Adaptive Reuse: From Desks to Doorways
Stroock Presents: GOAT Town, Episode 4: Office-to-Residential Conversions in NYC – Magic Bullet or Merely One Piece of the Puzzle?
Business Better Podcast Episode: Affordable Housing in Chinatown, Los Angeles: How To Better Serve Your Community
California CRE to Expand in 2022
How To Be A Project Advocate By Diffusing Adjacent Neighbor Tensions
Homebuilder Series Webinar: Joint Ventures Solutions, Steve Lear
This is the eighth update in our series covering AB 130 and SB 131, two bills that work substantive changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and California housing law....more
Note: This is the third update in our series covering AB 130 and SB 131, two bills that work substantive changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and California housing law....more
On June 30, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 130 (AB 130) and Senate Bill 131 (SB 131), both of which took effect immediately....more
AB 1893 (Wicks) significantly modified the so-called “Builder’s Remedy” under the Housing Accountability Act (Gov. Code § 65589.5) (HAA) effective January 1, 2025. As explained in our prior legal alert, the Builder’s Remedy...more
Senate Bill (SB) 937 (Wiener) went into effect on January 1, 2025. SB 937 eases the financial burden on residential developers by prohibiting local agencies from imposing fees on specified residential development projects...more
On January 12, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-4-25 suspending the application of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the California Coastal Act (Coastal Act) for projects to...more
In a partially published opinion filed October 31, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) held, in light of AB 1307 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Make UC a Good Neighbor v. Regents of University of...more
The California Legislature has continued to refine the Density Bonus Law over the years, making important updates to housing laws that impact developers across the state. Recent legislative changes include key updates on...more
On June 27, 2024, the California First District Court of Appeal affirmed the denial of a writ petition challenging the City of Lafayette’s determination that a 12-unit residential condominium building qualified for the Class...more
City of Los Angeles - Increase to Planning Applications and Affordable Housing Linkage Fees - On July 1, 2024, the fee for planning and land use applications increased by 3.5% based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban...more
A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team: San Francisco - S.F.’s Stonestown to become west side’s largest residential development in 50 years (SF Chronicle): The plan to convert the Stonestown...more
The California Supreme Court, on June 6, 2024, reversed the First District Court of Appeal’s decision regarding UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) EIR. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision clears the way for...more
As expected, on June 28, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) determined that San Francisco has not made adequate progress toward its State-mandated housing production goal. The City’s Housing...more
A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team: San Francisco - Ultra Wealthy Are Putting Money Behind Bets on San Francisco’s Comeback (Bloomberg): Big investments in City businesses and real...more
A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team: San Francisco - Small and Mighty: How small businesses can reinvent downtown San Francisco (SPUR Policy Brief): SPUR’s research, drawn from a...more
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced the 2024 Area Median Income (AMI) and Rent Limits for counties statewide. These numbers are impactful on a number of levels, but are extremely important...more
Welcome to Construction & Claims, a periodic digest of the headlines, statutory and regulatory changes and court cases involving construction news, claims, bid protests, contract administration and payment-related disputes....more
On March 6, 2024, the First Appellate District held that a city council resolution approving an agreement between the City of Livermore and an affordable housing developer was legislative in nature and thus subject to a...more
The Los Angeles Superior Court issued a highly anticipated ruling on March 4, 2024, addressing a Builder’s Remedy project denial by the City of La Cañada Flintridge. The decision confirms (i) that a local jurisdiction cannot...more
Voters in San Francisco and California will again confront a formidable ballot during the election on March 5, 2024, with an array of qualified City measures and one state proposition to consider....more
Throughout 2023, the State’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) loomed large in San Francisco land use policy and politics. In January 2023, the City adopted and HCD certified a new Housing Element setting...more
In a published opinion filed on January 17, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 5) reversed a trial court judgment overturning a mitigated negative declaration (MND) and requiring an EIR for a 42-single family...more
2023 served up roughly the same number of published appellate CEQA cases as 2022 with a defense win percentage of over 80 percent, which has been the case in many, if not all, of the past ten years. A prominent theme of...more
San Francisco - Can Free Rent Jump-Start a Downtown San Francisco Revival? Pop-Up Retailers Say Maybe (SF Standard): Nearly halfway into the three-month program, called Vacant to Vibrant, stakeholders say it has breathed...more
A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team: San Francisco - These three new blocks of housing are among S.F.’s best. They’re for the formerly homeless (S.F. Chronicle): Exploring three recently...more