My last post was not real. There is no such legislation and there is likely to be no such legislation. Nor is there likely to be any sort of judicial intervention along such lines, which would be one upside to a severely conservative Supreme Court. Sadly, judicial conservatives are not likely to support such interventions. Thus my plaintive call to the Koch brothers.
So we are in the world of baby steps towards turning Palo Alto into East New York and building $50,000 homes. One came from Sacramento, California, in October 2015. The Density Bonus Act of 2015 reduces the maximum parking requirement for affordable developments within a half-mile of a major transit stop to 0.5 spaces per unit. At a cost of $24,000 per space ($34,000 if inside the structure) that is a big saving. Hooray!
But it is a baby step. First, not a whole lot of developments devote 10% of their units to low-income households. Even if they do, they will only get a 20% density bonus. In other words, if you could have built ten units on a parcel, adding a low-income unit will let you bump that number up to 12. This is less than huge.
Second, major transit stops are rail stations or stops serving more than two bus routes with 15-minute frequencies. A half-mile from them does not cover a whole lot of places.
Finally, the underlying zoning code is still the underlying zoning code. For example, the entire southwestern half of the ½-mile circle around the Palo Alto Caltrain is unbuildable for residential housing. (See map.)
So, yeah, a baby step. Nice, yes, but nothing will change.
Posted by: JKR | January 21, 2016 at 08:05 AM