California Editorial Rdp

Aug. 2

San Francisco Chronicle on California’s worsening housing shortage:

This year’s counts of homeless populations across the Bay Area and California yielded a trove of distressing data on the depth and persistence of the housing shortage as well as the inadequacy of state and local officials’ response - to the extent that they have responded.

Unfortunately, there’s more: Reports on housing permits issued through the first half of this year show a pronounced statewide downturn in residential construction. At a time when California should be building homes at more than twice the current pace, the number of houses and apartments likely to be built is falling.

U.S. census surveys analyzed by the Public Policy Institute of California show a 16% year-over-year decline in residential construction permits. From July 2018 through June, permits for 93,000 housing units were issued statewide, down from 110,000 units authorized over the previous 12 months. Even if each of those permits yielded a house or apartment, California would be producing housing at half the rate officials say is needed and a fifth of the goal set by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

While housing production across the region and state has been anemic for more than a decade, this is the first such sustained statewide decline in residential construction permits since the Great Recession ended in 2009.

Permits for apartment buildings and other multifamily residences, the key to closing the worst housing deficit on the U.S. mainland, suffered a steeper decline during the period, the PPIC noted, falling 24%.

In the Bay Area, San Mateo and Alameda counties saw the most precipitous drops in permitted homes over the past year, with respective declines from the previous 12 months of 49% and 30%. Permits in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties fell 9% and 7%.

The region has encouraging exceptions. Permits in Sonoma County, buoyed by efforts to replace housing destroyed by the Wine Country fires, increased 47%. San Francisco saw an even greater jump of 66%. PPIC senior fellow Hans Johnson attributed that to long-planned development in the South of Market and Mission Bay neighborhoods, where there is less of the neighborhood opposition seen elsewhere in the city and suburbs. Last month, for instance, citing concerns about traffic and the size of a mixed-use project, a no vote by a San Bruno councilman killed 425 housing units planned near YouTube’s headquarters, the city’s downtown, and its BART and Caltrain stations.

Despite the 2017 enactment of a housing package described by its champions as a down payment on addressing the crisis, the Legislature has since struggled to advance major legislation on the issue. A bill to override local barriers to apartment developments near mass transit and jobs, by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has been repeatedly blocked by Democratic legislative leaders.

The PPIC’s Marisol Cuellar Mejia and Mary Severance wrote that zoning reforms like Wiener’s are probably necessary but “not sufficient” to turn around a construction rate that appears poised to go from bad to worse. Like the closely related rise of homelessness, the prospect of a plunge in housing production reflects the state’s failure to do any of the above.

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Aug. 2

The San Diego Union-Tribune on the bullet train project:

In 2008, California voters narrowly approved providing $9.95 billion in bond seed money for a $40 billion-plus state bullet-train network. Eleven years later, nearly all the promises made to voters have gone unfilled as costs have exploded because of overruns and multiple management failings at the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority.

To salvage the broken project he inherited from Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov. Gavin Newsom in February proposed that the state use the $20.5 billion in available funds it had to build a bullet train linking Bakersfield and Merced in the Central Valley, where construction was already underway.

This week, however, the Los Angeles Times reported that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, and some other Democratic lawmakers want to downsize and use slower diesel trains on the Central Valley route and take away up to $6 billion to beef up rail in the population centers of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Rendon and company must think their plan complies with the rules of the 2008 bond and may have a point when they say it will yield more good than Newsom’s plan. But where is any actual high-speed rail that was guaranteed to voters? Diesel trains aren’t bullet trains. And remember that Brown gave up in 2012 on building high-speed rail into and out of the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas because of the extreme cost and huge obstacles, calling instead for a “blended” system of regular and high-speed rail. Now even that’s far-fetched? Sheesh.

This boondoggle is a massive blend of incompetence and dishonesty. Californians wanted a bullet train. It’s never been clearer it’s going nowhere fast.

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Aug. 1

The Tribune on the threat of sea level rise:

Poor California.

As if wildfires, mudslides, droughts and the threat of the Big One aren’t enough, now sea level rise is on the list of California disasters that will make life more risky - and far more costly - in the future.

On Friday, three people died when a huge chunk of a limestone cliff collapsed onto a beach in Encinitas, located north of San Diego.

That danger will grow; in Southern California, sea level rise could cause cliff erosion rates to double the historical rate by 2100, according to U.S. Geological Survey researchers.

Another example: Under the worst-worst-case scenario of a 10-foot sea level rise and major flooding, San Luis Obispo County could lose 1,178 homes, valued at $392 million, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit science and news organization.

Statewide, nearly 900,000 people could be displaced and 364,686 homes lost, along with 451 schools, 130 medical facilities and 116 fire stations. Total property loss: $180.7 billion.

And it won’t just affect coastal communities.

If we stand by and do nothing, California’s transportation network will be disrupted, its economy will be jeopardized as tech, manufacturing, tourism and ag industries falter, sandy beaches lost, and coastal residents will be forced to relocate, putting a strain on resources in inland communities.

Yet many Californians have been treating sea level rise as a distant worry, and some climate change deniers have pounced on warnings of possible consequences as “climate fear porn.”

This is so not porn.

Attempting to deny that oceans are warming and, as a result, expanding, that ice sheets and glaciers are melting much more rapidly than expected, and that seas are rising is as obtuse as pretending that earthquakes or wildfires or hurricanes don’t happen.

SLOW RESPONSE

Communities already grappling with rising seas - like Pacifica, where some apartment buildings have already been lost and clifftop homes are in serious jeopardy - have been taking action.

Responses in places that aren’t yet affected have been slower, even lackadaisical in some cases. That’s not likely to change, as long we’re under the impression that we have plenty of time to act. Most estimates are long-range, keyed to the year 2100 and beyond. A state Coastal Commission report, for example, includes estimates of sea level rise ranging from 2.4 feet to 6.9 feet by 2100 - and even going all the way up to 10.2 feet under the “extreme scenario” of rapid ice loss.

The huge disparity in estimates doesn’t add to the sense of urgency, since it’s hard to know exactly what will be in jeopardy and when.

In the face of so much uncertainty, it’s hard to see a way forward. Gavin Newsom made that clear a couple of years ago, saying, “This is all interesting, but what the hell do we do about it?”

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

1. For starters, maintain efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cutting emissions won’t have any immediate effects on sea level rise but could make a significant difference toward the end of the century - benefiting our kids and grandkids.

2. Conduct a statewide inventory of vulnerable private and public properties, including vacant parcels.

Several regional and city studies have been done, but every community in jeopardy - including inland areas near deltas and rivers affected by sea level rise - needs one.

At the very least, an inventory would help local agencies decide where to build - or rebuild - critical infrastructure, such as highways, sewers and fire stations. It would also guide planning agencies considering new developments.

The state should approach this in the same way it approached seismic safety, when it required every jurisdiction in a seismic zone to inventory buildings (private residences were exempt) and notify owners of potential hazards.

3. Provide some policy direction.

Building seawalls is one of the quickest and dirtiest ways to protect coastal properties, but it’s also frowned upon by policy makers.

The California Coastal Commission has been especially down on seawalls.

“They’re trying to find every opportunity to dismantle seawalls on private property,” said San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson, who chairs a committee of coastal counties that’s been studying the issue of sea level rise.

The Coastal Commission supports less intrusive remedies, such as living shorelines - barriers created with vegetation, shell mounds, rocks, and other natural materials - and “managed retreat,” a euphemistic term that essentially means moving people inland and letting the sea takeover.

Gibson’s group - together with a similar organization of coastal cities - is hoping to come to an agreement with the Coastal Commission, to allow for more flexibility. They also want guidance on “when it’s necessary to protect certain portions of the coast and when it isn’t,” according to a paper they recently presented to the Coastal Commission.

4. Develop local action plans.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Whether it’s installing seawalls, hauling in sand and boulders to shore up beaches, creating living shorelines or buying out doomed properties, affected communities should have as much discretion as possible, along with state and federal disaster support.

5. Develop cost estimates and look for funding.

Some local governments are trying to hold oil companies liable; San Francisco and Oakland sued five oil companies, using the argument that the production of massive amounts of fossil fuel caused climate change that led to sea level rise. The lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge, but that ruling has been appealed.

San Francisco also is tapping taxpayers; last year, voters overwhelmingly approved a $425 million bond measure to strengthen the Embarcadero seawall.

On a statewide level, there’s a bill pending in the Legislature that would direct a portion of the state’s oil revenues to climate adaptation projects in the coastal zone, and there are grants available for studies and projects, such as creating living shorelines.

It’s going to take a lot more than that, especially if entire communities are displaced.

MANAGED RETREAT

The most drastic option for coping with sea level rise - managed retreat - is by far the most devastating.

In Pacifica, it caused such a furor among homeowners that city officials replaced the words “managed retreat” with “adaption strategies,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

And it isn’t just homes that may have to retreat; vital public facilities like highways, railroads, sewer plants and emergency service buildings could be lost as well.

That’s already happening.

In the city of Morro Bay, officials decided to build a new sewer plant further inland, rather than rebuild at the current site near the ocean. While there were other reasons for the decision, a big factor was the vulnerability to flooding at the old location.

Similar decisions face other communities; just up the road from Morro Bay, San Simeon must relocate its sewer plant farther inland within 20 years, according to Gibson. And a stretch of Highway 1 was recently relocated away from crumbling cliffs near Piedras Blancas.

Moving down the coast, in Santa Barbara, the El Estero wastewater treatment plant will be in trouble starting in 2060 and “permanently inoperable” by 2100, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. The cost to replace the plant: $250 million.

There’s no comprehensive cost estimate of what it would take to replace all the public infrastructure in harm’s way, to move people out of homes in danger of toppling into the ocean, or to build whatever seawalls the Coastal Commission is willing to allow.

Whatever it is, it will be staggering - far greater than the cost of responding to the worst wildfires.

It’s certain that local jurisdictions - many already struggling to pay down pension debt while they keep their roads paved and their offices staffed - won’t be able to foot the bill alone. Nor can taxpayers be expected to bear such a heavy burden.

Sacramento must get its act together, and prod local communities to do the same.

We need to keep hammering the need for greenhouse gas reductions.

We need comprehensive policies and programs developed at the state level that can apply to all affected local jurisdictions, not just to urban centers or to communities already feeling the brunt of sea level rise.

We need a major commitment of funds.

And we need readily accessible, up-to-date information.

To answer Newsom’s question - “What the hell do we do about it?” - this is what we need to do, and fast, while there’s still time.