Articles

Mobile home parks often represent meaningful opportunities for cities to provide affordable housing. Conversions of rental mobile home parks to individual ownerships can lead to thorny issues. They can create affordable ownership opportunities for lower income families and individuals, or they can displace the same economically disadvantaged households burdened with a difficult-to-relocate housing asset. 

Ideal Boat & Camper Storage began operating as an equipment storage yard in 1964, and in subsequent years, obtained various county approvals, including two site development review (SDR) approvals, the latest in 1990. In 1993, the county adopted a new area planning document which sought to promote viticulture in the area and in 1994, the area plan was incorporated in the comprehensive general plan for the east area of the county. 

The $188 million Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), which broke ground earlier this month, is the most recent example of a fast-growing list of public facilities with big ambitions: the local transit hub that connects local and regional transit rail lines with bus service, taxies, bicycle locks and sometimes business services for travelers.  The anticipation of high-speed rail also adds some drama to the Anaheim transit center. 

The $188 million Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), which broke ground earlier this month, is the most recent example of a fast-growing list of public facilities with big ambitions: the local transit hub that connects local and regional transit rail lines with bus service, taxies, bicycle locks and sometimes business services for travelers.  The anticipation of high-speed rail also adds some drama to the Anaheim transit center. 

When Jerry Brown first proposed killing redevelopment -- back in January 2011, when he released his first budget -- he said he would replace it with some other economic development tool. After Brown succeeded -- when he released his second budget, in January 2012, just days after the Supreme Court killed redevelopment – his tune changed, ever so slightly. He said he would consider bringing redevelopment back if it didn't affect the state's general fund.

Fair enough.

It's safe to say that the City of Calistoga's Silver Rose Referendum will not be the most important question on the ballot in the this November. Nor will Escondido's general plan measure, nor even a preliminary vote on draining Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

While Gov. Jerry Brown's veto of redevelopment-related bills and the earlier failure of parking reform bill Assembly Bill 904 caused some consternation around the state, he did in fact sign a wide array of bills relating to land use at the end of last month. 

Over the past year, even the most irate objectors to Gov. Jerry Brown's dismantling of redevelopment held out hope that in agreeing to kill redevelopment, the legislature would invent a new, better system for stoking local economic growth. Last week, the governor dashed those hopes. 

When voters in Orange County approved the creation of the 1,300-acre Orange County Great Park out of the shuttered Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, they had every reason to believe the estimated $1.2 billion cost would come, partially, from redevelopment monies. Such was the status quo in 2002.

Watch out, Copenhagen.

Like so many a rider at the back of the peleton, California cities have long lagged behind their European counterparts in their embrace of bicycling. But they are now clipping in and gearing with the dramatic arrival of bike sharing. With zero major bike-sharing systems currently in the state, no fewer than five California cities will be adopting pilot projects by mid-2013.  

In a state with the likes of Yosemite, Griffith, Balboa, and Golden Gate, the development of a neighborhood park scarcely larger than a Trader Joe's parking lot may not seem particularly noteworthy. But the pocket parks, community gardens, and micro-recreation areas of the City of Los Angeles' 50 Parks Initiative are intended to be landmarks in some of the state's neediest communities.

In 2006, a developers Y.T. Wong and SMI Construction, Inc. proposed to divide two existing ‘R-1' zoned parcels totaling 1.89 acres into 11 lots to allow for the development of single-family homes in the community of Fairview in unincorporated Alameda County, bordering the City of Hayward. The county sent out written notices to a number of agencies, neighbors, and other interested parties, including the group that would become the appellants, indicating the county's intent to utilize the section 15332 (Infill Development) CEQA exemption.

A proposal to use eminent domain to ward off foreclosures in two cities in San Bernardino County has been slammed almost unanimously by both Wall Street and federal regulators. The most powerful dissenter was Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who said on August 7 that he would resist any effort by local governments to "take" homes owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies under his supervision; those agencies buy the majority of US home loans and repackage them as mortgage-backed securities.

In a case pitting a real estate brokerage against a homeowners association, the trial court sustained demurrers to the HOA's complaint against real estate brokers who acted as dual agents in the developers' sale of properties in the development to HOA members.