We know that city dwellers have a smaller carbon footprint that suburbanites. But now we have a real case study with carbon measurements to document the phenomenon.
14 scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Utah and several other universities set up a network of carbon dioxide sensors across Salt Lake City and its suburbs. The Washington Post reported on the results:
As suburbs have expanded southwest of Salt Lake City over the last 10 years, carbon dioxide emissions have spiked…
It’s the latest indication that suburban expansion takes an environmental toll, with people driving greater distances and building larger homes that use more energy for heating and cooling.
Similar population growth in the center of Salt Lake City didn’t take the same toll, according to the research. Carbon dioxide emissions in the city center were already higher than in nonurban places. But as the population there grew by 10,000 people, the emissions didn’t increase further.
It’s yet more evidence that encouraging urban growth is one of the most important steps we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s also a reason why supposedly “environmental” organizations like Sierra Club California that oppose pro-infill measures like SB 827 are actually damaging the environment by doing so.
Back in 2008, and then again in 2016, transit advocates in Los Angeles came together to get county residents to fork over $160 billion over 30 years in new sales taxes revenue for transportation investments. A sizeable chunk of that money goes to major transit capital projects, including new rail and bus rapid transit lines.
They successfully secured approval for these tax hikes with 2/3 voter support. But now transit ridership is plummeting in Los Angeles. It’s a nationwide phenomenon, but it’s particularly severe in L.A. While there a few ways to counter-act these trends, the most proven and sensible one is to boost transit-oriented development of all types.
Yet given recent public debate on SB 827, which would upzone residential areas within a few blocks of major transit stops, it’s clear that many of these advocates are not committed to the land use changes necessary to achieve this density. Despite SB 827’s promise to accomplish the very increase in residential density needed to support transit, they remain opposed.
So who are the culprits? Most prominently, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti (who championed the 2016 measure) still refuses to support SB 827, despite the recent amendments to address his legitimate displacement concerns. Instead, he stated concern for the area’s single-family homeowners, professing a desire to “protect” these mostly affluent residents from mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit.
And it gets worse. Move LA, the organization that has probably done the most to launch these voter sales tax measures, actually came out against the bill in a joint letter with various community groups. This opposition comes after their executive director Denny Zane already helped sink a major transit-oriented project near an Expo Line station that would have added more than 400 hundred badly needed homes in the area, including 50 affordable units. His main concern at the time was too much car traffic.
Even Sierra Club California used the fear of these land use changes in SB 827 as a reason not to support the measure. Specifically, the organization wants to see a new rail transit line in Sacramento, even though the line will be a massive money-loser without more density around the stations.
Based on these transit advocates’ arguments, it seems clear that many are only focused on one thing: building new transit lines. They don’t seem to care how cost-effective they are, and in many cases they actively don’t want to see much new development around the stations — especially not market-rate housing, and especially not in “quiet” affluent areas that are benefiting financially from these publicly funded investments.
So despite SB 827 being one of the most important pro-transit measures put forth by the legislature in recent years, some key transit advocates seem unlikely to join a coalition in support.
It’s a disheartening — though clarifying — turn of events. What it means is that the help to save transit agencies from plummeting ridership may not come from advocates for expanding new lines. It will instead come from those who favor more density of homes near transit in general, which is apparently a distinct cause for many in the “transit advocacy” community.
Some opponents of SB 827 (Wiener) — to essentially upzone residential areas adjacent to major transit stops — simply reject the idea of any new housing in their neighborhoods. Others are generally hostile to new market-rate development. But besides those non-helpful objections, the one compelling knock on the SB 827 approach is that the new residential development it would unleash could displace low-income renters.
There’s a clear moral objection to that happening. With the housing shortage and jobs boom leading to high home prices and rents everywhere, low-income residents of rent-controlled units will basically have no place affordable to go if they’re displaced. The bill shouldn’t force some of the most economically insecure and impoverished among us out of their homes.
And displacement also potentially undermines one of the key purposes of the bill: to boost transit ridership. Low-income people are more likely to use transit than higher-income people. So replacing them with market-rate renters or owners could be a loss for the nearby transit system.
That said, I do believe the concern is overstated, as low-income neighborhoods are not likely to be a prime target of developers risking capital on expensive multi-family buildings and needing a high return to justify the expense.
But still, we knew anti-displacement measures in SB 827 were coming, and yesterday Sen. Wiener introduced them. They essentially boil down to two things:
1) Explicit recognition that SB 827 does not preempt local policies preventing demolition of rent-controlled units or displacement of those tenants or requiring affordable units to be built with market-rate ones. This recognition is probably not needed legally, but it’s a handy reminder to critics that SB 827 takes nothing away from locals on the issues of affordability and displacement.
2) Making it expensive to displace residents of rent-controlled units.
This second approach is where the amendments get interesting. Basically, if any SB 827 project displaces these residents, the developer must honor a “Right to Remain Guarantee.” As Sen. Wiener explains in a blog post:
[The guarantee] must, at minimum, provide all of the following, at the developer’s expense:
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All moving expenses for a tenants moving into, and out of, an interim unit in the area while the project is being built.
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Up to 42 months of rental assistance that covers the full rent of an available, comparable unit in the area.
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Right of first refusal for housing units in the new building, and offered with a new lease at the rent previously enjoyed by the tenant in their demolished unit.
So displacement could still happen, but only at significant expense and with displaced residents being “made whole” by the process. It’s essentially a quasi-market-based approach to discouraging displacement. It will incentivize developers to seek to redevelop properties that don’t have rent-controlled units on them to avoid these costs.
In addition, a separate amendment requires a local jurisdiction to adopt a demolition process for rent-controlled units if they don’t already have one, for any SB 827 project to occur.
It remains to be seen whether anti-displacement critics of the bill will be mollified by this approach. But I do think these changes make the bill stronger, without conceding too much of the market-rate development we still need for residents of all incomes in our state.
One of the interesting side benefits of SB 827 (Wiener), to allow mid-rise apartments to be built near major transit stops, is that it’s revealing exactly which interest groups have a stake in preserving the status quo of housing dysfunction and shortage.
Given the depth and breadth of the housing shortage, it’s not surprising that there are a lot of entrenched interests who benefit from this status quo. The obvious are the wealthy homeowners in coastal cities and their elected official allies.
But also in that corner are advocates for low-income renters in specific, transit-rich neighborhoods, either out of genuine concern over displacement but sometimes out of ideological hostility to market-rate housing, at least without being able to extract as much money out of it as possible for affordable units. They want to make market-rate development hard and expensive to build, so they can use that byzantine process as leverage to get a few additional affordable units built. But this is ultimately a self-defeating bid to boost affordable housing only for those few lucky enough to win the affordable housing lottery. Meanwhile, overall housing production lags, hurting low-income residents the most.
On the “pro” side are developers (who stand to profit from loosened zoning), the YIMBY groups (largely led by millennials frustrated at high housing costs), and a mix of pro-housing and climate advocates.
But in an interview with Vox.com, California YIMBY executive director Brian Hanlon pointed to another member of the pro-coalition: inland California representatives:
A lot of folks who represent more exurban areas, Inland Empire and parts of the Central Valley, they’re going to love this bill, even though it’s not going to allow more homebuilding in their areas. I spoke with one member in the legislature who just said, “I am sick and tired of these hypocritical, rich coastal liberals talking this good game on the environment, passing tax breaks for their rich constituents to buy Teslas, while not building any housing in their district. They’re displacing their middle-income people to my district, where they’re now driving an hour-and-a-half or two hours each way to get to work.”
You’re going to have some interesting alliances on this bill — folks like Ting, Skinner, and Wiener, who genuinely care about the environment and the housing crisis, along with members who represent outer districts.
Meanwhile, I still hold out hope that some of the low-income renter advocates will come around, once anti-displacement language is included in the bill. As Hanlon alludes to in the interview, the concerns particularly in Los Angeles around inadvertently weakening existing affordable housing policies are likely to be addressed through future amendments.
But in the meantime, SB 827 is finally lifting up the rock that keeps all of the dysfunction in California’s housing policy in place, with its attendant economic, environmental, and quality-of-life harm. The fight won’t be easy, but at least it’s finally getting started.
For those interested in the latest legislative updates and debates on housing and land use in California, I’ll be speaking this weekend at the Planning and Conservation League’s annual “Environmental Assembly” conference in Sacramento. I’ll be on an afternoon panel with:
- Kip Lipper, Chief Policy Adviser on Energy and Environment, Office of Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León
- Winter King, Shute Mihaly & Weinberger, LLP
- Doug Carstens, Chatten-Brown & Carstens, LLP
We’ll discuss recent updates to the California Environmental Quality Act under SB 743, recent legislation like SB 35, as well as pending legislation like SB 827.
More details here:
What: Planning and Conservation League’s 2018 California Environmental Assembly
When: Saturday, February 24, 2018, registration and breakfast starts at 7:30 am
Where: McGeorge School 3200 5th Ave, Sacramento, CA 95817
The Sacramento Bee is running an op-ed today on line (and in print tomorrow) from me and infill builder Mott Smith in support of SB 827 (Wiener), to relax local zoning restrictions on housing near transit. The basic gist is that local control over land use has too often meant no new housing near prime transit areas, and it’s now time for the state to intervene directly.
As we summarize in the piece:
Change won’t come easy on hot-button land-use issues. But the status quo that so many groups defend drives the very problems we most need to solve – sprawl, environmental damage, transit disinvestment and gentrification.
We can only address these problems through bold action to boost California’s housing supply in the places we need it most. SB 827 is a long-overdue reform that will help the state rebuild its middle class, boost transit ridership and preserve the environment and quality of life that Californians cherish.
The bill will face some key tests in the coming weeks, particularly in the face of objections from advocates for low-income tenants. But the basic approach of SB 827 is right on and badly needed.
Lost riders on L.A. Metro alone, which serves L.A. County, accounted for fully 72 percent of lost transit patronage across the entire state. Those losses are even further concentrated: Remarkably, just a dozen bus and rail routes in L.A. County account for nearly 40 percent of all the vanished ridership in California.
Right now, the best explanation seems to be a staggering increase in cars on the road, owned and driven by the very people who used to ride buses, the report states. From 2000 to 2015, the population of the Southern California region grew by 2.3 million people, and the region added 2.1 million household vehicles—close to one new car for every person and a huge jump from the previous decade. In the same period, the proportion of immigrant households that own zero vehicles dropped 42 percent, and a whopping 66 percent among Mexican immigrant households specifically.
The ridership gap and vehicle usage seems to be particularly high among immigrant communities that previously were a backbone demographic for transit.
What are the solutions? One option is simply to make it more expensive to drive a car, through mileage-based fees, congestion pricing, and other taxes and fees. There’s merit to that approach, particularly if the funds generated help support transit in those corridors as an alternative.
But the other alternative is to stop forcing people to use cars as the most convenient travel option, and similarly stop subsidizing automobile infrastructure, particularly “free” mandated parking. And that all boils down to land use. People use cars to travel because their home is nowhere near convenient transit, they may have readily available free parking on-site and at their jobs (while paying for it via higher home prices and rents), and their jobs and other destinations are similarly not near transit.
So the most effective solution, as we’ve seen all over the world throughout the history of transit, is to encourage more homes and jobs near transit. It’s not really complicated: we need to build transit-oriented, walkable and bikeable neighborhoods within a convenient transit-ride of clustered job centers. Needless to say, this is exactly the goal of SB 827 (Wiener), which would lift local restrictions on growth near major transit stops.
Possibly the biggest beneficiaries in government from an SB 827 to approach to housing would be transit agencies. These agencies across the country have suffered this declining ridership over the past decade, hurting their revenues and undermining political support.
So far I haven’t heard California transit agencies clamoring to support SB 827, probably due to the complicated politics involved. But if they were honest, they would tell the public that SB 827 and similar approaches are what is truly needed to bring ridership back.
The “Gimme Shelter” podcast, a regular show dedicated to all things housing in California, interviewed me for a new episode releasing today on the tension between infill housing advocates and some environmental groups.
Specifically, the hosts, Los Angeles Times state policy report Liam Dillon and CalMatters Matt Levin, asked me about the 2017 UC Berkeley/Next 10 report Right Type, Right Place on infill housing, SB 827 (Wiener), CEQA, and other climate & housing topics. They cover other housing issues in the first half of the podcast (my interview starts about 29 minutes in).
Tune in here (and don’t forget to subscribe to their podcast if you haven’t already):
One of the common knocks on allowing new home-building near transit (as SB 827 would allow) is that it will displace low-income renters and gentrify low-income neighborhoods. The nightmare scenario for these tenants is that a developer buys and demolishes their low-income, single-family or small multi-unit building and then builds a luxury mid-rise in a fast-gentrifying neighborhood. The tenants are kicked out and can’t find comparably priced housing in their neighborhood.
But let’s explore why this dynamic might happen. A neighborhood is more likely to “gentrify” if higher-income people can’t find new housing elsewhere. They’ll buy up existing buildings in places like San Francisco’s Mission or Venice in Los Angeles, which otherwise house predominantly low-income residents.
And why can’t any of these tenants who are kicked out find comparably priced housing nearby? Primarily because local governments haven’t allowed enough new home-building, particularly subsidized affordable units, to stabilize prices and give low-income residents a chance to stay in their communities. So the current housing shortage puts displacement and gentrification on steroids.
Yet many advocates for low-income renters continually shoot down options to build new market-rate housing, even if that market-rate housing would include fees and requirements to build a certain amount of affordable units. Their argument is that the “luxury housing” that would result will only contribute to gentrification and displacement.
So what does the academic literature have to say on this subject? The Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley (in collaboration with researchers at UCLA and Portland State) tackled this question in a research brief last year. Here are their key findings, based on a study of the relationship among housing production, affordability and displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area:
- At the regional level, both market-rate and subsidized housing reduce displacement pressures, but subsidized housing has over double the impact of market-rate units.
- Market-rate production is associated with higher housing cost burden for low-income households, but lower median rents in subsequent decades.
- At the local, block group level in San Francisco, neither market-rate nor subsidized housing production has the protective power they do at the regional scale, likely due to the extreme mismatch between demand and supply.
The key takeaway here is that new affordable housing provides the most “bang for the buck” in terms of reducing displacement and gentrification pressure.
But the study also indicates that new market-rate housing may have three primary benefits for low-income tenants:
- It can reduce displacement pressure overall (although less so than new affordable units).
- This housing stock eventually “filters” over the coming decades into low-income housing, as it gets older and therefore less desirable to higher-income earners. As a result, it provides an investment in the unsubsidized housing of the future (most low-income residents live in market-rate housing, not subsidized units).
- New market-rate development can provide local governments with the revenue they need to fund new subsidized units, via impacts fees, inclusionary zoning, or higher tax revenue.
There’s no denying that displacement is a genuine concern, and policies to promote new housing need to take that concern into account. But opposing new market-rate housing, particularly near transit, is not a solution. In fact, it’s part of the problem.
Housing more Californians near transit and not in sprawl areas represents one of the most crucial ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Bill 827 (Wiener) would help do just that, by preventing local governments from zoning people (and homes) out of these prime transit areas. So it was surprising to see an environmental organization like Sierra Club California come out against the bill (here is a PDF of their letter).
Just how high are the environmental stakes of SB 827? Berkeley Law, together with the Terner Center and Next 10, recently analyzed the impact of putting all new residential development in California through 2030 within three miles of transit or in low-vehicle miles traveled neighborhoods (areas without rail but where residents drive at low rates) and found the following impacts:
Annual reductions of 1.79 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the business-as-usual scenario, which is the equivalent of taking 378,000 cars off the road and almost 15 percent of the emissions reductions needed to reach the state’s Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg, 2008) targets from statewide land use changes.
Significantly, the geography we examined was farther from transit than what SB 827 encompasses, which only covers up to one-half mile near major transit. So the greenhouse gas savings and air quality improvements from building new homes near transit will be significantly greater under SB 827.
So why would Sierra Club oppose what is arguably the state’s most important climate bill this term (as the New York Times couches it)? Let’s go through their arguments:
First, they argue the SB 827 will fuel neighborhood opposition to new transit. Why would neighbors want to support a new rail line, Sierra Club argues, if it will force them to allow new people in their community who will want to live near it? Perhaps the Sierra Club doesn’t realize it, but they just made an important point in favor of SB 827. The better question is: why should we build expensive new rail lines through low-density communities, when they refuse to provide the ridership necessary to support these taxpayer investments? SB 827 is actually a great way to weed out bad rail projects with weak ridership in favor of more sensible transit investments, like bus-only lanes or rail in areas that can actually support it.
Second, they argue that bus routes and service changes all the time, so frequent transit service now might be reduced, leaving SB 827-style dense development underserved by buses. But if you look at the maps of bus routes served with 15 minute peak headways, they cover major arterials that would be among the last places a transit agency would peg for service reduction, like Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. And if Sierra Club is really concerned about service reductions, why not recommend an amendment that the bus routes must have been in service at 15 minute commute headways for a minimum period of time for SB 827 to qualify? Otherwise, this seems like a weak reason to oppose the bill outright.
Third, they are worried about displacement of low-income renters near transit. As I’ve blogged before, this is a legitimate yet overblown concern. Gentrification and displacement is happening now like crazy, precisely because we’re not building enough housing overall. Furthermore, developers will build in upscale transit areas where they can get higher returns, not in low-income neighborhoods. For example, a UCLA study examining low-income neighborhoods around the Blue Line light rail from Downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach showed virtually no investment in these areas, despite some very relaxed local zoning.
But if Sierra Club is truly concerned about displacement, why not recommend policies to address it in the bill, such as requirements for inclusionary zoning or density bonuses? Instead, they offer no solutions, while failing to recognize the massive displacement already occurring due to the existing housing shortage. My question for Sierra Club: what do they propose to combat the gentrification and displacement currently happening now? And where do they want new homes to be built, if not in these prime transit areas?
Fourth, they argue for more incentives on growth instead of a state-based approach like SB 827. But incentives only go so far when you’re up against well-heeled homeowner groups who will vote out elected officials who don’t toe the exclusionary line. What incentives does Sierra Club believe might entice Westwood to upzone their single-family zoning around the Expo Line? Or Rockridge around its BART station? Let’s face it — local control in transit-rich, upscale areas mean the forces of exclusion win. Hence the critical need for approaches like SB 827.
Finally, Sierra Club complains that some of these new buildings near transit won’t need to undertake environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, based on last year’s SB 35. This is a bit of a convoluted argument. SB 35 only applies to jurisdictions behind on affordable housing production. The projects that are then eligible for SB 35 CEQA streamlining must otherwise meet strict requirements and be compliant with local zoning, including providing a significant amount of affordable housing on-site (addressing the displacement concerns Sierra Club raised earlier). So the universe of projects that escapes CEQA review under SB 35 is already pretty minimal.
But more importantly, if you follow this line of argument, now that SB 35 is in effect, Sierra Club is basically saying they won’t favor any zoning changes to allow new housing in communities that are behind on producing affordable units because it might mean CEQA doesn’t apply to projects consistent with that zoning. I don’t think that’s a position Sierra Club really wants to take.
Overall, Sierra Club California appears to be at a reputational crossroads here on smart growth. Their image on this issue took a big hit when wealthy property owners used the San Francisco chapter to oppose new housing in the city, precisely the low-carbon area where new housing should go. So is Sierra Club an organization of wealthy homeowners who want to keep newcomers out of their upscale, transit-rich areas? Or are they actually committed to fighting climate change by providing enough housing for Californians in low-carbon, infill areas? Because their opposition to SB 827 unfortunately indicates more of the former than the latter.
