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The California Supreme Court unanimously ruled in San Francisco on Monday that cities have the right to require developers to make a portion of new units available as affordable housing.
The court unanimously upheld a 2010 San Jose law that requires developers of 20 or more units to provide 15% of those units at below-market rates affordable to people with low and moderate incomes.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote that the ordinance falls within cities’ “broad discretion to regulate the use of real property to serve the legitimate interests of the general public and the community at large.”
Problems stemming from a scarcity of affordable housing “have reached what might be described as epic proportions in many of the state’s localities,” the chief justice wrote.
The court rejected a challenge by the California Building Industry Association, which argued that the measure amounted to an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation.
Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court, “This condition does not require the developer to dedicate any portion of its property to the public or to pay any money to the public.
“Instead, like many other land use regulations, this condition simply places a restriction on the way the developer may use its property by limiting the price for which the developer may offer some of its units for sale,” the court said.
More than 170 California cities and counties have adopted similar laws, known as inclusionary housing ordinances, according to the court.
The San Jose law was put on hold while the building association pursued its lawsuit.
Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “The California Supreme Court has vindicated San José’s bold decision to become the largest city in the nation with an inclusionary housing policy, and it couldn’t have come at a time of greater need for affordable housing.
“With the crisis we face in our housing markets, I only regret that it required a Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ordinance, because we could have had the benefit of several years of implementation of this important tool,” Liccardo said in a statement.
Tony Francois, a lawyer for the building association, said the organizations and its attorneys are reviewing the ruling to determine whether a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is possible.
“This is a very disappointing decision from the standpoint of property rights generally, and specifically for those who want to build homes for the public, and for people who aspire to buy a new home,” Francois said.
“The ruling allows government to impose financial penalties on providers of new housing – a penalty that can only deter efforts to ease the state’s housing shortage, and make it even harder and costlier for average families to afford a home in California,” he said.
Francois is a senior staff attorney with the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, which supports property rights and limited government.
The San Francisco-based Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California called the ruling “a big win for affordable housing.”
“Inclusionary programs are an especially important tool to ensure that we maintain and create integrated and socio-economic and ethnically diverse communities,” the group said in a statement.
The housing association was part of a coalition of six nonprofit housing organizations that was allowed by the trial judge in the case, Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Socrates Manoukian, to become an intervenor, or an official party, on the side of San Jose.
The case came to the state high court after Manoukian overturned the city law in 2012 and after a state appeals court in San Jose in 2013 reversed his decision and upheld the law.
The San Jose ordinance allows developers the options of paying a fee or providing affordable housing at another location as alternatives to making 15% of a new development affordable housing.
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So, you have a classroom of average students who struggle to get a C. There are those who work hard, study and get A’s. The instructor decides that everyone deserves an A just because they are alive. This levels the playing field and is considered fair and good. It has unintended consequences however, the A’s stop working so hard. Now most get C’s. Why bother? Now, it is a similar situation in housing. You work hard and save for a home, and then there are those due to many circumstances, some of which are lack of skills and education so they earn less. But, guess what, they want to live in nicer neighborhoods and homes, and now they get to buy and rent at a lower cost because they are subsidized by the others who earn more. Redistribution of wealth aka socialism pure and simple. This is where we are with the current politicians at the state and federal level.
So when did we become Russia? Owing a home or renting a nice apartment is a privilege, not a right!
Obviously, you both forget that earning a lower income is not necessarily the result of a lack of skills or education. I know a great many teachers who have more education and skills (but lower incomes) than high-income real estate brokers.
I agree that teachers often have more education than many realtors, self-employed electricians and plumbers too, but they also don’t work 7 days a week and evenings and they don’t have to pay their own medical/dental insurance or fund their own retirement. Salaries and income should be determined by the market and not what some bureaucrats think is “fair”. Teachers in the San Ramon Valley earn a great wage and benefits for a 9 month a year job – plus paid vacations. If they have masters degree or above they earn close to $100K a year. There is a trend in denouncing wealth like its a bad thing and wanting successful entrepreneurs and executives to feel guilty because of it.
Actually, Louise, you are incorrect in two respects.
Louiaw said that the people who can’t afford to live in communities like ours earn less, in part, because they lack skills or education. However, there are many people who are skilled and/or educated who earn less because their jobs are just less remunerative, like teachers. We don’t have a meritocracy — income is not perfectly aligned with education/training or effort.
And, second, there really is NOT “a trend denouncing wealth like it’s a bad thing and wanting successful entrepreneurs to feel guilty because of it.” That’s just a Fox News and right-wing meme designed to obscure the real issue, which is that our sense of community and the ability of our democracy to function is undermined if the gap between ultra-rich and poor (or even working class) becomes too extreme. If ALL of the gains in a society go only to the very small sliver of earners at the top, then ordinary Americans will lose faith in the economic and political system that has built this great country. We really have to guard against our country becoming too skewed in favor of only the wealthy or the powerful, or the vast majority of the middle class will feel that they no longer have a stake in the country and its future…..and I say that as a member of the 1%.
Then Dave, if you feel so strongly about your position, feel free to donate all your hard earned money to the middle class. And denouncing wealth is not a Fox News thing – it is an Obama and liberal thing!
Dave,
There is sadly no convincing the bourgeois in this zip code and ones like it of the perils of returning to a full-on oligarchy of the wealthiest segment of society. In this day and age, we as a society are more then happy to see a MLB ballplayer receive “market” wages (http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/04/major-league-baseball-average-salary-meal-money-2015-mlb) while the individuals who educate our children receive a “great wage”.
I would offer a fair wager that if one such as Louise could slip into a time machine and go back and ask her grandparents (or great grandparents, I suppose) what life was like just after WWI in those days when it was just the über wealthy (e.g the Rockefellers, the Morgans, etc.) and those poor souls like my predecessors and perhaps yours.
Again, I go back to the athletes that we seem to so universally enable with generational wealth for their ability to hit a baseball, a jump-shot or a quarterback for that matter. There is just no amount of money we are not happy to see placed into their respective bank accounts provided they afford us the opportunity to have bragging rights to our colleagues and family members in distant cities.
So, using Louise’s market-based economic model and accepting that MLB players are certainly paid to play at adjusted market-rates, let’s see how many teachers it takes to equal just one (1) ballplayer. We should note that the athletes are expected to work as many as 162 time a year, less any additional work (i.e. playoffs) required to determine each fiscal year’s market leader. Since they both go to ‘college’, let’s also presume that their start-up costs and academic preparatory requirements are equivalent.
Thus, if we take the average 2015 MLB salary from the provided link to be approximately $4MM USD and we take Louse’s “great wage” salary estimate of $100,000 USD as a reasonable valuation for a teacher with a master’s degree, we should expect a minimum of FORTY (40) educators for every MLB players. WOW! It takes 40 teachers to equal just one MLB’r in terms of societal expense. Please note that for this analysis, we’ll neglect the $100.50 per diem each MLB player receives each and every day for “nutritious meals away from the ballpark” as equivalent to the apple each teacher likely receives from a random student, each day.
This is how the market works, right? Perhaps someone can add to this economic forecast by predicting the benefit of shoe contracts for each and every educator….
Oh, Douglas, shallow quips are not the answer.
I think I’d rather use my time to help change tax policy back to something fairer to all.
When the wealthy can grab a bigger share of the pie not by working harder or smarter, but instead, b buying a Congress that reduces (or, as the Republicans are proposing, eliminates) the capital gains tax, something is seriously wrong with America. When those wealthy people who collect their income from capital gains pay a lower effective tax rate than ordinary workers, something is wrong. When the Walton family owns more of this nation’s wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans, something is seriously wrong.
And even apart from the morality of it, it is simply bad business for the middle class to fall further and further behind — because our economy depends on middle class consumer spending. It accounts for 70% of our economy. If the middle class doesn’t have money to spend, eventually all those dividends and capital gains that the wealth live off will dry up.
Dave
I really think you should go back to school and take some classes in both economics and accounting as you are seriously misguided. This country was founded on capitalism, not socialism. The fact that my taxes this year alone have paid for a few low income students to get a free ride in the UC system, and then to have to pay for my own child to attend college is seriously flawed. I chose to have my children and should only be responsible for them to get a higher education, or a nice house/apartment if I so choose. It is not my job to pay for everyone else unless I choose to do so – not to be dictated by you or the government. I work hard for my family, not for the people who continue to have children and don’t contribute anything to society and are just a drain on it.
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
K. Marx
The old Soviet ideology is alive and well, never mind what happened to that failed, central planned empire.
Douglas –
When you live in the “Island of Douglas,” you can keep all that you earn and be as isolated and selfish as you want to be. Everything that is yours will be from your efforts alone.
But, you don’t. We live in an interdependent and complex society. Instead, your earnings depend, in part, on all the many great features that this nation provides (laws, infrastructure, police, etc.), and you have to contribute to their cost. And you don’t get to pick and choose which ones you think you benefited from and which ones you didn’t. We don’t (fortunately) have a system that calculates out exactly how much benefit you received, or think you received, from each little thing that society provided.
And those who have earned more are presumed to have benefited in greater measure from all of those public goods. That’s why we have a progressive tax system.
If we continue to drain all the wealth of this country in to the hands of just a few mega-rich families, we will have a nation of serfs who own no property and are forced to work for sub-subsistence wages, with little or no ability to purchase the consumer goods that currently drive the vast majority of our economy. Maybe they won’t even have a vote by then.
Perhaps you would like to live in a feudal society like that. Most Americans would not.
Dave – Again, seriously flawed logic as my earnings depend on the company I work for and how well I do my job. You obviously are a bleeding heart liberal, but are unwilling to put your own money where your mouth is. Until you do that, your words are just meaningless, flawed rhetoric!
Douglas – “To those whom much is given, much is expected.”
Stop complaining about having to pay your fair share to live in this great country. You can’t even begin to imagine how much opportunity has been given to you compared to most other people in this world.
Again, flawed logic as I pay well more than a fair share. Give me a break, Dave! And by the way, are you now quoting yourself as you gave no credit for the ridiculous quote? The opportunities I have been given are based on how hard I have worked to make them – I don’t believe in handouts for those who believe they are owed something.
Douglas,
I’m sure you’ll have much to explain to St. Peter at the pearly gates but perhaps a little more time reading the good book as opposed to these silly threads???
That “ridiculous quote” (and ones like it) can be found in Luke 12:48….
Sincerely,
Conservator
Thanks, Conservator. Yes, the quote was a paraphrase of that Biblical passage. Most people wouldn’t view it as a ridiculous quote, right?
Douglas doesn’t seem to realize that the biggest opportunity that he was ever given was to have been born in the U.S. (purely a matter of luck — unless he believes that he somehow “worked” to make that opportunity happen), rather than in some obscure part of a developing country.
Also, it’s interesting how he believes that anyone who needs a helping hand (for whatever reason) must “believe they are owed something.”
I also find it interesting that, for some people who have been fortunate enough to have made a very comfortable life for themselves (like many of us in Danville), it is not enough to simply enjoy that life (and maybe give a little back), but they have to lobby diligently to avoid rubbing elbows with anyone who hasn’t had the same good fortune.