California, Housing

At the PCBC builder's conference in San Francisco, the award-winning designs were 'smaller, greener, more urban and more affordable.'

Congresswoman Laura Richardson has gotten on the nerves of her Sacramento neighbors, mainly because she's never around. As a result, her home has gone untended and turned into a blight on the neighborhood.

The median home price in California notched up 1.4% in April from the previous month, prompting some to announce the market has bottomed out and is recovering.

Plans to build a 12,000 home waterfront development on the San Francisco Bay have some environmentalists up in arms. But the developers claim the project will exemplify "smart growth".

Due to the downturn in the housing market, plans for a new development that would essentially become a 20,000-person suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area have been abandoned.

A stalled housing development in a Los Angeles exurb meets the wrecking ball as completing the development became too unaffordable.

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has unveiled plans to turn an industrial parcel of land near downtown into "the global capital of clean technology."

Officials and advocates in Oakland California are warning that the foreclosure crisis is not only leading to evictions, but also growing public health problems and community blight.

The old saying is that he who has the gold, rules. The fact that Orange County motorists have a toll road carving through a magnificent canyon while rich folks in Malibu get to live next to scenic hillsides proves the rule, writes Bill Fulton.

A judge has ruled against parts of SB 1818, a density bonus law that allows taller building limits in exchange for affordable housing units.

An antiquated set of zoning laws has been at the heart of a debate between preservationists and developers in Oakland for years, though a compromise in the form of new zoning rules may be in the city's near future.

William Hudnet, former mayor of Indianapolis, now with ULI, spoke at a gathering in Sacramento on the inevitable wave of urban infill, less auto-dependent development to come due to state climate protection laws AB 32 and SB 375, and regional plans.

Los Angeles has begun using its $33 million in funds from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program to jumpstart neighborhoods blighted by foreclosure. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan visited a South Los Angeles neighborhood Wednesday.

High Country News reports on Fresno's infamous Taco Flat in this 4-pager. Seattle's Nickelsville and Portland's Dignity Village are held up as better examples of squatter settlements. Architecture and 'informal urbanism' of tent cities is examined.

A prominent developer predicts that all hi-rise housing will cease in the San Francisco due to the credit crisis. The result, says an urban think tank director, will be more sprawl development in the Bay Area as it presents the least financial risk.

This piece form the Modesto Bee looks at the growth and housing bust that has dramatically affected California's San Joaquin Valley -- home to some of the nation's highest rates of foreclosure.

California's Inland Empire's status as one of the nation's leader in foreclosures has fleeing retail as proof of it. This article offers a glimpse in this "land of extremes."

As foreclosures spread throughout California's Inland Empire, empty homes need to be cleaned and maintained. To meet the demand, an industry is rapidly expanding.

Fifty years ago, Kenneth E. Norwood placed a time capsule and his predictions for Burbank, CA in a newly constructed bridge. According to the planner, monorails and "multi-unit garden apartments" were the waves of the future.