San Francisco Bay Area greenbelt development debated

Assassination poll web's best, worst

The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) wants to limit greenbelt development to only 900 acres per year for the San Francisco Bay Area -- barely enough for a single subdivision. Conservationists say the amount of acreage is too high.

by Broderick Perkins
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

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Deadline Newsroom - The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) wants to limit greenbelt development to only 900 acres per year for the San Francisco Bay Area -- barely enough for a single subdivision.

Conservationists, on the other hand, say the amount of acreage -- about the size of Golden Gate Park -- is high. They say there's no reason to disturb the greenbelt with more development, because there are ample infill locations better suited for the area's growth needs.

ABAG's biennial "Projections and Priorities 2009," for the first time, sets forth a land use performance target to restrict green field development to 900 acres for the entire nine-county Bay Area -- among other targets. The report also includes targets for reduced driving times, traffic congestion, the share of income spent on housing and transportation, and others.

ABAG is an association of elected officials from member cities and counties who examine regional issues like housing, transportation, economic development, education, and environment. The association describes itself as "the official comprehensive planning agency" of the Bay Area region.

Every other year since 1970, the association's biennial Projections series has provided long-term forecasts and projections of population growth, transit trends and housing and job needs.

"Model results are relied on by transportation and air quality agencies, local government, and private industry," according to ABAG's documents.

However, the 2009 greenbelt land use target likely won't find its way into policy any time soon.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) does incorporate ABAG's data in its planning, but "Transportation 2035 Change In Motion" was published before ABAG's 2009 report. The report incorporated ABAG's older 2007 land use projections.

The MTC, the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, says its next plan is four years away.

Local jurisdictions also say ABAG's projections and new targes aren't carved in stone.

Santa Clara County, for example, has pretty much closed the door on greenbelt building. An official there says while ABAG data is examined by planning officials it doesn't result in land use, zoning and general plan issues in Santa Clara County.

Home builders haven't specifically challenged the greenbelt target, but if the target became policy it would severely restrict development, housing or otherwise.

San Jose's Silver Creek Valley Country Club, for example, sits on about 1,500 acres and has 1,538 homes, a golf course, country club facilities and other open space.

ABAG says from 2000 to 2010, much more greenbelt, an average 4,000 acres, is developed every year.

ABAG itself says its targets are not binding, however, rather than just projections ABAG decided to include the greenbelt land use target, and others because times are changing.

Rapid population growth in general and among the aging population, higher energy costs, and climate change dictate the need for regional performing targets -- numerical outcomes -- to show how policy choices impact the quality of life.

ABAG plugs the target numbers into models to get a better grasp on not just general assumptions or projection estimates, but something closer to reality -- specific goals.

"The results suggest that accomplishing the targeted outcomes and ensuring a better, or at least the same, quality of life into the future will require a significant departure from previous planning strategies and policies," the report says.

But for each target the report also includes a more likely projection. While the greenbelt target is at 900 acres, the ABAG forecast is for 1,950 acres to be developed year, still below the annual greenbelt development in the past decade.

The Greenbelt Alliance thinks 900 acres is 900 acres too much.

According to the alliance's "Grow Smart Bay Area Infill Research" some 25,000 sites are available throughout the Bay Area for infill development that would eliminate the need for any green belt development.

Comprised of some 17,000 acres, these properties can provide the region with an additional 304,000 homes and 637,000 jobs, according to the alliance's study.

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National Housing Bust: Four More Quarters

Moody's Economy.com says look for a housing market turnaround in early 2009 -- provided market conditions cooperate.

by Broderick Perkins
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

Deadline Newsroom - If you've been wondering when the housing market will turn around, Moody's Economy.com says it has the answer -- early 2009 -- provided market conditions cooperate.

The report, "Aftershock: Housing in the Wake of the Mortgage Meltdown," forecasts the beginning of the end to housing market woes early next year, but only with the alignment of significant housing market conditions.

Given the current state of those conditions, a planetary alignment may also be necessary.

Economy.com's report says to generate a 2009 turnaround, home builders must further curtail housing starts, sellers must shave more off asking prices and lenders will have to loosen their purse strings, among other cooperating market conditions.

To put the housing market on the road to recovery, new homes constructed must fall to 1 million this year, down from the estimated 1.2 million last year.

The report, which incorporates the respected Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a measure of home price appreciation, says the national median home price will have to tumble 12 percent from peak levels. Prices have already fallen 5 percent from their high point, according to "Aftershock" data.

Along with a smaller inventory of homes and lower home prices, a market turnaround will also require more loan modifications to help stop foreclosures from flooding the already oversupplied market.

Creditors must also ease their grip on financing so more consumers can buy homes.

"In this scenario, the housing market finds a bottom by early 2009," the report says.

Unfortunately, the downturn could be prolonged if prices slide too much, too many mortgages fail and money stays hard.

"The ramifications of this for the economy, and thus housing, would be overwhelming. Behind this worry is the financial system's substantial exposure to hundreds of billions in mortgage losses that are set to come," the "Aftershock" report warns.

Another risk is home owners suffering equity losses that amount to too much "wealth effect" erosion.

"As consumers turn more cautious in response to their eroding wealth, the economic expansion will surely waver, but if it falters significantly it will ignite a further devolution of the already reeling housing market," the report further warns.

Without a cooperating convergence of key factors, analysts could begin to use the "C" word -- as in "crash," says the report.

Making no mention of a supposed "media effect," postulated by real estate leaders who say media coverage has exacerbated the housing market slowdown, "Aftershock" sees some light in what it considers "promising" federal policy making efforts.

The report says the Bush Administration, federal legislators and federal regulators are fully engaged in heading off the recessionary impact of the hard-pressed mortgage market.

The Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates, Congress recently passed the "Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007," effective January 1, 2008, and lawmakers have several more major pieces of legislation in the pipeline to assist homeowner.

"The most significant upside risk to the housing outlook is that policymakers appear fully engaged in stanching the financial turmoil and ensuring that the economy avoids recession," the report concludes.

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Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist of 30 years, is publisher and executive editor of San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service, and the new Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's new backshop. In both cases, it's where all the news really hits home.

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Smart Growth Awards Promote Smart Growth

by Broderick Perkins
© 2007 DeadlineNews.Com

Deadline Newsroom - Smart growth isn't just about cutting back on sprawl and building high-density housing, but includes rebuilding existing communities and engaging its residents.

Take it from Manhattan, which joined Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Vermont and Barnstable, MA as the nation's smart growth leaders for 2007.

The accolades, the 2007 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, are granted for innovative community development that protects the environment, preserves community identity and expands economic opportunity.

The Environmental Protection Agency sparingly doles out the awards to promote smart growth strategies, because such efforts help communities enjoy cleaner air and water, open space and critical habitat preservation, and redevelopment of vacant land -- qualities that make for a nice place to live.

Smart growth efforts also preserves community identity and expands economic opportunity.

Winners were selected based on how effectively they used smart growth strategies to improve their communities and how well they engaged citizens and fostered partnerships.

The details are available online on the EPA's Smart Growth Achievement page but here are some highlights revealing why the winning communities are smart growth leaders.

• The award for "Overall Excellence" went to the Housing Authority of Portland, OR. The agency created a public-private partnership to redevelop an isolated and distressed public housing site into New Columbia, where local residents engaged in design workshops and were employed for portions of the construction. The project increased the number of houses, including affordable units and maintained the neighborhood's ethnic diversity.

• For "Built Projects" the Seattle Housing Authority, similarly turned a dilapidated neighborhood into High Point, a mixed-use, mixed-income, and environmentally sensitive community. Using green building principles, High Point's more than 1,700 new units are expected to consume less water, electricity, and natural gas than the old community's 716 units. The new community includes new parks, a public library, and a health clinic. Retail space will come in 2009.

• The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) got the nod for "Policies and Regulations." The independent, state-supported agency, promotes compact settlements surrounded by countryside, pursues affordable housing, land conservation, and historic preservation initiatives. Since 2002, VHCB investments have supported developing more than 3,000 affordable homes, the preservation of 44 historic buildings, and the conservation of more than 37,000 acres of farmland, natural areas, and recreation lands.

• Barnstable, MA created a development strategy for one of its seven villages, Hyannis, to encourage growth and development in the town center and reduce growth pressure on environmentally sensitive areas along the coast to win the "Waterfront and Coastal Communities" award. These policies have resulted in almost 100 new residential units (nine of which are for lower-income households), with nearly 150 more planned; 22,000 square feet of commercial space, with another 100,000 square feet planned; and more than 300 jobs.

• Manhattan shines in the area of "Equitable Development" thanks to its cooperative strategy to expand the housing and commercial options for central Harlem. Work in the Abyssinian Neighborhood Project area, once marked by vacant lots and abandoned buildings, employed comprehensive programs linked education, job training, and cultural enhancement; developed 200 affordable housing units, with an additional 200 planned; and created 15,000 square feet of commercial space for five local businesses. The project also increased access to public transit, created new green space, and minimized storm water runoff by reusing paved surfaces.

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Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist of 30 years, is publisher and executive editor of San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service, and the new Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's new backshop. In both cases, it's where all the news really hits home.

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The United Metros of America

by Broderick Perkins
© 2007 DeadlineNews.Com

Deadline Newsroom - Just as real estate thrives -- or doesn't -- by location, so does the nation, according to a recently announced blueprint for national prosperity.

The blueprint is designed as a new partnership with federal, state, local, and private sector leaders to strengthen metropolitan economies, build a strong and diverse middle class, and grow the nation in environmentally sustainable ways.

It isn't federal policy or a presidential campaign promise.

It's, well, metro.

And it has a strong housing component.

"We are a full-fledged Metro Nation and need to change our mental map of the United States, from a union of 50 states to a network of 363 highly connected, hyper linked, and economically integrated metropolitan areas," said Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director of Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program recently, when launching the "Blueprint For America Prosperity".

That a think tank, rather than the federal government, is launching such a bold bid to reshape the nation, is itself indicative of the nation's ills.

Brookings says more and more often, large metropolitan areas are at the forefront of social change, quickly addressing housing policies, sprawl, sustainable development, education, immigration, infrastructure, energy independence, technological innovation, global warming and a host of other pressing social concerns.

"Metropolitan areas are vital to national prosperity because they're the engines of the economy. So much of what happens in America happens in metropolitan areas," says Rey Ramsey, Chairman and CEO, One Economy Corporation a non-profit spreading technology and information to low-income people.

Eighty-three percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, which contain 86 percent of American jobs. The vast majority -- 94 percent -- of people in the nation's 100 largest metros live and work in the same metro.

It's not surprising then, that with such a constituency, metropolitan leaders, not Washington D.C. politicos, are the ones with their fingers on the pulse of innovation and the need for both swift and long-term change.

Unfortunately, dynamic efforts on the metropolitan level are getting short-circuited by out-dated policy and procedural procrastination from a growingly more detached federal government.

Stuck on political partisanship and legislative lethargy, bogged down in war and embroiled in another national election, the slow, plodding federal government is too often ineffectual when it comes to addressing the national penchant for prosperity.

"America's metros find our national government strangely adrift, ignorant of the dynamic changes sweeping the country and the new spatial geography of our economy.

Our federal government is mostly a legacy government, a collection of ossified agencies carrying out decades-old programs and policies, through means and mechanisms suited to a pre-Internet world. As a result, our federal government is out of step with rapid change, and is failing to leverage those assets that drive secure and sustained prosperity," Katz said.

He also characterized current government's housing policies aimed at "the expansion of McMansions at the periphery of metropolitan areas, while failing to address the rapid suburbanization of poor people and employment opportunities."

While the blueprint calls for plans to fully recognize and further tap metropolitan might, it also seeks an upgrade in the federal government to foster a federal-metro partnership to put the nation back on the right track.

"A metro can focus on building its economic strengths, but its economy is profoundly influenced by federal monetary, trade, regulatory and investment practices. A metro can focus on reducing income disparities, but only the federal government can close the gap between wages and the cost of living. A metro area can focus on environmental sustainability, but only the federal government can regulate industries on a national scale," Katz said.

Following the blueprint's introduction, Katz's Brookings crew will begin identifying specific reforms for the next administration and Congress to advance key national priorities including boosting innovation and productivity, replicating the best examples of urban school reform, increasing the supply of workforce housing, improving transportation within and across metros, and making energy efficiency in our homes part of the solution to climate change.

"We are a metro nation. And now it is time to start acting like one," Katz said.

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Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist of 30 years, is publisher and executive editor of San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service, and the new Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's new backshop. In both cases, it's where all the news really hits home.

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