News
New research shows some of California's most affordable cities saw biggest rent increases
 NBC News – August 11
Typical rent prices have shot up by as much as 40% in inland cities like Bakersfield, Fresno, Visalia, and Riverside in just three years, according to data from economists at Zillow. While rent in these cities remains considerably lower than the Bay Area or Los Angeles, they've seen the largest increases in rent across the entire state, putting sudden pressure on lower-income residents who rely on the lower costs of living of these areas. The sudden explosion in inland rent prices can be traced back to the COVID-19 pandemic and, more generally, California's already-existing housing crisis that has long pushed residents to more affordable cities inland and outside of the state.
Long Beach seeks input on downtown, shoreline area zoning updates
Long Beach Post – August 15
The first of several planned meetings to gather input on rezoning Long Beach’s downtown and waterfront entertainment area will be held September 9, the city has announced. The area covered by the existing Downtown Plan (north of Ocean Boulevard) was last rezoned in 2012, but since then, the city has exceeded the 5,000 housing units originally envisioned. Also, because of the pandemic and other changes in how people work and shop, city officials want to revisit the area’s blueprint for office and retail space.
Office-to-residential, other adaptive reuse construction reaches record high
Smart Cities Dive – August 9
The number of adaptive reuse projects in the U.S. multifamily construction pipeline has grown in the last year, up from 77,000 units in 2022 to a record of 122,000 in 2023, according to RentCafe’s latest Adaptive Reuse Report. Office-to-multifamily conversions make up the majority of units under construction at 37% of future projects, or 45,000 units, followed by hotel-to-multifamily conversions at 23%. Los Angeles has the largest development pipeline in the country at 4,566 units, followed by New York City and Chicago. However, adaptive reuse deliveries have not followed the same trend. A total of 10,092 converted apartments hit the market in 2022, down from 11,422 in 2021 and 13,530 in 2020, according to RentCafe. A conversion project typically takes nine months to a year to design, about a year to approve in most cities, and then two more years to construct, according to Steven Paynter, principal at Gensler, as quoted by RentCafe. This means that the completions hitting the market in 2023 better reflect trends from a few years earlier, in the early days of the pandemic or just before.
As explained in our prior legal alert, Assembly Bill (AB) 2011, which became operative on July 1, 2023, allows for the “by-right” streamlined ministerial (i.e., no CEQA) approval of qualifying mixed-income multi-family residential projects on qualifying properties where office, retail, and/or parking are a principally permitted use. Therefore, AB 2011 provides a potential path for by-right approval for the conversion of commercial buildings to residential use.
As explained in our prior legal alert, some local jurisdictions, including the City and County of San Francisco, have also passed local legislation to facilitate the conversion of commercial buildings to residential use. Unfortunately, AB 1532, titled the Office to Housing Conversion Act, will not be approved during this legislative session. The Office to Conversion Act would have created a lower threshold for qualifying for by-right approval, as compared to AB 2011.
California adopts first-in-nation building code revision to reduce embodied carbon
Architectural Record – August 10
California is now the first state in the country to formally implement general code requirements for reducing embodied carbon in the built environment. On August 2, the California Building Standards Commission voted unanimously to approve two amendments to the 2022 California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen), Part 11, Title 24, that will limit embodied carbon emissions in the “construction, remodel, or adaptive reuse of commercial buildings larger than 100,000 square feet and school projects over 50,000 square feet.” The new regulations, which will take effect statewide on July 1, 2024, expand the 2017 Buy Clean California Act, which imposed embodied carbon limits for certain building materials in public works projects.
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