What Will Happen to California's Orphaned Urban Projects?

Terry Pristin looks at the fallout from the dissolution of California's redevelopment agencies and asks what will come of the hundreds of projects in various stages of completion.

1 minute read

April 12, 2012, 7:00 AM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


After the shuttering of the state's 397 community redevelopment agencies was made official on Feb. 1 of this year, local officials began the arduous task of "sifting through billions of dollars' worth of projects to determine which ones qualify as enforceable obligations entered into before June 29, 2011, the date the legislation was signed into law."

According to Pristin, "Of greatest immediate concern is how dissolution will affect the development of housing for people with low and moderate incomes. Since 1979, 20 percent of the property taxes diverted to the agencies had been set aside for this purpose."

With the tentacles of the decades-old redevelopment system reaching wide and deep into California's urban development efforts, the long-term effects of unwinding their obligations are far from clear.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 in The New York Times

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