The 15 new housing laws were signed by Jerry Brown on Friday, and it sure seems like the politicians were intent on throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the so-called housing crisis. But as you read through the bills, and listen to the Governor above, how confident are you that anything will change?
“This package has everything from A to Z – affordability to zoning,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said in a statement. “It’s not a magic wand, but it is going to put a lot of drafting tools, backhoes, hammers and door keys to work.”
State Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, an author of one of the major bills in the package, said the state has only begun to address its housing challenges.
“This is a necessary and critical first start,” she said.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, pledged to do more next year.
“Today, California begins a pivot … I am happy to hear my colleagues (say) this is the beginning, not the end, because I have some bills for you next year,” Wiener said.
The housing bills provide new funding for low-income housing development, seek to lower the cost of construction, fast-track building, and restrict the ability of cities and counties to block new development. Here’s a rundown of the bills in the package:
Senate Bill 2, Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego: Imposes a new $75 to $225 fee on real estate transactions. Estimated to generate $250 to $300 million per year to fund affordable housing development, programs to assist homeless people and long-range development planning in cities and counties. For 2018, revenue would be split equally between the state and local government. The state share is specifically aimed at combating homelessness. It’s available for rental assistance, homeless navigation centers and development of housing for homeless people.
Senate Bill 3, Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose: Will put a $4 billion housing bond before voters in November 2018. If approved, $1 billion would go to the CalVet home loan program, established in 1921 to help military veterans purchase homes. The remaining $3 billion would help fund low-income housing projects and development near jobs and public transportation.
Senate Bill 35, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco: Lets developers bypass the lengthy and often expensive review process for new housing development, which includes extensive environmental analysis and public hearings. If a community has not built enough housing – state law outlines the housing needs, at all income levels, for each city and county in California – developers can bring forth a project without undergoing the process. It mandates higher construction worker pay and benefits on projects with 10 units or more.
Here is the N.A.R. press release on Trump’s tax reform, and reiterates the same threat that home values will plummet if the M.I.D. goes away:
WASHINGTON (September 27, 2017) – A group of legislators and administration leaders known as the “Big 6” today released an outline for comprehensive tax reform that if enacted, according to the National Association of Realtors®, could lead to a tax on homeownership for millions.
According to the Big 6’s framework for tax reform, changes to the current tax code would eliminate important provisions, such as the state and local tax deduction, while nearly doubling the standard deduction and eliminating personal and dependency exemptions. NAR believes the result would all but nullify the incentive to purchase a home for most, amounting to a de facto tax increase on homeowners, putting home values across the country at risk and ensuring that only the top 5 percent of Americans have the opportunity to benefit from the mortgage interest deduction.
NAR President William E. Brown, a second-generation Realtor® from Alamo, California and founder of Investment Properties said that the proposal reaffirms Realtors®’ concerns from earlier in the year and urged lawmakers to keep homeowners in mind as they proceed with comprehensive tax reform with the following statement:
“We have always said that tax reform – a worthy endeavor – should first do no harm to homeowners. The tax framework released by the Big 6 today missed that goal.
“This proposal recommends a backdoor elimination of the mortgage interest deduction for all but the top 5 percent who would still itemize their deductions.
This article adds the numbers. We need to build at least three times as many homes as we’ve been building to keep up with the growth – and no telling what that would do to prices, if anything:
SAN DIEGO (CNS) – As the homeless population grows and rents balloon in San Diego, city officials Thursday announced a series of proposals to help alleviate the housing shortage over the next 10 years.
Numerous changes to city codes and procedures are required to meet the housing demand, according to a report presented to the City Council’s Smart Growth and Land Use Committee.
Some of those changes include rezoning areas around transit hubs to increase density, converting unused industrial zones into residential areas and encouraging smaller unit sizes. Making use of vacant lots and easing some onerous parking requirements are also among the ideas identified in the report.
“This is an exciting step because it gives the city goals for the future, and it gives the city goals to be measured by,” San Diego Housing Commission President Richard Gentry said.
To meet the housing need in San Diego, as many as 220,000 new housing units will need to be built by 2028, the report said. The top annual production rate within the last 5 years has been of 6,400 units. Even with the solutions identified in the report, San Diego would have to bolster its production rate.
“To meet the projected needs for the city for the next 10 years, we will need to produce between 17,000 and 24,000 housing units per year — a dawning task but a worthy goal to be set,” Gentry said.
After the presentation, City Councilwoman Georgette Gomez worried that more units may not necessarily fix the housing crisis facing the region.
“I would love to work with the housing commission to look at the affordability of housing,” Gomez said. “I’m not a firm believer that just creating units is going to get to the actual issues that are in front of us.”
According to a staff report, the annual rate of housing construction has been well under half that of population growth over the past decade, creating a warped supply-and-demand situation that has prompted costs to skyrocket. The result is that half of San Diegans can’t find rental units they can afford and 60 percent can’t afford to purchase a home, according to the report.
“What we are doing is driving our kids and grandkids right out of town,” Councilman Scott Sherman said.
The report identified the communities of Skyline-Paradise Hills, Linda Vista, Otay Mesa, Clairemont Mesa and Navajo as the areas with the largest housing growth potential. As many as 74,000 units could be built all together in those five communities.
If all the suggestions in the report are carried out, that 10-year housing goal could be met or exceeded. Then hope later one is to keep that same production rate through 2028 to keep up with the expected population growth.
On September 14, 2016, the top transit official in the United States committed $1 billion toward building the San Diego region’s newest trolley line, signing an agreement that will provide 50 percent of the funds to extend the popular transit service for 11-miles from Old Town to UC San Diego and the University City community.
The largest public transit project in the history of the San Diego region, the Mid-Coast Trolley Extension will extend the existing Blue Line, building nine new stops along the north coast of San Diego, including near Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, the VA Medical Center, the UC San Diego campus, and the dense residential and commercial areas along Genesee Avenue.
“The Mid-Coast Trolley will bring fast, reliable transit to the places where it’s most needed, including our largest research university and biggest employment center,” SANDAG Chair and San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Ron Roberts said. “At the same time, it is an outstanding example of our ability to leverage the region’s local TransNet dollars to bring in outside money to complete major transportation projects.”
The San Diego region was able to garner the 50 percent match for the Mid-Coast Trolley in large part because it has a dedicated local source of funding that provided the other 50 percent match for the project. Revenues from TransNet, the countywide half-cent sales tax for transportation, are covering half of the $2.1 billion total project cost.
“FTA is proud to partner with San Diego to bring new transit options to this growing region,” said FTA Acting Administrator Carolyn Flowers. “With the population along the Mid-Coast corridor expected to grow nearly 20 percent in the coming decades, this Trolley extension will offer a much-needed alternative to traffic congestion in the years ahead.”
A ceremonial signing of the Full Funding Grant Agreement – dedicating approximately $1 billion to the project over the course of 10 years subject to annual Congressional approval – took place on the campus of UC San Diego, at a location where the future Pepper Canyon Trolley station will be built. As part of the ceremony, Flowers handed Roberts a symbolic $1 billion check. Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) Board Chair Harry Mathis, UC San Diego Vice Chancellor Gary Matthews, and Cynthia Abair, Acting Director of VA San Diego Health Care System, also spoke during the ceremony.
Pre-construction activities for the project – primarily the relocation of underground utilities out of the project alignment – are already underway. Primary construction is expected to begin this October, with service anticipated to start in 2021.
Once the extension is built, transit riders will enjoy a one-seat ride (no transfers) from San Ysidro to University City. Planners estimate that the project will provide more than 20,000 new transit trips every weekday.
The construction of the Mid-Coast project is expected to produce more than 14,000 new local jobs. Even after the construction is over, the Mid-Coast project will have an estimated $116 million of annual economic impact on the region by reducing congestion, reducing parking needs, and increasing access to jobs. The Mid-Coast corridor supports more than 325,000 jobs. The two ends of the route – Downtown San Diego and University City – account for nearly half of that total.
Climate change has been hotly contested, and who knows what the eventual outcome will be. It’s unlikely that we will have to worry about any possible effects, but your kids might – and look out Mission Beach! Hat tip daytrip!
As glaciers melt amid the heat of a warming planet, scientists predict that coastal communities in the United States could eventually experience flooding from higher tides.
Conservative estimates range from an increase of about one to four feet in sea-level rise by the end of the century. Experts also warn that people should be prepared for unlikely but extreme scenarios of up to eight feet in sea-level rise, which would cause severe and chronic flooding in hundreds of coastal cities.
Grappling with this problem would be expensive for local governments. Anticipating the costly possibility, the city of Imperial Beach and the counties of Marin and San Mateo last week filed potentially groundbreaking lawsuits to push large oil and coal companies to foot the bill.
According to scientists, sea-level rise is underway in some seaside neighborhoods and comes on top of the potential for large storms to intensify because of climate change. Cities along the East Coast — such as Miami, Boston and Charleston, S.C. — face the greatest risk, but flooding is also projected to harm much of San Diego County’s coastline in the coming decades.
The major questions currently are: How much flooding will vulnerable cities experience, and how fast?
SAN DIEGO (KGTV)–Creating a quick, temporary respite for San Diego’s homeless population at Qualcomm Stadium was at the forefront of today’s meeting of the San Diego City Council’s Select Committee on Homelessness.
Committee chair and City Councilmember Christopher Ward, who represents the third district, presented options including:
Temporary housing at Golden Hall downtown
Temporary housing at Qualcomm Stadium practice field
Expanding outreach efforts
Creating more places in city-controlled facilities where people who live in their cars can spend the night
“One of the big barriers people have from getting off the streets today is that their stuff is on the streets,” Ward said. “So trying to go interview with the Housing Council or seek health assistance or do a job interview, they don’t want to leave their stuff. We don’t have enough storage and that’s something the city can provide.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has taken pains to stress that the Trump administration isn’t out to kill Americans’ beloved mortgage-interest tax deduction — but a side effect of the plan could turn it into a perk for only the wealthy.
President Donald Trump has proposed rewriting the tax code to raise the standard federal deduction to a level where about 25 million homeowners would no longer take advantage of the century-old break.
A married couple would need a home-loan balance of about $608,000 — almost triple the mortgage on a median-priced U.S. home — before using it would make sense, according to a new analysis by property-data provider Trulia. That would be up from about $322,000 today.
Without the incentives, along with a proposed end to local property-tax deductions, home sales may be hurt in cities where prices are rising quickly and buyers are stretching to afford their purchases, from Denver and Portland to Boston and Washington, D.C. Reduced demand would weigh on values, causing price declines nationwide, according to the National Association of Realtors, which opposes the change.
The proposal “is a backdoor way of rendering the mortgage-interest deduction close to worthless,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.
Prices may fall 10 percent on average nationwide, taking into account the lack of deduction for state and local property taxes, according to a preliminary estimate prepared by a consultant for the National Association of Realtors. Zandi, of Moody’s, said the proposed deduction changes would reduce prices by about 4?percent nationally, including the property-tax impact, with bigger decreases in pricier parts of the country.
Economists have been critical of the mortgage-interest deduction because it disproportionately benefits people with more expensive properties, including many who would have purchased even without the break. It also inflates home prices because buyers often overestimate their tax savings when they’re budgeting for a purchase, said Dennis Ventry, a professor at University of California, Davis, School of Law who has studied the program’s history.
Trump’s plan might boost homeownership rates over time because a drop in prices would improve affordability and the standard deduction would give buyers more money to spend on a house, Ventry said.
The real-estate industry is lining up against the proposal, including the powerful National Association of Realtors, which spent $10.2 million lobbying Congress in the first quarter, more than any other organization except the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Trump’s plan also targets tax deductions for state and local taxes paid — a provision that would hurt homeowners in states where property taxes are high.
“One of the big reasons for homeownership is the ability to deduct property taxes,” said Coldwell Banker Realtor Kevin Cascone, who’s based in Westfield, New Jersey. “If that’s eliminated, what’s the difference between renting and buying?”
An online auction to sell real estate? Maybe it will catch on!
Gone are the days of the quick talking auctioneer, paddles and shouted bids. Today, San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister announced he is moving the annual property tax sale auction online.
“With this new system, people sitting at home can browse and bid on more than 1,600 properties currently available, including timeshares starting at $900,” said McAllister. “The online auction aligns with our ‘e-nitiative’ to make it easier and more efficient to do all business with us electronically.”
The online tax sale auction will take place May 5-10. Interested buyers can register as a bidder beginning April 5, and registration will end April 27. Bidders must put up a $1,000 advance and a nonrefundable $35 bid processing fee.
“Moving this tax sale online will cut our operation costs compared to a live auction,” said McAllister. “We also hope to sell more properties as we open the auction up to bidders outside the San Diego region – even around the world.”
All sales are final, so this is a buyer beware sale. Before April, the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office (TTC) encourages everyone to research the selection of available properties by clicking here.
Right now, there are about 1,600 parcels available, roughly four times the number we have put up for auction in previous years. The majority – 1,231 – are timeshares, many with minimum bids as low as $900.
The remaining 393 parcels are improved and unimproved properties, 39 of which have owners living in them. Owners of the for-sale properties can redeem them by paying owed taxes and fees until 5 p.m. on May 4. Over the past five years, TTC notices and late bills to these owners have not been responded to. In early April, each of the properties will be personally contacted by TTC staff who will warn them of the impending sale.
The TTC has not held a tax sale auction since 2015, and on average, sales have generated more than $1.1 million each year.
Congrats to Brian who has had the middle parcel listed for sale since 2007!
Hat tip Richard:
One of San Diego’s most popular beaches could soon be getting a luxury resort.
Two Encinitas based companies specializing in hospitality development – The Robert Green Company and Zephyr – acquired a 16 acres oceanfront parcel in Del Mar, just north of Dog Beach.
They plan to build a luxury resort, and want input from the public.
“What we’re really doing is announcing a process where we go out and hold a series of community meetings to really define what the plan is,” said Brad Termini, CEO of Zephyr.
Termini said he and Robert Green, of The Robert Green Company, have been working to acquire the site for over a year.
“There actually are eight parcels here, owned by three different local families that have owned this land for a very long time,” Termini said.
The land sits north of Del Mar’s popular Dog Beach, south of Solana Beach, and west of the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
“It’s essentially a large triangular-shaped property and because of its shape it creates spectacular views in multiple directions,” said Robert Green, President and CEO of the Robert Green Company.
According to Zephyr and The Robert Green Company, plans are not finalized, but include a luxury resort, branded resort villas, restaurants and meeting space.
Both Green and Termini are local San Diegans. Termini lives a quarter-mile from the site and Green was born and raised in San Diego.
Termini said he’s been walking by the site for years with his dog, just looking at this site and thinking about what he could build there.
He and Green plan to hold a series of public meetings to get input from the public before starting to build.
