You WILL Build

Whether they come or not. Hot off the presses from Housing California:

COMMISSION ADOPTS FINAL GUIDELINES FOR NEW LAND-USE TRANSPORTATION PLANS

On April 8, 2010, the California Transportation Commission adopted the 2010 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) Guidelines. The revised guidelines reflect new requirements imposed by SB 375 (Steinberg, 2008) to link transportation and land-use planning in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Housing California and our partners at Public Advocates, ClimatePlan, and other progressive organizations devoted significant time to ensuring the guidelines accurately reflect the language and spirit of SB 375, especially relating to public participation, housing and transit affordability, and environmental protection. Language added to the guidelines at our urging includes:

• Specific suggestions on how regional planning agencies can effectively engage low-income residents and their representatives (See Chapter 4 RTP Consultation and Coordination).
• Requirements for use of public participation tools, including computer simulations, that clearly demonstrate how various planning scenarios will impact residents' lives (See Chapter 3.2 Sketch Modeling).
• Recommendations for modeling improvements that demonstrate the link between housing affordability, wages, and greenhouse gas emissions and that show how various planning scenarios impact housing affordability (See Chapter 3.2).
• Guidance on estimating the projected housing need for the full RTP planning period (See Section 6.25 Sustainable Communities Strategy Development: Addressing Housing Needs in the SCS)

Housing California is proud to announce that our SB 375 resources are now online! Resources include:

• An SB 375 bill summary.
• A list of Sustainable Communities Strategy acronyms.
• A list of opportunities for addressing home affordability in regional modeling.
• An advocates guide for effectively participating in the regional modeling process.
• Regional implementation timelines for Los Angeles
• The slide presentation from our last SB 375 training

Obviously our state needs to take a lesson from Spain rather than forcing draconian overbuilding that generates tremendous carbon loads and diminishes our resources.