Bay Area Land News - November 12, 2019
US / California / Bay Area News
California’s housing crisis is sputtering along
The Mercury News
The latest developments in California’s housing crisis are, as usual, mixed. In September, according to the Legislature’s budget analyst, permits for 10,580 new housing units were issued, a 13% increase from August and a 40% boost from September 2018. However, overall housing starts are still running below 2018’s level, meaning the net gain for the year, including housing that’s burned or been demolished, will likely be well below 100,000 units, or about half of what the state says we need to build each year.
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Bay Area homes are getting more affordable, closing gap with rest of state
San Francisco Chronicle
This may sound hard to believe if you’re house hunting, but Bay Area homes got significantly more affordable in the third quarter, thanks to a big drop in mortgage rates, rising incomes and lower home prices, according to a report issued Thursday by the California Association of Realtors. The region is still the least affordable in California, but it’s closing the gap with the rest of the state. In the Bay Area, 29% of households theoretically could buy a median-priced, single-family home in the third quarter, up from 24% in the second quarter and 21% in the third quarter of last year, according to the association’s “affordability index.”
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The $4.5 Billion Puzzle
Silicon Valley Business Times
When Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook announced Monday that the Cupertino tech giant was pledging $2.5 billion toward combatting California’s housing crisis, he said it was because his company calls Silicon Valley home. “We feel a profound civic responsibility to ensure it remains a vibrant place where people can live, have a family and contribute to the community," Cook said. That stands in contrast to the way Silicon Valley's largest tech employer has traditionally approached its role in the local community.
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Opportunity Zones' Social Impact On California's Housing Market
Forbes
California is positioned to take full advantage of an opportunity to breathe life into low-income neighborhoods throughout the state. An economic impact of hundreds of millions of dollars could significantly improve conditions in the state's 879 federally designated opportunity zones in low-income communities. With more opportunity zones than any other state, California is in prime position to stabilize its economy, thanks to socially conscious investors looking to make a difference while maximizing their returns.
San Francisco News
SF election’s muddled housing message
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco’s latest election yielded a paradox. London Breed, the city’s pro-housing mayor, won re-election in a landslide. But her choice to represent her former district, Vallie Brown, lost narrowly to Dean Preston, who stands to exacerbate the Board of Supervisors’ already pronounced bias against housing. The result echoes a contradiction at the heart of politics and public opinion in San Francisco, where far more officials and residents claim to support housing than are willing to welcome it to their neighborhoods.
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1 in 3 San Francisco residents wants out, according to city survey
San Francisco Gate
More than a third of San Franciscans can't see themselves staying in the city much longer, according to none other than the city of San Francisco itself. The survey, conducted by San Francisco's Office of the Controller, found that 35% of respondents were either "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to move out of San Francisco in the next three years. Residents under the age of 35 were the most likely to want to leave and — no surprise here — renters were about twice as likely as homeowners to be thinking of bailing.
How loss of Mayor Breed’s allies at the polls could make her job harder
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco progressives are celebrating two major wins from last week’s election that could signal a significant change in how the city approaches key issues such as housing and crime. That shift could create headaches for Mayor London Breed, who must now forge a relationship with two newly elected officials — Dean Preston as District Five supervisor and Chesa Boudin as district attorney — who both ran on platforms that buck parts of her agenda.
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South Bay News
New downtown San Jose office tower will be first in California to use time-saving structural system
Silicon Valley Business Times
The company building 200 Park Ave., a new downtown San Jose office tower by Jay Paul Co., is using a composite steel-concrete hybrid system to build the tower's core that is expected to reduce construction time of its core by more than 30 percent. Level 10 Construction — the general contractor for Jay Paul's CityView Plaza redevelopment project and for numerous Jay Paul projects in Silicon Valley — is using a structural system for 200 Park Ave. dubbed "SpeedCore."
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Swenson collects properties at choice downtown San Jose development site
East Bay Times
The Swenson real estate firm has bought a commercial property in a key section of downtown San Jose, a deal that gives the veteran developer control of choice parcels near San Pedro Square and the site of Google’s proposed transit village. Green Valley Corp., an entity controlled by Swenson, bought the property in downtown San Jose near the corner of North Almaden Boulevard and West St. John Street where Dark Horse Gym now operates.
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Arson-gutted sex shop may yield to housing tower in downtown San Jose
The Mercury News
A building containing a sex shop that a fatal arson fire had gutted could be bulldozed and replaced with a residential tower in downtown San Jose. The fire in September captured plenty of attention: Investigators determined the blaze at the Craze 4 Toys Adult Superstore, a long-time fixture at 17 E. Santa Clara St. in San Jose, was set by store owner Pirtpal Singh, 33, who had been evicted from the building and died in the conflagration. Now, the property owner, Cupertino resident Eunice Kim, has proposed the development of a residential tower that would replace the two-story building near the corner of East Santa Clara Street and North First Street, according to documents on file with San Jose city planners.
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Peninsula News
Microtransit looking for riders
The Daily Journal
Six months after launching, SamTrans’ microtransit pilot, a new on-demand bus service, is not seeing the ridership numbers officials had hoped for, but those who have used it are overwhelmingly satisfied with their experience, according to the transit agency. Dubbed SamTrans OnDemand, the new bus line replaced the FLX Pacifica line in May, serving a 5-square-mile area around the Linda Mar community. The service allows passengers to request a ride to anywhere in the service area via an app or by calling SamTrans. Buses make stops based on an algorithm that plots out the most efficient route while having some safeguards to make sure the first ones to board are served as close to first as makes sense. So far, wait times for the bus average 12 minutes and the app has accurately predicted arrival times.
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Reimagining Redwood City's downtown
The Daily Journal
With transformative development projects and increased rail service in the works, Redwood City next year will begin developing a new land use vision for its downtown. On Monday, the City Council unanimously agreed to initiate the visioning process, which will begin in the summer or fall of 2020 and span a year.
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Menlo Park council to consider enacting state renter protection law early
The Almanac
Word of a new state law that restricts evictions and rent hikes, set to take effect Jan. 1, has triggered a number of major rent increases and evictions in Menlo Park as some landlords seek to make the most of the remaining months of a less-regulated rental market. Assembly Bill 1482, passed Sept. 11 in the state Legislature and signed into law on Oct. 8, creates two policies aimed at protecting renters. Starting Jan. 1, landlords will not be permitted to evict renters without a reason, and under certain conditions may be required to pay evicted tenants relocation assistance.
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After dropping expansion plans, Stanford moves ahead with another faculty housing project
East Bay Times
Despite abruptly withdrawing a 3.5-million-square-foot expansion proposal in Santa Clara County last week, Stanford University is moving ahead with a separate, smaller housing development for faculty members in its neighboring county to the north. The proposed housing would be built about three miles from campus on Alpine Road just south of Westridge Drive in Portola Valley and would consist of 27 for-sale single-family homes for university faculty and 12 affordable rental units spread across three buildings for residents of the town.
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Inside Stanford's bid to expand -- and how it came undone
Palo Alto Online
The largest project in Santa Clara County's history got the axe just before noon on Nov. 1, when Catherine Palter, Stanford University's associate vice president for land use and environmental planning, sent a letter to county Planning Director Jacqueline Onciano informing her that Stanford was pulling its application to expand development on the campus. "We regret that it is necessary for Stanford to withdraw the permit application, and we greatly appreciate the hard work of your office in reviewing it," Palter stated, alluding to the nearly three years of analysis that culminated in an environmental impact report, three meetings by the county's Planning Commission and three more by the Board of Supervisors, which was set to rule on the application on Nov. 5.
Woodside council rejects challenge by equestrian bridge opponents
The Almanac
The Woodside Town Council has reversed a ruling by the Planning Commission that denied a conditional use permit for a bridge that will enable equestrians to bypass a washed-out section of a trail. The bridge to be placed across Bear Gulch Creek near the intersection of Woodside Road and Why Worry Lane will reopen the Center Trail, a riding trail that has been in use for more than 100 years, according to the staff report on the project. The trail closed following a storm in 2017.
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Foster City considers a new agenda policy
The Daily Journal
The Foster City Council is interested in implementing a new policy for how and when items are placed on an agenda. The current practice is the mayor and city manager work together to develop an agenda for council meetings. Councilmembers also sometimes submit requests to place an item on the agenda, but there is no policy in place to govern that process.
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Burlingame examines renter protections
The Daily Journal
As concerns rise around the repercussions from a new state law capping rent hikes, Burlingame officials are set to host a discussion examining potential protections for tenants fearing eviction. The Burlingame City Council will address calls from advocacy organizations to establish a local urgency ordinance aimed at preventing landlords from evicting tenants in advance of the rent gouging prohibition taking hold.
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Fortinet widens Sunnyvale holdings, big campus footprint expands
The Mercury News
Fortinet, a tech company with sharply rising sales and robust profits, has taken steps to expand its Sunnyvale headquarters campus with a fresh purchase of a big site in the vicinity. In July, the cybersecurity tech company broke ground on a new headquarters expected to total 172,000 square feet, and Fortinet is now poised for an even larger presence in Sunnyvale.
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A different kind of condo complex
Mountain View Voice
If you didn't know what you were looking at, the Mountain View Cohousing Community appears to be like any other apartment complex in the city. It's located on Calderon Avenue, just across the fence from Landels Elementary School and a short walk downtown, and proposes a kind of intentional living and sharing of community resources that is relatively rare in Silicon Valley. Jenny Bixby and her husband Ken Rosenfeld have been members of the MVCC since September 2018, and raised their children in a cohousing community in Massachusetts before they moved to the Bay Area. Bixby said that she prefers cohousing because she wants to be connected with her neighbors.
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East Bay News
Most Oakland vacant parcel owners get a tax break
The Mercury News
Easing the sticker shock for landowners subject to Oakland’s new parcel tax on vacant properties, the city is cutting the $6,000 annual fee in half next year for most people. The tax — which was approved by more than 70 percent of Oakland voters last year — was created to discourage corporate speculators and spur development by charging property owners $6,000 a year for holding onto vacant lots and $3,000 a year for not renting out units in apartment buildings.
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North Bay News
San Rafael adopts 3-strike policy for vacation rentals
The Mercury News
The San Rafael City Council has adopted an ordinance regulating online vacation rentals, establishing a three-strike policy for problematic rentals. The City Council voted unanimously on Monday to pass the ordinance on the first reading, establishing rules for an industry that was previously unregulated in San Rafael.
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