California Building Industry Association

Fees and Costs

San Jose council agrees to levy fee on affordable housing developers

San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose City Council on Tuesday agreed to amend a city ordinance that for 22 years has given affordable housing developers a pass on paying to build parks. The city now will require those developers to pay 50 percent of the parkland fee that other developers pay. While preserving an incentive to build apartments for lower-income residents, the new agreement will provide the cash-strapped city more money to build or improve parks or trails near housing projects.

Land Use/ Planning

Watsonville City Council nixes affordable apartment project

Santa Cruz Sentinel
WATSONVILLE - The city's plummeting home values derailed a proposal to build an affordable apartment complex near Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday. A variation on the project that called for 23 mostly market-rate apartments won approval from the City Council two years ago, but construction stalled because the current owner was unable to secure financing, according to city staff. The potential buyers, AMG & Associates, LLC, were asking for approval to build a smaller number of larger apartments and make the complex 100 percent affordable for low-income families. But residents of nearby Vista del Mar urged the council to nix the project, saying it could further reduce their property values.

ESCONDIDO: Deer Springs files complaint against fire board official

North County Times
A local resident has filed a complaint with state and local officials accusing a Deer Springs Fire Protection District board member of improperly accepting legal opinions about the Merriam Mountains project from a lawyer representing a nearby business opposed to the development. Developer NNP-Stonegate Merriam's proposal to build 2,630 homes on 538 acres of rugged, mountainous terrain across Interstate 15 from the Lawrence Welk Resort north of Escondido has run up against staunch opposition from some area residents and businesses.

Hearing set for SPI home project

Sonora Union Democrat
The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors has set a March 16 date for a public hearing on a 306-home subdivision proposed by logging giant Sierra Pacific Industries. The hearing will begin at 1:30 p.m., at the supervisors’ regularly scheduled meeting. The outcome of that hearing will decide the project’s fate. The project’s footprint is roughly 600 acres, on the east side of Standard Road, near SPI’s shuttered Standard Mill. As proposed, 122 of the lots could contain second homes, bringing the total potential size of the subdivision to 428 homes.

Osborne Hill project hits snag over sewers

Union of Grass Valley
The Osborne Hill housing project east of Grass Valley hit a wall Tuesday when the Board of Supervisors rejected proposals to include it in a new sewer district. Thinking about problems with small sewer districts in other Nevada County communities, supervisors also rejected the developers' alternative proposal of linked septic tanks and a leach field for 56 single-family homes and 20 condominium units. But the project is not dead: Homes could be hooked up to the Grass Valley sewer system or use individual septic tanks, Community Development Director Steve DeCamp said at a meeting Tuesday.

Carlsen Estates may be denied

Monterey County Herald
Foreclosure on a 96-acre site in North Monterey County where developers proposed the Carlsen Estates subdivision will likely scuttle the project. Today, the county's Planning Commission will consider whether to deny the project and find the proposal abandoned by development group Paco LLC. According to a staff report on the Carlsen Estates project, three properties off Carlsen Road in the Prunedale area involved in the development proposal are under new ownership, and none of the new owners indicated an interest in pursuing the 33-lot housing project.

Market

Shorting the housing recovery

San Francisco Chronicle
There's a rosy tint on a lot of the national economic indicators right now, but it doesn't feel that way for many Americans. There are still six unemployed workers for every open job. In California, unemployment actually rose in January - to a record 12.5 percent, with new figures due out today. And the housing market, which was the catalyst for 2008's economic disaster, remains grim all over. There were nearly a million "past due" mortgages at the end of 2009 in California alone, and nearly 2 million foreclosures are predicted for California by 2012. It's going to be impossible for the state to make a genuine economic recovery in the face of such numbers.

US home value decline steepens in January – Zillow

Reuters
NEW YORK - Home prices continued to weaken in many U.S. markets during January as the impact of government tax credits on housing demand lost momentum, real estate Website Zillow.com said on Tuesday. Nationally, while the annualized appreciation rate continued to rise, increasing from negative 5.5 percent in December to negative 4.8 percent in January, home values fell 0.33 percent from the prior month, a slightly larger monthly depreciation than the 0.27 percent recorded in December, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. Humphries said that of the markets he focuses on, four stayed in positive or flat territory in terms of month-over-month appreciation: Los Angeles (0.2 percent), Philadelphia (0.2 percent), San Diego (0.0 percent) and San Francisco (0.3 percent).

Water/ Energy/ Environmental

California global warming law may lead to job losses, report says

Los Angeles Times
Debate over the economic effects of California's first-in-the-nation global warming law flared this week, with a report saying short-term job losses can be expected. The state's nonpartisan legislative analyst's office examined 2008 economic modeling by the California Air Resources Board and concluded that it "may overstate the number of jobs" attributable to future implementation of the 2006 climate law. While acknowledging the uncertainty of such projections, the report said, "On balance, however, we believe that the aggregate net jobs impact in the near term is likely to be negative, even after recognizing that many of the . . . programs phase in over time."