Latest News
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the news items cited here do not necessarily represent the opinion of Catalysts for Local Control. We try to present a balanced picture of the news on the subject of housing and legislation.
Marin Voice: Large Fairfax housing proposal part of concerning trend
By DOUG KELLY
January 30, 2025
If you’re a typical homeowner, your most important asset is your home; it’s your wealth. If you live in Marin, however, I am concerned that you are about to lose much of your wealth – unless voters take action. In Fairfax, there is a plan for a six-story building in the middle of town that will change the town for the worse. I think it will lower home values. In San Rafael, one plan is for a 16-story complex. If plans like these move forward, it will be the beginning of the end for our suburb. We will become something much worse than what we are today.
MTC Commission and ABAG Executive Board Approve Plan Bay Area 2050+ Final Blueprint for Further Study
Leading up to this month’s Final Blueprint approval, MTC and ABAG also released the final update to the Equity Priority Communities (EPCs) geographies in December 2024. In addition to informing long-range planning efforts, EPCs are also used to identify funding and public engagement priorities, among other areas. The final Plan Bay Area 2050+ Equity Priority Communities Map ensures that no EPC tracts previously identified as part of Plan Bay Area 2050 will lose EPC status in Plan Bay Area 2050+.
Sacramento’s attack on our suburbs
By Cherie Zaslawsky
January 23, 2025
Though we’re told we’re facing a “housing crisis,” when you come right down to it, we’re experiencing more of a “legislation crisis” since Sacramento has robbed our cities of local control over zoning, insisting we squeeze hundreds of “affordable housing” units into our mostly built-out downtowns. These monolithic apartment complexes tower over a number of our suburban cities of mostly one- and two-story buildings. Such high-density high-rises have sprouted up all along El Camino Real as if overnight.
Menlo Park finds development application at 80 Willow inconsistent with standards
by Eleanor Raab
January 17, 2025
Menlo Park has determined that the application for the controversial “Willow Park” development at 80 Willow Road, the site of the former Sunset Magazine headquarters, is not consistent with city development standards. As the project was submitted under the ‘builder’s remedy’ provision of state housing law, this determination does not amount to a denial of the project. Consistency review is a required step under state housing law, even if it does not necessarily change the outcome of the project.
Malibu, fires, and the Mandate for Endless Growth
Posted by: Zelda Bronstein –
January 14, 2025
“California will force Malibu and other towns to add housing. Here’s why that’s not nearly enough.”
So reads the headline on an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times on May 5, 2024. The authors are Paavo Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, and Aaron Barrall, a housing data analyst at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Monkkonen is one of the most vocal advocates of the Yimby build-baby-build agenda.
Developers making millions from ‘affordable housing’ program lobbied California lawmakers to shut down regulation
By KATE TALERICO
UPDATED: January 2, 2025
Developers who have reaped millions of dollars from an affordable housing program for middle-income renters with sometimes little-to-no discounts from market rents have spent hundreds of thousands on lobbying and campaign donations in recent years in a bid to keep lawmakers from imposing regulations. The expenditures represent a fraction of the $32 million the California real estate industry as a whole spent on lobbying the state legislature and the executive branch in the past three years.
Billions Spent On Homelessness, Yet It Is Still Increasing. Why?
Dick Platkin
December 26 2024
The city, county, and state of California are spending billions to eliminate homelessness, yet the number of homeless people is still increasing. For example, by mid-2023, the State of California had spent $17.5 billion on homelessness. LA County has allocated about $800 million for fiscal year 2024-25, and the City of Los Angeles has budgeted $961 million. Let me explain why I think the numbers of homeless and overcrowded people are still increasing, despite so much local spending. The problem is NOT a housing shortage.
Marin Voice: To save Democratic Party, Bay Area must build more homes
By DAVID NEWMAN
December 23, 2024
There is a startling contradiction at the heart of Bay Area politics. On the one hand, the Bay Area is an unabashed “blue” stronghold, defining itself by its support for diversity and tolerance. Yet its resistance to building new homes cuts against these values. Experts have proven that suppressing housing is fundamentally regressive, massively increasing segregation, per-capita carbon emissions and rents. The opposition to development is kneecapping the Democratic Party on a national level.
How a Yimby candidate with little experience became Berkeley’s next mayor
By Zelda Bronstein
December 19, 2024
Berkeley’s new mayor, education consultant Adena Ishii, is a Yimby with scant experience in the town’s governance and politics. To be sure, Berkeley has had a Yimby mayor for most of the past eight years. But Jesse Arreguín’s Yimbyism was an acquired taste. He was first elected mayor in 2016 on an anti-Yimby platform. Shortly after taking office, he jumped onto the antidemocratic, “pro-housing” bandwagon.