Council Hires Co-Counsel to
Preserve the Inclusionary Ordinance
After a lengthy closed session on Tuesday, the
San Diego City Council approved appointing the San Diego Housing Commission's
attorney, Charles Christensen, to serve as co-counsel with the City Attorney
on defending the inclusionary ordinance. The City Attorney then withdrew his
proposal to amend the ordinance to insert the waiver language used by Napa
County. Apparently, the plan is to try
to get the judge's ruling reversed in order to preserve the in-lieu fees
collected over the last 3 years. Mr. Christensen is very optimistic about
their chances of succeeding.
Chamber Presents Housing
Plan to Council Committee
Sherm Harmer, Chairman of the San Diego Regional
Chamber of Commerce's Housing Committee, presented the Committee's 15
recommendations for addressing the affordable housing crisis. The
recommendations support more funding, streamlined processing for affordable
and workforce housing and passage of an infrastructure bond, among other
things. The San Diego Housing Federation testified in support of the
recommendations. The recommendations can be downloaded at: http://housingsandiego.org/documents/ChamberHousingRecs-03-23-06.pdf.
Legislature Passes
Milestone
This week was the deadline for all bills to be
passed out of their house of origin or die. Several bills of interest to
affordable housing interests were considered.
The Assembly passed AB 2634 (Lieber), adding
"extremely low income" (less than 30% of area median) to the list of income
groups that must be planned for in housing elements. After repeated vote
counts in the Assembly, AB 2922 (Jones), redevelopment housing, was stripped
down to a single non-controversial provision, thus eliminating both the 35%
housing set aside and deeper targeting of the redevelopment housing fund. The
author hopes to have the provision added back in by the Senate. The
redevelopment agencies have strongly opposed increasing the affordable housing
set aside.
The Senate took no action this week on the
builder’s major housing planning bill, SB 1800 (Ducheny), which means it
missed the 6/2 deadline to move off the Senate floor. The bill has been
heavily amended to meet objections from the cities, environmentalists and
housing advocates. It may be resurrected in the Assembly in a "gut and amend"
move.
The Senate did approve SB 1322 (Cedillo),
by-right zoning for homeless shelters.
Awards Event Early
Registration Ends Wednesday
The Federation's 11th Annual San
Diego County Affordable Housing and Community Development Recognition
Awards will be on June 14th. The early registration deadline is
on Wednesday, June 7th. The early registration fees are $50 for SDHF
Members and $60 for Non-members . After that the fee will be $85. A Table of
10 $400. The nominees are listed in the June issue of Housing &
Community Develoment News, which was published today.
Plan to come early as the Silent Auction has 30
items including Padre tickets, sports memorabilia, sailing lessons, golf, golf
clubs, gift baskets, and theater and restaurant packages that are affordable
for all bidders. Bidding will close just before the Award Presentations
begin at 6:00 PM.
For more information and to register online go
to: http://housingsandiego.org/events_award.php.
Celebrating 15
Years of Support and Advocacy for Affordable Housing
ã 2006 San Diego
Housing Federation, 450 B Street, Suite 1010, San Diego, CA 92101 (619)
239-6693
Website: http://www.housingsandiego.org Email:
sdhfstaf@housingsandiego.org
