Lawmakers in Sacramento recently upped the ante in their ongoing assault on local democracy in the Golden State. Earlier this year State Senator Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco) introduced a bill called SB 79. If passed, it would all but eliminate local authority over zoning, land use, and development. It would place the fate of thousands of neighborhoods not in the hands of the people who live in them and want to live in them, but in the hands of for-profit real estate speculators and the financial class behind them. The bill is part of an assault on the foundations local democracy that, as I wrote two weeks ago, trace their origins back 800 years to Magna Carta itself.
SB 79 would allow real estate speculators to cram five, six, and seven story luxury apartment and condo buildings into single-family neighborhoods and neighborhoods currently characterized by small multifamily buildings (duplexes, fourplexes, and smaller apartments and condos). If a speculator takes advantage of other recent laws, including so-called “density bonus,” they could build 10 or even 20 stories in a single family neighborhood. The only requirement is that the new structures be within one half mile, and in some cases a quarter mile, of a bus stop. That’s it. Doesn’t matter where the bus goes. Doesn’t matter if that bus doesn’t go anywhere near your workplace, your kids’ schools, your local grocery store, and so forth. Just has to be a bus.
What’s more, some city officials are on the same page, hell bent on self-immolation. For example, multiple sources have told me that officials at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) have rerouted segments of bus routes and changed the locations of bus stops in order to make existing “transit oriented development” incentives applicable to specific parcels. Some California transit agencies aren’t serving the people, they’re bowing to the whims of for-profit real estate speculators, many of whom aren’t based in California and could care less about neighborhood character or quality of life.
This is how local democracy dies
It’s madness. This is how local democracy dies. Agencies like LA Metro increasingly are in the land use business. This is how mass transit functioned in the Soviet Union, in which housing and mass transit were inextricably linked (because, of course, none but the most privileged and powerful owned their own cars).
It’s almost impossible to overstate the threat SB 79 poses to neighborhoods. It would all but eliminate local governments’ power to control their own communities’ destinies. City councils and boards of supervisors, the members of which most closely reflect the people they represent, would be reduced to bystanders as rapacious developers — many of whom in this context are less than scrupulous — literally bulldoze hundreds of thousands of homes, irreversibly transforming and destroying countless neighborhoods. It’s the state dictating where and how 39.8 million will live. The state dictating to cities what kind of housing they must approve, under penalty of crippling fines, legal action, even a complete state takeover of local zoning, land use, and construction decisions. Sounds an awful lot like tyranny.
Read the rest of this piece at The All Aspect Report.
Chistopher LeGras is an attorney, journalist, muckraker, and Californian.
Photo: California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), in an unintentionally perfect picture. Courtesy The All Aspect Report.
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