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Granny flats – small housing units that often exist in the form of converted garages or freestanding structures in homeowners’ backyards – were a fixture throughout San Diego County even before Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill last year that made them easier to build.
The law, written by Sen. Bob Wieckowski, essentially reduces the authority of local governments over the granny flat building process.
But so far only seven of the 19 jurisdictions in San Diego County have updated their granny flat ordinances, and there is still confusion about what the law means for cities, architects and homeowners.
Wieckowski and Greg Nickless of the state’s housing and community development department tried to address some of those concerns at a conference in San Diego on Monday.
One area of pushback has been parking requirements, Nickless said. For instance, some cities still want to require homeowners who convert a garage into a granny flat to construct a new parking garage as a replacement. The law tossed out such requirements.
“It has been 30 years where we deal with local jurisdictions that say, ‘You don’t understand, but we’ve got a parking problem.’ I understand. I know you have a parking problem, but we have a housing problem,” Wieckowski said.
California ranks next to last in the country in housing units per capita, according to stats provided by Wieckowski’s office. State lawmakers are treating the construction of granny flats – and lowering other local barriers to construction – as remedies to the housing crisis.
“We’ve heard time and time again that we need to decrease the cost of new housing production, and we need to create more naturally affordable homes for California—[granny flats] check both of those boxes at the same time,” said Sen. Toni Atkins, who co-wrote the granny flat bill.
While the law simplified the process of building a granny flat, onerous fees may be keeping many homeowners from actually building them.
The fees for building a granny flat in San Diego are comparable to fees required for building a 20,000 square-foot home, said Sarah Jarman, a consultant for the San Diego City Council’s Smart Growth and Land Use Committee.
On Nov. 8, the committee will vote on whether to waive some granny flat fees, which would reduce the total from more than $15,000 to about $2,000. That does not include other fees the city has no control over, such as fees from private water companies.
Though applications for granny flat permits have increased in San Diego from 12 applications in 2016 to 48 this year, the city is far from its goal of 6,000 new granny flats in the next decade.
– Jonah Valdez
Republicans Go All in Against the Gas Tax
With the legislative session over, California Republicans focused all their attention this week on the statewide gas tax increase, which went into effect Wednesday.
Though Republican lawmakers have long expressed a desire to repair the state’s roads, they object to the gas tax and believe a larger share of existing gas tax money should go toward roads, instead of being funneled into the state’s general fund.
“California’s drivers are being punished with higher gas and car taxes for a problem they didn’t create. The state’s General Fund has grown from $100 billion in 2013 to more than $125 billion this year – a record high,” Republican Senate leader Pat Bates, who represents portions of North County, said in a statement. “Yet the liberal supermajority allocated very little from those additional revenues for road repairs. At the same time, the supermajority continued diverting $1 billion each year from existing transportation dollars to general state expenses.”
Republicans are now hoping to make the tax hike a 2018 election issue, and many support an effort to repeal the tax being led by San Diego talk radio host Carl DeMaio.
The San Diego County Republican Party is holding nine rallies across the county on Saturday to promote the repeal effort. They sent out this directive for participants: “Only stand on public right of way. Do not stand on private or commercial property unless specifically invited. Most people will agree with our message but do not argue with fellow citizens. Be respectful. Do not occupy parking spaces used for business. Preferably park a few blocks away. Smile, be positive, and have fun!”
Some endangered Republican members of Congress are jumping in, including San Diego Rep. Darrell Issa, who’s been feuding with Gov. Jerry Brown a lot lately.
“Sacramento shouldn’t make families pay for its repeated financial mismanagement,” Issa said in a statement. “California must repeal this misguided tax increase so we can help more families keep more of what they earn.”
Golden State News
- Columbia Journalism Review profiles CALMatters and its approach of courting wealthy donors to fund newsgathering efforts.
- California, heart of the resistance, also shaped and raised some of the fastest-rising conservative stars. (New York Times)
- San Diego businessman John Cox is running for governor, and is still pushing his idea to split up Senate and Assembly districts into 10,000 micro districts. (Capitol Public Radio)
- Social media companies got a very intense grilling on Capitol Hill this week. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- Some environmentalists recognize the need to build dense new housing near transit, which means they’ve formed unlikely alliances with developers. (CityLab)
- The California Senate in 2014 made it easier for employees to report misconduct, but the reforms haven’t really helped much. (L.A. Times)