Bay Area
A new bill would grant the Housing Alliance for the Bay Area taxing authority to raise revenue in the nine-county region to find solutions to the housing crisis. Another bill would reduce the voter threshold below two-thirds for eligible taxes.
KQED News
Cupertino Mayor Steven Scharf, a fervent opponent of a new Bay Area housing initiative, opened his Jan. 29 state-of-the-city address with a short joke about "building a wall around Cupertino and making San Jose pay for it" that didn't go over well.
East Bay Times
Two Bay Area city council members serving on a regional commission suffered the political consequences of supporting a controversial regional housing initiative, not from their constituents, but from their colleagues.
San Francisco Chronicle
A regional, comprehensive, and controversial approach to tackling the housing affordability crisis in the nine-county Bay Area, including strategies to render renter protections and new housing production, has cleared three major hurdles.
KQED: California Report
It could have been a multiple-vehicle fatal car crash—a driver fell asleep at the wheel driving 70 mph—but the outcome was two DUI charges.
SFBay
In a distant and expensive future, there are two new ways to get across the San Francisco Bay without a car. One will have a much better view.
The Mercury News
Twelve finalists have been picked for their ideas about how to spend $1 billion in funding to fix transportation in the Bay Area.
The Mercury News
San Francisco voters will decide on Proposition C, a business tax based on gross receipts levied on large employers, the most contentious of five local measures.
Curbed SF
For over 20 years, few people have understood or influenced the Bay Area like Gabriel Metcalf, president of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research. Metcalf recently announced a move to Sydney, Australia, and reflected the past two decades.
California Planning & Development Report
The new Antioch station is seeing ridership well over predictions, and some think there would be even more riders if there were more parking.
The San Francisco Chronicle
Brisbane, a city of about 4,700 on the southern border of San Francisco, will vote on a controversial ballot measure in November to approve or reject a mixed-use development including up to 2,200 residential units on a 660-acre vacant brownfield.
San Mateo Daily Journal
A California taxpayers association has challenged the June passage of a regional ballot measure because it didn't receive two-thirds support from voters, although two prior voter-approved bridge toll increases also fell short of a super-majority.
The Mercury News
The 2019 New York City budget includes $106 million to subsidize half the transit fare for qualified residents for six months. The city joins the ranks of Seattle, Toronto, and the Bay Area that offer income-based discounts for transit fares.
The New York Times
With national media focused on individual candidates, propositions that dealt with park and water bonds, transportation spending, cap-and-trade, and rainwater may have been overlooked. Plus, a measure to increase bridge tolls in the Bay Area.
The Sacramento Bee
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's the housing, stupid! In addition to the troubling findings of the Bay Area Council poll, a California housing report found that Silicon Valley had the highest percentage of residents leaving their counties.
The Mercury News
Motivate operates Ford Gobike in the Bay Area, Citi Bike in New York and Divvy in Chicago among other bike share fleets.
CNET
A "floating village" has been proposed for a San Jose neighborhood, with building riding on pontoons as a safeguard against repeated flooding.
San Jose Mercury News
Kathleen Pender, business columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, points to two reasons why home prices rise amidst a Bay Area exodus to other states. On a state level, out-migration shows California's strong but dysfunctional economy.
San Francisco Chronicle
While tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple have approached the Bay Area's housing crisis gingerly the CEO of Yelp has thrown himself into the YIMBY movement. His activism says a lot about the real world and the virtual world.
California Planning & Development Report
AB 2923, which would allow the Bay Area Rapid Transit District to rezone their properties near stations for transit-oriented development, passed its first committee. The California chapter of APA objects to the preemption of local land use authority.
California Chapter of American Planning Association
