Housing advocates are lawyering up to force Bay Area cities to produce more housing.

Coming just days after the region’s RHNA deadline the lawsuits suggest pitched battle ahead over the Bay Area’s housing targets — and maybe even a Builder’s Remedy battle or two.

Attempting to ease tensions between cities and the state, HCD is given out the planning equivalent of gold stars.

California desperately needs housing, but inflation and interest rates may hinder production.

But measures calling for increased housing development potential met decidedly mixed results.

Emeryville has embraced housing on a scale that no other Bay Area city has even considered. In particular, the city hopes to not only meet its Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals, but to exceed it — by as much as 50%.

HCD says 70% of draft elements don’t meet the state’s enhanced requirements.

An advocacy group led by municipal officials is seeking to put a measure on the ballot that would curtail almost all of Sacramento’s power to influence local planning, zoning, and housing production.

Some cities are welcoming the units, but others appear to be adopting regulations designed to put up barriers.

San Francisco has become equally famous for rejecting projects, including, recently, everything from a branch of a locally beloved burrito restaurant to a 13-story, 316-unit building in the Tenderloin. The apartment building, at 469 Stevenson, met the same fate—for now—on a 8-3 vote in late October.

One trend that is not new at all is California’s housing crisis. If anything, it only got worse during the pandemic. Now, cities, developers, and lawmakers are trying to figure out whether these three crises might have a common solution: Can excess office and retail space be used for housing?

The pandemic accelerated the “retail apocalypse,” rendering storefronts and mall spaces vacant. And that raises the question of what will happen to all that excess retail space.

CP&DR to discuss exactly what combination of art and science will be required for cities to undo single-family zoning