The headwinds are plenty: Higher interest rates for construction loans. Rising labor and material costs. Slowing demand from homebuyers squeezed by more expensive mortgages. And fears of a looming recession as cities continue to recover from the pandemic.

That’s all raising the specter of a widespread housing construction downturn.

“There already is a slowdown, but I think it will magnify itself in 2023,” said Ken Rosen, chair of UC Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. “A lot of developers may put projects on hold until construction costs come down.”

The decline threatens to thwart the Bay Area’s effort to meet its state-mandated goal of approving more than 441,000 homes of all income levels over the next eight years, representing a roughly 15% increase in the region’s housing stock. Already, most cities and counties haven’t come close to meeting their individual targets in past decades. And housing experts and advocates contend that chronic underproduction — in part because many local officials have sought to limit growth — is at the root of the region’s astronomical rents and home prices.

Mathew Reed, policy director with Silicon Valley pro-housing group SV@Home, said the mounting economic uncertainty will require officials at all levels of government to remove barriers to development and unlock more money for desperately needed affordable homes.

“Because there are ongoing challenges, there’s a lot we can do that’s going to be critical in the longer term,” Reed said.

Signs of a homebuilding decline are already clear. From the start of last year through November, the San Francisco metro area — which includes the East Bay and Peninsula — permitted just over 10,000 homes, a 16% decline from the same period in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The San Jose metro area, which has seen a spate of new housing planned for its urban center, actually saw permits increase from around 4,000 to 6,000 new units.

But just because projects have construction permits, that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll be built. In San Francisco, for instance, several of the city’s biggest housing developments are reportedly stalled. And in Concord, a 16,000-unit megaproject still in the planning stages is on hold after the developer asked the city to approve the addition of about 3,000 more homes to offset growing costs.

“You have deals going to the sidelines because of interest rates,” said Chris Neighbor, president of SummerHill Homes, which develops houses, condos and apartments throughout the South Bay.

The rising cost of borrowing has sent typical mortgage rates doubling over the past year, to 6.3% last week, boosting monthly home payments by thousands of dollars and pushing many would-be buyers out of the market. In turn, developers are increasingly pulling back on new single-family homes and condos.

On top of that, financing projects has become more expensive as rates for construction loans also have jumped to around 6%. Neighbor said that’s adding roughly $20,000 to the per-unit cost of large multimillion-dollar developments – a seemingly small amount that can still make all the difference.

“That just upended all of the financial models that determine whether or not something is a feasible project,” said Chris Thornberg, an economist and founder of Beacon Economics.

Another roadblock: swelling material and labor costs since the start of the pandemic. Neighbor said inflation and supply chain issues for lumber and other materials, coupled with worker shortages, have sent hard costs soaring by around 20% the past few years, though prices are now starting to stabilize.

The cost of ​lumber, which has been especially volatile during the pandemic, recently returned to pre-COVID levels. Prices averaged around $377 per thousand board feet this month, down from a peak of $1,495 in May 2021.

Dean Wehrli, a principal with John Burns Real Estate Consulting, said tens of thousands of local layoffs by tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce also are having a “big impact on housing demand,” giving developers pause. And growing concerns about a recession freezing the local real estate market later this year are only increasing the uncertainty.

At the same time, the slow pandemic recovery of the region’s urban cores has some developers questioning whether it makes sense to pursue projects in city centers, where rents largely haven’t returned to pre-COVID prices.

“Why would you want to live in a downtown if it is dark and empty and boarded up?” asked Danny Haber, chief executive of Oakland-based developer oWOW.

Meanwhile, affordable housing developers are facing yet another set of challenges. Most low-income projects rely on public subsidies that have become increasingly oversubscribed in recent years and could soon be on the chopping block amid economic uncertainty.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom, facing a projected $22.5 billion deficit, released a new budget proposal calling for $350 million in reductions from the $11.2 billion set aside for affordable housing programs over the next few years.

“In the tough times, that’s where we’ll see how committed we are to addressing this crisis,” Diaz said.

Matt Regan, a housing policy expert with the pro-business group Bay Area Council, blamed cities’ sometimes yearslong approval process for adding crushing costs to both affordable and market-rate projects. Local zoning rules have also put overly strict limits on how many homes can go where, he said.

While the state and local governments have phased in reforms, more needs to be done to rebalance the housing market in the Bay Area, Regan said.

“If it’s not already a gated country club for millionaires,” he said, “it will become that very soon.”

Nearly half of the almost 52,000 people who called 211 — the nationwide social services hotline — in six Bay Area counties last year needed housing help, from a place to shelter for the night to assistance paying their rent so they wouldn’t be evicted. That’s up from about a third the year before.

The surge in demand, which came as the last statewide COVID-19 eviction protections expired and inflation soared, is overwhelming the Bay Area’s resources, meaning many people in need are turned away or left to languish on long waitlists.

“We’ve always received calls about housing needs, but the past quarter especially we’ve been seeing thousands of our neighbors reach out about housing,” said Clare Margason, 211 director for United Way Bay Area. “Our residents are struggling to pay their rent, to meet basic needs.”

United Way recently released its first public, online database tracking the number and types of calls it receives at the 211 centers it operates for San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, Napa and Solano counties. (The call centers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties are run by different organizations.) Margason hopes the data will help make their services stronger by identifying gaps in resources.

After housing at 47%, food was the second-most needed resource last year, comprising nearly 17% of requests, followed by help with health care, at 13%. Requests for help with mental health or substance abuse, at nearly 7%, also ticked up despite the launch last summer of 988 — a nationwide mental health crisis hotline.

Pleas for housing help have soared in Alameda County as well, jumping up 27% last year, according to Eden I&R, which operates the county’s 211 line locally. The call center, which keeps an extensive housing database, sometimes can refer callers directly to affordable housing units or shelter beds, or help them get on waitlists. Because of the bureaucratic nature of the county’s affordable housing system, 211 operators often have to refer callers to other resource centers where they can begin a complicated screening process to determine if they are eligible for help.

“There’s never enough,” said Eden I&R Executive Director Alison DeJung. “It can be pretty common that a caller will call and there’s no shelter bed available.”

Because the need is so great, her team launched a new “housing specialty unit” in October designed to help callers hold onto their housing and avoid ending up on the street. They hired three employees specially trained in tenant rights to help callers who are at risk of eviction or struggling to pay rent. The Bay Area’s other 211 call centers are working on similar experimental programs.

United Way outsourced its 211 call centers to Southern California in 2012 due to financial challenges and now calls from San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Napa, Marin and Sonora counties are answered in Ventura County.

In Santa Clara County, there has been such a desperate need for emergency shelter that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the county launched a separate hotline just to connect people to beds. Dubbed the Here4You hotline — 408-385-2400 — the number is now operated by the Bill Wilson Center, which runs shelters and housing programs in the county. Before the recent storms wreaked havoc on the region, the hotline received about 300 calls per day, said CEO Sparky Harlan. Now, that’s up to between 400 and 450. There are so many people in need, that the call center is constantly turning people away.

“We’re probably able to place a third of the people right now that are calling,” Harlan said.

The need is similarly high in Contra Costa County, where the number of calls specifically related to evictions nearly doubled — increasing from 681 in 2021 to 1,196 last year.

Tom Myers, executive director of the nonprofit Community Services Agency in Mountain View, isn’t surprised by the spike in 211 requests for housing. He’s seen a similar increase at his own agency — both in the number of people who need help paying rent and in those who are trying to claw their way out of homelessness. Unable to keep up with demand, his team is forced to put people on waiting lists. The average wait for rental assistance is between two and four weeks, he said.

“Unfortunately, I think we’ve known for some time that we have a group of people who are living in incredibly housing insecure environments,” Myers said. “And that number increased. It multiplied during COVID. And it’s not going away. Until the Bay Area solves its affordable housing crisis, we are going to continue to have this problem.”

We must mitigateweather extremes

I applaud The Mercury News for the excellent coverage of California’s recent storms and their resulting devastation. And wow, what a contrast to the extreme drought that we had been experiencing the past few years.

This extreme weather fluctuation is not a coincidence. Climate change has been wreaking havoc on our state. It is impacting weather patterns, altering the frequency and intensity of when it rains. A warming climate increases the moisture in the air, which unleashes longer, stronger and wetter storms.

We need to stop emitting heat-trapping climate pollution into the atmosphere. The longer we choose to burn fossil fuels, the more heat-trapping climate pollution we put into the atmosphere, which in turn exacerbates climate disasters and expense.

Our elected leaders must do the work to cut emissions, embrace carbon-free energy and transportation systems, and protect communities at risk — not only here in California, but also throughout the United States.

Paula DanzLos Altos

With fentanyl, don’tbe ‘the cool parent’

Thank you for your insight Johann Jacob (“Parents have critical role in fentanyl fight,” Page A6, Jan. 11).

Some adults just throw up their hands and say “they are just being teenagers” as a child starts messing around with drugs. These adults are a do-nothing lot. The result often is an escalation of drug use and in some cases death (or very close calls).

Parents, get involved, heavily. Being the cool parent is not cool.

Sue KensillSan Jose

Many in Congresshave violated oath

Mounting evidence has been provided that elected GOP representatives and senators are not eligible to maintain their positions in the House or in the Senate.

The 14th Amendment of our Constitution, Section 3: Ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly disqualifies any person from public office who, having previously taken an oath to defend our Constitution as a federal or state office holder, engaged in insurrection or rebellion.

There is ample evidence from the Jan. 6 committee and the Mueller report that Donald Trump and his allies in the House and Senate did engage in exactly that behavior. They should be held accountable and be removed from their public offices or be barred from ever holding a public office ever again.

Wilhelmus VuistCampbell

Prop. 13 needs reformfor schools’ sake

Re. “California’s Proposition 13 battle enters a new phase,” Page A6, Jan. 6:

The recent discussions of Proposition 13 have completely ignored its devastating and lasting impact on our schools, especially for marginalized students.

As a person of color immigrant who attended public high school, community college and is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, I can firmly say that my education was negatively impacted by underfunding.

It’s interesting to see how accepted and easily published this vilification of taxation is. But we never talk about the huge burden Proposition 13 put on the backs of our students. Every year it’s estimated we lose billions of dollars that should be going to our public schools from commercial properties alone. A recent legislative fix would recoup up to $12.5 billion a year.

Proposition 13 has robbed so many from my generation; and so many more future Californians will experience teacher shortages, the lack of extracurricular programs and overcrowded classrooms because of Proposition 13. People need to consider all the effects Proposition 13 has created for Californians.

Gillian GaraciSan Francisco

CEQA isn’t holding upaffordable housing

In his recent column, Dan Walters falsely declares that the California Environmental Quality Act blocks affordable housing (“Environmental law’s misuse blocking housing brings calls for CEQA reform,” Page A9, Jan. 8). His argument relies on inflammatory rhetoric rather than established fact. He ignores empirical studies by reputable authorities — The Housing Workshop, UC Berkeley Law, and Association of Environmental Professionals — finding CEQA is not a major impediment to housing.

Walters got it exactly backward: The Livermore case demonstrates CEQA’s affordable housing exemptions are working. With its strong set of categorical exemptions, CEQA allows affordable housing to be built, while adhering to its purpose of protecting public health and the environment.

Rick LonginottiSanta Cruz

If the state rejects Atherton’s updated plan — which also includes a property adjacent to Redwood City — it could lose local development control altogether, putting at risk the bucolic mansion-studded small-town vibe it’s worked years to preserve.

More commonly known as upzoning, some properties will be rezoned to allow more housing — a hot topic since the California HOME Act, which makes it easier for homeowners to subdivide an existing lot, went into effect at the beginning of last year. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators are pushing to increase the state’s supply of affordable, multi-family housing and slow-growth, but affluent Bay Area suburbs such as Atherton are pushing back.

Some have tried creative approaches to avoid increasing their housing density — Woodside, for example, declared itself a mountain lion habitat. But most have taken Atherton’s tack of assuaging pushback from residents about apartment construction in their neighborhood by relying on granny flats or school sites to try to meet the state-mandated construction of hundreds of new units of housing over the next eight years.

Tasked with where to put its 348 required new homes, Atherton leaders have spent the last year and a half squabbling with their super-rich neighbors over one plan or another. As council member Rick DeGolia put it: “Wherever you propose to do it, whoever lives around that area objects. That’s the constant we’ve experienced in the last year and three months.”

While spending months devising a plan that puts much of the new-housing burden on Menlo School, Menlo College and other public school sites within Atherton, the council had tried to avoid upzoning any of the town for multi-family housing.

But after the town’s housing consultant cautioned that their plan would likely be rejected by the state because it does not include multi-family zoning nor address homes for low- and very low-income families, council members went back to the drawing board to reconsider previously rejected drafts.

“I’ve lived in Atherton over 20 years, and I don’t want to destroy Atherton’s character, but the rationale is to look at locations that will have the minimal impact on the remaining town,” council member Elizabeth Lewis said. “We’ve really tried to not do a multi-family upzoning situation, but it looks like we need to take another look at our housing element before we submit.”

Atherton has until Jan. 31 to submit a housing plan to the state; if it’s rejected, the town will be subject to the “builder’s remedy,” which would allow landowners to build dense housing without the oversight or approval of local officials.

Already one homeowner on Oakwood Boulevard, near the border with Redwood City, has said he’s interested in building multiple units there, though some council members are wary that it will cause too much traffic in a part of town that’s dominated by single-family homes. If the state rejects Atherton’s housing plan, that could mean that owner could build a much denser project with no oversight from town officials. By zoning it as multi-family, the council believes they’ll have much more control on what gets built there.

“Personally I think that one of our best opportunities is 23 Oakwood with whatever clauses we want to put in to guarantee we’re going get something that helps meet our need,” Mayor Bill Widmer said.

The council also decided to upzone 17 houses along El Camino Real, from Stockbridge Avenue to the Redwood City border, for multi-family housing and single-family homes on smaller lots at the edge of a town predominated by acre lots with some of the Bay Area’s largest mansions — an area jokingly referred to as the “poverty pocket” by locals, despite the presence of multi-million-dollar homes.

But the council couldn’t agree on developing an acre-sized area in Holbrook-Palmer Park currently housing the chief of police in a historic 1930s Mediterranean-style home. The Holbrook-Palmer estate was donated to the town in March 1958 after the death of Olive Holbrook Palmer — but for recreational uses only. The town attorney said there’s a clause in the will that says if the town ever uses it for anything other than recreation — potentially including housing — ownership of the land would go to Stanford University.

While the council did manage to upzone parts of town, Councilmember DeGolia said he fears that no developer would be able to afford the pricey land, saying, “I don’t believe you can reasonably build affordable housing” in Atherton.

DeGolia said that what the town really needs to focus on is “housing for teachers and members of the community that need affordable housing,” and Widmer said the town should continue to pursue “activities over at the college” for housing and fill the “need for staffing housing here.”

But for housing advocates such as Jeremy Levine, the question for councilmembers is simple: “Is affordable housing possible in Atherton, and, if so, what can the city actually do to make it happen?”

The proposed development would be built at 5670 Camden Ave. in south San Jose, the city planning documents show.

The affordable housing project would consist of 136 residences and a self-storage center at that location, near the corner of Camden Avenue and Blossom Hill Road.

Three educational centers — Delight Montessori School San Jose, Beacon School and Cinnabar School — are located next to the site where the development would occur.

Two development firms, Santa Clara-based Roem Corp. and Insite Property Group, based in the Southern California city of Torrance, have teamed up to float the project proposal at San Jose City Hall.

John F. Font Ph.D. Associates and Beacon School currently own the property, a Santa Clara County property database shows.

The overall project site totals 10.7 acres, which includes the existing school site and the proposed locations for the affordable homes and the self-storage center.

The Roem and Insite development alliance intends to request that the city modifies the general plan for the parcel.

The preliminary proposal on file with the city is being floated as a way to gauge feedback from city political leaders, municipal staffers and the local neighborhood.

The neighborhood where the project could rise consists primarily of single-family homes and apartment buildings, although several neighborhood retail centers are in the immediate vicinity. Westfield Oakridge Mall, Almaden Plaza and Princeton Plaza Mall are a few miles away.

That’s done via land-use decisions that control how many housing units and commercial sites can be built in a given time. However, through a series of laws mandating new levels of density everywhere in the state, whether or not they are needed or justified, this key local power now belongs to largely anonymous state officials who know little or nothing about most places whose future they are deciding.

It’s being done through the elimination of single-family, or R-1, zoning. It’s being done via the new requirement that the state Housing and Community Development (HCD) Department approve housing elements for every locality. If HCD does not approve such a plan for a city, developers can target it with virtually no limits if they choose.

It’s all based on a supposed need for at least 1.8 million new housing units touted by HCD. This is despite the fact that the state auditor last spring found that HCD did not properly vet the documents and other instruments on which that estimate was based.

What’s more, only three years earlier, HCD was claiming more than 3.5 million new units were needed. Less than one-eighth of that figure have since risen, yet HCD has cut its need estimate considerably.

However, cities and counties must do what they’re told by this demonstrably incompetent agency or risk lawsuits and big losses in state grants for everything from sewers and road maintenance to police and fire departments. State Attorney General Rob Bonta even set up a new unit in his Justice Department to threaten and pursue noncompliant cities.

This leads localities to approve developments in ways they never did before, including some administrative approvals without so much as the possibility of a public hearing. It leads to the absurd, as with Atherton trying to get state approval of a plan forcing almost all local homeowners to create “additional dwelling units” on the one-acre lots long required in the city. That’s instead of building almost 400 townhouses or apartments in a town of barely 7,000 people.

And in Santa Monica, because the City Council didn’t get its housing element approved, developers can probably not be stopped as they make plans for at least 12 large new buildings. So much for bucolic seaside living.

Santa Monica is also an example of a city buckling to state pressure to allow huge projects opposed by most of its citizens, a majority of whom are renters. That city has done nothing to stop or alter the largest development in its history, to be built on a property at a major intersection now occupied by a grocery and several other stores.

Despite heavy community interest, evidenced by the more than 2,000 people on a Zoom call about the project last winter, the city will hold no public hearings and does not respond to most written communications from its citizens about the development. This is all because city officials fear the state will sue if it objects.

Several cities have begun to fight parts of today’s state domination of land use. Four Los Angeles County cities — Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson and Whittier — are seeking a court order negating the 2021 Senate Bill 9, which lets single-family homes be replaced by as many as six units, with cities unable to nix any such project.

As city councils and county boards see their constituents objecting loudly to much of this, other lawsuits will inevitably follow. No one can predict whether or not courts will find that the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have vastly overreached in their power grab, which is all for the sake of increased density and based on unfounded predictions by bureaucrats who answer to no one.

Thomas Elias can be reached at tdelias@aol.com. To read more of his columns, visit californiafocus.net online.

After a marathon meeting on Saturday, the Concord City Council hit the pause button on a crucial contract after raising concerns over the proposed amount and type of affordable housing, and the involvement of Albert Seeno III, who is currently in multiple legal battles with his father over control of the family’s building empire.

The City Council is now expected to vote on Jan. 28 on a term sheet — a draft of a contract — with Concord First Partners and a consortium of developers that includes Seeno III, to develop the 2,275-acre Naval Weapons site into thousands of homes, new schools, parks and commercial and retail centers on Concord’s north side over the next 40 years.

Councilmembers spent three hours of the daylong meeting, which ran from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., grilling Concord First Partners and city staff about the details of the contract, which differs from negotiations with the city’s previous master developer, Lennar, in that it now includes a longer construction timeline and more homes.

“I feel like I am being deposed,” Guy Bjerke, director of economic development and base reuse for Concord, said in the middle of Vice Mayor Edi Birsan’s line of questioning.

Councilmembers Laura Nakamura and Carlyn Obringer challenged the legitimacy of counting accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units —sometimes referred to as granny or in-law units —toward the project’s affordable housing goal.

The original 2012 area plan called for setting aside 25% of 12,272 units, or about 3,020 units, as affordable housing. The draft contract before the council on Saturday increased the number of residences to 15,595. The number of affordable units, however, remained the same. To make up the difference, the developers are counting 879 accessory units attached to single-family homes as affordable units.

Obringer and Nakamura said there would be no mechanism to ensure homeowners would rent out the units to those in need of affordable housing. Bjerke replied the city couldn’t force owners to rent the units, but could “create restrictions that should they rent the unit, they’d have to do so under certain parameters.”

Twenty years in the making, the project has recently led to unprecedented division amongst Concord residents, who packed the council chambers on Saturday.

Representatives of labor and union groups have supported passage of the draft contract and its goal of hiring 40% of the construction workforce from within Contra Costa County, giving Concord residents a priority.

More than 100 written comments were submitted to council prior to the meeting, many from residents who urged that Discovery Builders Inc., one of the three partners Concord First Partners, be dropped from the deal. The Seeno III-run company and Lewis Management each have a 45% stake in the project, with Oakland developer Phil Tagami’s California Capital & Investment Group holding a 10% stake.

The Seeno family for decades has held great influence over real estate development in Contra Costa but also has become notorious in the East Bay for regularly suing public agencies and fighting environmental groups.

Some letters referenced the recent revelation of an ongoing legal battle among the Seeno family, first made public in a column in the East Bay Times published Thursday. In the lawsuits, Albert Seeno Jr., 78, accused his son, Seeno III, of erratic behavior, improperly spending, and trying to shut his father and uncle out of their own companies, among other allegations.

Through present in the council chambers, Seeno III did not speak. He did submit a letter for public comment denying all allegations made against him by his father, Albert Seeno Jr., in a lawsuit filed in September.

In light of the allegations, Obringer asked city staff about whether its financial analyst had reviewed the ability of Seeno III’s company to keep its financial promises. Bjerke said his staff had not and was unsure whether it would be appropriate to do so.

Nakamura pressed Elmore, asking, “If, at any time when the partners were aware of this illegal situation with one of your partners, was there a thought to issue a statement in full disclosure to the public for full transparency?”

Elmore replied: “We did not see (the lawsuit) having any impact on our ability to proceed with the next steps in our partnership. He added, “Clearly, if we’re unable to perform…we know the answer is going to be that we’ll find someone else who can.”

According to a court affidavit submitted by Louis Parsons, president of Discovery Builders Inc., Seeno Jr.’s actions to “reassert control” of the family companies “have disrupted the business of those entities,” including “stop payments” orders to vendors, which placed the company’s projects at risk of liens and losing subcontractors.

The court order means that for now, dozens of people living on a vacant, city-owned lot off Wood Street in West Oakland cannot be forced to relocate amid ongoing rain and flooding. The camp is home to roughly 55 people — the last holdouts in the area after Caltrans recently removed between 200 and 300 people from a neighboring lot — and the city intended to start the closure process Monday.

The judge’s decision comes as a wave of storms has drenched the Bay Area for the past 10 days — with the wet weather showing no sign of letting up this week — and experts are concerned about a “trifecta” of COVID-19, RSV and influenza viruses taking hold this winter.

“The plaintiffs have raised serious questions that the state will violate their constitutional rights by placing them in increased danger by being forced out of shelter during severe weather, in the midst of an ongoing ‘tripledemic,’ and without adequate plans to provide shelter,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Orrick, who last year issued a similar order temporarily barring Caltrans from clearing the neighboring camp.

Even so, Orrick indicated this latest court-ordered ban is likely to be brief. Both sides will appear in court Jan. 18, at which point the judge will decide whether to lift or extend the ban.

The problem, according to the court, is that the city has a little more than two-dozen shelter beds available — not enough to shelter everyone living at the Wood Street encampment. Furthermore, those beds are in a dorm-style shelter where many residents share one room. That setup isn’t feasible for everyone, according to the plaintiffs, as it’s untenable for people with certain mental health conditions, and it would force residents to leave behind their pets and belongings.

The city is building a new tiny home community down the road from the encampment, which will be able to shelter at least 31 unhoused residents in small, private dwellings. But it won’t be ready until Jan. 20. Another 29 new RV parking spaces will be available by Jan. 17.

“The closure should be postponed until those new spaces are available,” the judge wrote.

Oakland, which has said it expects to be able to shelter everyone from the encampment who wants shelter, argues it needs to be able to clear the camp to make way for a 170-unit affordable housing development slated to be built there. The project already has been delayed because of economic uncertainty and staffing shortages — and until the encampment is gone, the city says it can’t apply for the funding it needs for the project.

The city attorney’s office declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.

The court order marks the latest development in an ongoing saga surrounding the controversial camp, which has occupied the Wood Street area for years. Caltrans in October removed the majority of the camp’s occupants when it cleared a vacant lot the agency owns off Wood Street. Many residents displaced from that camp have since moved down the road to an encampment they call “the Commons” — the camp at the heart of the current lawsuit.

Both camps were much more than a cluster of tents — they had become functioning communities. The Caltrans camp had toilets, a hot shower, gardens, common areas and tiny homes built by residents and volunteer activists. The Commons has solar panels to help residents charge phones and other devices.

But frequent fires, some of which impacted Interstate 80, 880 and the transition lanes to 580 that run above the encampment, prompted everyone from Caltrans to city officials to Gov. Gavin Newsom to call for the camp to be shut down. Oakland spent nearly $80,000 responding to 63 fires at the Caltrans-owned Wood Street property between October 2021 and 2022.

Oakland initially planned to start clearing the Commons on Monday, and posted notices last month warning residents they would have to move out. But the city changed its tune Friday, citing the stormy weather. Instead, new notices posted at the camp advised, the city would start deep cleaning the site, and residents would need to vacate the property between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. every day this week. The city intended to start closing the camp after the cleaning was complete.

But that wasn’t good enough for the judge, who worried residents wouldn’t be protected from the rain while they had to leave the camp during the cleaning.

Did they hit their mark?

Not on every front. But even so, officials say they’ve made significant progress as we head into the new year.

San Mateo County set perhaps the most ambitious goal, setting its sights on essentially ending street homelessness in 2022 by making sure everyone who wanted to come inside had access to a shelter bed, temporary housing or a permanent home. It didn’t quite get there.

The county moved 154 homeless people out of new hotel programs and into long-term housing in 2022 and is on track to more than double its shelter capacity by the end of January. But the gold standard of having a bed for everyone remains elusive.

“We’re well within striking distance,” said Deputy County Executive Iliana Rodriguez, who is spearheading the county’s efforts and thinks they can guarantee a bed for everyone by the end of 2023. But it remains to be seen whether recent nationwide inflation and rampant job losses — which already have exacerbated the need for food and rental assistance in the Bay Area — will derail that effort.

San Jose, meanwhile, exceeded its goal of moving 1,300 homeless people into housing by the end of 2022 — overshooting by more than 50%. That target, set in September 2021, was part of the Biden administration’s larger “House America” goal of moving 100,000 homeless Americans into housing.

But the Bay Area’s biggest city fell far short of its goal to get 1,695 new units of homeless housing built, under construction or about to break ground by the end of 2022. The city hit less than 50% of that goal — 789 units. Part of the problem is that another 357 units were expected to be underway by now but hit delays in the permitting process, according to Director of Housing Jacky Morales-Ferrand.

Oakland, meanwhile, moved 1,468 unhoused residents into homes — falling just short of its “House America” goal of 1,500 people. The city also has 321 new units of permanent housing for homeless residents underway — exceeding its goal of 132 units.

By comparison, San Mateo County’s goal was a veritable moonshot.  But it was reasonable, officials argued, in part because the county’s homeless population — about 1,800 — is far smaller than nearby San Francisco, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.

The plan to meet that goal hinged in part on a new homeless shelter in Redwood City. The 240-bed shelter, which will give residents their own room and provide onsite medical, mental health and dental services while helping residents find long-term housing, was supposed to open in 2022. But construction delays have pushed the opening back to the end of January. The new Redwood City facility, plus three hotels the county has turned into homeless shelters, will more than double the county’s shelter capacity.

One of those hotels — the Coast House in Half Moon Bay — helped 57-year-old Joe move into housing after being homeless off and on for 10 years. Joe, who declined to give his last name, lived in the shelter for about a year while working on getting sober, finding a job and saving money. In November, he moved into a studio along the coast in Montara with a voucher that will help pay his rent for a year.

Now, he’s working full-time as an operations supervisor at a pharmacy. And he was able to spend the holidays with his 13-year-old daughter, whom he hadn’t seen in almost two years.

“I’m back on track,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”

But the help Joe received won’t be available to everyone who needs it. Once the Redwood City shelter opens, there will be just 723 shelter beds available in a county that, as of January 2022, counted 1,092 people living outside.

San Mateo County also continues to struggle to keep up with the amount of affordable housing it needs to move people from shelters into long-term homes.

“We are making progress, but there are a lot of people who need affordable housing and more work needs to be done,” said Assistant County Executive Peggy Jensen.

The county is trying to close that gap with vouchers that subsidize rents for low-income and homeless tenants in market-rate buildings. The county received an extra 278 vouchers from the federal government in 2022. And starting in 2023, it will have another 100 vouchers backed by $4 million in county funds.

Even so, eliminating street homelessness in 2023 may prove challenging as the country heads into an economic downturn. Already Samaritan House, which provides shelters, food assistance and other programs in the county, is seeing a spike in need, said Chief Operating Officer Laura Bent. Six months ago, they were seeing an average of 50 new clients per month. Now, they see 50 per week.

“I tried doing it twice, but nothing really came of it,” he said. “I figured I slipped through the cracks.”

Despite his own experience, he’s optimistic the county can make progress toward its goal in 2023.

“I don’t think you can end it,” he said of homelessness. “But you can definitely make a dent in it, help people move forward with their lives.”

Anti-housing NIMBYs in affluent communities misuse it to stymie high-density, multi-family projects, arguing that their neighborhoods’ bucolic ambience would be altered. And construction unions misuse it to extract wage concessions from developers.

It’s a long-running civic scandal and a major factor in California’s chronic inability to reduce its severe housing shortage, one that cries out for CEQA reform, which former Gov. Jerry Brown once described as “the Lord’s work.” But neither Brown or any other recent governor has been willing to take on the task, which would mean confronting environmental groups and unions, two of the Democratic Party’s major allies.

In the absence of comprehensive reform, governors and legislators sometimes grant CEQA exemptions for particular projects, such as sports arenas, or narrow categories of housing. However, CEQA misuse continues and the courts have become venues for battles over its application.

Two recent state appellate court actions in the crowded San Francisco Bay Area – one expanding the use of CEQA by those who oppose housing projects and another that restricts its use – underscore the law’s chaotic role.

Just before Christmas, one panel of the First District Court of Appeal issued a preliminary ruling that could open a new avenue for using CEQA to halt projects. It declares that a University of California student housing development in Berkeley violates the law because UC didn’t consider the impact of having more people – 1,100 students – in the neighborhood, citing the potential of late-night parties and other gatherings that could worsen a “persistent problem with student-generated noise.”

In other words, the court said that the presence of more people is an environmental impact – a novel theory that could hand anti-housing groups everywhere a potent weapon.

As UC law professor Chris Elmendorf tweeted about the draft decision, “The court’s reasoning is devastating ammunition for racist white homeowners who would leverage CEQA to keep poor people and minorities out of their neighborhoods.”

For example, he continued, “using the court’s statistical-associations logic, white homeowners could argue that CEQA requires affordable housing developers to analyze and mitigate putative ‘gun violence impacts’ from any lower-income housing project in an affluent neighborhood. The homeowners would point to statistics showing that poor people, and African Americans and Hispanics, are statistically more likely than affluent people and whites to be victims of gun violence.”

A few days later, another panel of the same appellate court rejected efforts by a group opposing a 130-unit project in downtown Livermore, called Save Livermore Downtown, to employ CEQA. Attorney General Rob Bonta had interceded in the case, supporting the city’s approval of the project and its win in Superior Court.

“Timing is critical for affordable housing projects, which often rely on time-sensitive funding sources like tax credits to finance development,” Bonta said while intervening, adding, “Our state is continuing to face a housing shortage and affordability crisis of epic proportions. CEQA plays a critical role in protecting the environment and public health here in California. We won’t stand by when it is used to thwart new development, rather than to protect Californians and our environment.”

After the appellate court action, Bonta tweeted, “CA’s housing crisis is dire. We won’t stand by and let people misuse our laws to avoid being part of the solution.”

The outcomes of both cases underscore the need for a fundamental CEQA overhaul to reinstate its original purpose, rather than continuing wasteful project-by-project skirmishes.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.