already is today in some cities. I'd much rather
| see a better system introduced, rather than that bandaid
| solution:
|
| "If the completed environmental review is not approved within a
| year after submission [for some projects which fulfill X
| criteria], it is assumed compliant." with further safeguards
| like "a city must start the review process within 90 days and
| present major findings within another 90 days after that" to
| avoid the "we just started reviewing it a day before the
| deadline" delay tactic.
| chayesfss wrote:
| outside1234 wrote:
| The judge is up for election in 2025:
| https://ballotpedia.org/Cynthia_Ming-Mei_Lee
|
| Time to swap her out!
| benj111 wrote:
| You elect judges???
|
| Who in hell thought that was a good idea?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Instead of being angry at judges in a lot of cases it would be
| better if the laws were designed better.
| astrange wrote:
| She's not wrong, it's because the law is bad. It'd be better to
| fix the law. CEQA and NEPA are bad ideas in the first place;
| they were designed by environmentalists to slow down bad
| projects, but instead they just slow down everything. Other
| countries don't make you write 300 page reports and get sued by
| all your neighbors to install solar panels.
|
| In the meantime, this can be appealed.
| outside1234 wrote:
| We need to repeal CEQA and replace it with something else. Enough
| is enough.
|
| Can we get a ballot initiative on this for god's sake?
| jeffbee wrote:
| It doesn't need to be repealed. It can be narrowly amended such
| that it does not apply to residential projects within existing
| urban growth boundaries, on previously-developed parcels.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The ballot initiative would lose; CEQA is notionally an
| environmental protection measure.
| chayesfss wrote:
| Shit is designed to keep P0C at the govmnt teet, under their
| control meanwhile a whole bunch of 'ear do sellers'. Just sad
| pessimizer wrote:
| This comment is a good reminder of what YIMBYs are, if you've
| been falling for their PR that makes them out to be civil
| rights activists.
| astrange wrote:
| They're people who would like houses to cost less than $2
| million.
|
| (The above comment appears to be from a "left-NIMBY", which
| is a kind of person that only exists in SF and spends all
| their time blocking new housing because it isn't "affordable"
| - of course, never making new housing also won't make it
| "affordable". They do have a tendency to believe
| poor/minorities are intrinsically poor and will only ever be
| able to live somewhere if they're constantly "organized" by
| "tenant organizers" who are typically over-theorized
| communist grad students or well connected slumlords like
| Michael Weinstein and John Elberling.)
| ars wrote:
| Am I understanding this right - cities in CA are fighting the
| State of CA?
|
| Isn't the State of CA supposed to be made of the cities in CA,
| rather than in opposition to their desires?
|
| If the city doesn't want housing, that should be fought at the
| city level, rather than the state stepping in. The whole thing
| just seems upside down to me.
| [deleted]
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| That's not what's happening here. The actual party challenging
| this project is TODCO [1], a non-profit housing organization
| that actually hasn't built any housing in the last 20 years and
| has spent its revenue in the form of appreciating property
| values in fighting new housing projects by challenging them on
| environmental issues. The Californian law in question that
| allows this challenge is a state (not city) law known as CEQA
| [2]. This issue is much more complicated than a mere issue of
| power delegation between states and cities.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_and_Owners_Development...
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali...
| [deleted]
| hendrikrassmann wrote:
| > warned that they may have violated the Housing Accountability
| Act, which says that cities generally can't deny or downsize
| housing projects that comply with whatever rules are in place at
| the time the project application was submitted.
|
| This sounds like a law which states that you can't break the law.
| bombcar wrote:
| It specifically sets the grandfather date to the project
| application date - so if I roll into your town and submit a
| proposal for a building, you can't tomorrow add a
| "hendrikrassmann law" that requires me to do something
| additional.
|
| Note that this is NOT the case usually - if you propose a
| building today and construction starts in 4 years you often
| have to code-update everything to the construction start date;
| or even the construction _end_ date. So the law has a purpose.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Another way to say it: You can't move the goal post once
| you've started running towards it.
| anm89 wrote:
| This is not a problem at all for me because I would never live in
| California and don't care if they light their state on fire.
|
| If you choose to stay at this point you are consenting to this
| stuff.
| Victerius wrote:
| The court has rendered its judgment. Now let it enforce it. The
| developers should ignore the judge and move forward with the
| project. Bring those bulldozers to the construction site. Put
| shovels in the ground. What's the judge going to do?
|
| Too much progress in this country is being slowed down by judges
| legislating from the bench, on both sides. Everyone should just
| stop following judges orders, Democrats and Republicans. The only
| matters judges are qualified to judge are trials.
| klyrs wrote:
| > What's the judge going to do?
|
| Issue an injunction, have the construction workers arrested and
| charge the developers with contempt?
| pc2g4d wrote:
| Too much legislating from the bench is a symptom of too little
| legislating in the legislature...
| benjaminl wrote:
| Normally that is the case, but California has been very
| active passing significant housing reform legislation in the
| past couple of years. Just this last legislative session over
| 20 housing bills were passed: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insigh
| ts/publications/2022/10/calif...
|
| The problem is that city counsels and judges are skirting
| laws by violating clear legislative intent.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| > Everyone should just stop following judges orders, Democrats
| and Republicans.
|
| So... no more rule of law. Got it. What could possibly go
| wrong? /s
| gort19 wrote:
| erehweb wrote:
| The judge wouldn't have to do anything. A city that wants to
| stop construction could use a police officer to do it, and they
| would be legally in the clear.
| LegitShady wrote:
| There would be an emergency injunction filed and they would
| send police to the job site if they didn't listen
| ProAm wrote:
| When a city becomes unlivable the smart decision is to move. It's
| the easiest answer for all parties involved.
| mdavidn wrote:
| Proposition 13 makes that option untenable for many homeowners.
| They cannot sell and buy a house elsewhere in the state without
| significantly increasing their property tax burden.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| No longer true. You can move anywhere in the state and keep
| your tax bill, as long as it's not a more expensive house.
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