Affordable Housing

California's 15 Housing Bills Won't Do Enough
At a new affordable housing project in a low-income neighborhood of San Francisco, Gov. Brown signed the package Friday that places a $4 billion housing bond on the ballot next year, adds a $75 real estate transaction fee, and streamlines permitting.

L.A.'s New Transit Oriented Communities Guidelines Are a Boost for Affordable Housing
The city of Los Angeles is taking substantive action to provide incentives for affordable housing development.

Proposed Density Causes 'Chaos' at the Newark City Council Hearing
A suite of zoning changes that would increase building heights and density along the Passaic River in Newark, New Jersey, provoked a chaotic council hearing that devolved into shouting and the removal of residents from the council chambers.

Downtown L.A. Sees Vacancies Rise and Homeless Populations Grow
There's plenty of housing available in Downtown L.A. for the wealthy but, while those apartments sit empty, many looking for housing find costs too high to pay.

Sustainable for Whom? Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and 'Environmental Gentrification'
Large, adaptive-reuse projects are all the rage in urban planning today, but absent a fundamentally new approach—with affordability at the center of the process—they are likely to become engines of what's been termed "environmental gentrification."

Critical Housing Bills Pass California Legislature on Final Day
The California legislature ended its season on Friday, handing Gov. Jerry Brown a third major victory. After passing landmark legislation earlier in transportation and climate change, a slate of controversial housing bills await his signature.

Philadelphia Developer Sues Affordable Housing Project Over Parking Spaces
As Philadelphia's Breeze Point gets more expensive, a market-rate developer is claiming that an affordable housing development's surface parking lot is taking up land that could be homes.

How Overly Restrictive Land Use Regulations Hurt the Nation's Economy
Two economics professors from the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley argue that the housing crisis doesn't just affect booming coastal cities. It's a national problem.

White Communities in the Bay Area Don't Plan as Much Low-Income Housing as Their Neighbors Do
Goals for low-income housing were lower in majority white cities and communities than they were in their more diverse neighbors.

The Unequal Distribution of Public Housing Across Los Angeles
KPCC has published an interactive map showing the publicly funded affordable housing developments in Los Angeles County.

Report: D.C. Inclusionary Zoning Finally Getting On Track
The Housing Department also found that inclusionary zoning (IZ) has not adversely impacted new development.

AVs and Real Estate - A Guide to Potential Impacts
AVs are more than a transportation issue and will have significant impacts on real estate. Expect AVs to affect parking, sprawl, housing prices, and transit.

Headed for Approval: Rezoning for Affordable Housing in Far Rockaway
The New York City neighborhood of Far Rockaway will see the latest of the rezoning proposals at the center of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's affordable housing plan.

Two Housing Bills Will Exacerbate California's Housing Shortage
SB 35 (Wiener) and AB 199 (Chu) make it more costly to build housing by requiring prevailing wages where applicable, pleasing construction unions but making affordable housing less affordable, opines CALmatters political columnist, Dan Walters.
The Left Critiques YIMBYism
There are two fundamental flaws with the emergent "YIMBY" approach to planning and development politics, according to this article in an influential magazine of the American left.

Boston's Inclusionary Zoning Track Record Revealed
A new city report provides data on the number of affordable housing units built in the city of Boston as a result of the Inclusionary Development Policy.

Affordable Housing Incentives Get Pushback in Maryland
Montgomery County's plan for Bethesda calls for height bonuses in return for affordable housing. Residents neighboring the proposed incentive zones have successfully resisted that idea.

The 'Inclusionary Housing Calculator' Will See If Your Affordable Housing Ideas Pencil Out
The debate about inclusionary zoning persists—with some pro-development saying affordable housing fees and requirements stifle development before it can start. A new tool helps crunch the numbers behind the debate.

Critiquing Santa Monica's 'Grand Bargain' of a Downtown Plan
The city of Santa Monica increased in population by 6,500 between 1960 and 2010, while the rest of Los Angeles County grew by 60 percent over the same period. A debate over a new downtown plan that includes more housing was never going to be simple.

Op-Ed: To Lower Housing Costs, Make it Cheaper and Easier to Build Housing
The argument in the headline, put more specifically: inclusionary zoning, fees, legal challenges, and minimum apartment sizes are counter-productive. The only policy that will add housing stock, is to make it much cheaper to add housing stock.
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