Growth Management Clashes With Housing

24 July 2002 - 7:00am

At a San Luis Obispo, CA workshop, local officials complain that housing elements don't take resource constraints into account.

California's Central Coast is famous for being skeptical about growth. Butat a workshop in San Luis Obispo last week on ballot-box zoning, localofficials were downright hostile to the state housing department's effortsto require more housing construction there... Some Central Coast jurisdictions have long used growth management techniques -- whether enacted by voters or by elected officials -- to restrain growth. In 1980, the City of San Luis Obispo passed a measure to restrict population growth in the city to 2% a year and later reduced that figure to 1%. San Luis Obispo County has had a 3% limit in effect since 1989. County voters defeated a "SOAR" urban growth boundary measure in 2000.

Source: California Planning and Development Report, July 23, 2002