Archinect - News

Terner Center's report on construction defect liability turns a new page for California housing reformers

2024-07-26T11:48:00-04:00

The latest report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation on the stasis of multifamily developments in California has identified existing construction defect liability laws as a barrier to enabling housing justice statewide.

This issue involves the risk taken on by developers of condominium projects and particularly affects BIPOC communities who are less likely to be homeowners than their peers. California’s policies are therein compared to others in the United States and Canada. The findings will help lead to legal reforms to increase homeownership and should be considered especially by architects working in the state's surging multifamily market.

New Terner Center study assesses the impact of SB 4's implementation in California

2023-09-16T10:37:00-04:00

A new study from the University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation has uncovered over 171,749 acres of developable land owned by nonprofit colleges or faith-based organizations in the state, bolstering the aims of the “Yes in God’s Backyard” movement as it pushes Governor Gavin Newsom to sign SB 4 by the end of next month.

The bill passed the state senate along with the related SB 423 on Monday. If signed into law, it would streamline the process by which churches and other nonprofit organizations can enact housing at sites that previously had been limited by local land use restrictions and the California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA).

Supporters of the measure have said it will help increase housing in much-needed communities where displacement and homelessness have become the norm as rising expenses and pushback on the part of local municipalities in the wake of SB 9 threaten to derail efforts statewide.

Previously on Archinect: Plan to let churc...

New Terner Center for Housing Innovation paper unpacks five years of SB 35's impact on the California housing crisis

2023-08-21T18:05:00-04:00

The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley has released a statewide assessment of the development of housing five years after the implementation of California's Senate Bill (SB) 35 began in 2018.

The bill eased the barriers to housing production for builders, in some cases removing the required review process under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other policies that had been targeted as key impediments to the effort to meet a crisis that has become the defining issue of the time for embattled local governments, residents, and planning officials.

Statistics revealed that 18,000 new units were able to be developed thanks to the streamlining of nearly a thousand multifamily infill housing projects as a direct result of SB 35. The rate of successful developments peaked in 2020, with a noticeable dip recorded in the past year. The study also found encouragingly that most projects covered by SB 35 were considered 100 percent affordable.

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California's inventory of disused strip malls may be an overlooked option to shore up its housing stock by 2030

2022-05-02T12:35:00-04:00

Converting empty or underutilized strip malls and shopping centers into mixed-use residential and retail developments could help solve California’s housing shortage crisis and allow stores to stay afloat amid the shift to online shopping, said housing experts and industry leaders during a panel at the Urban Land Institute’s spring meeting last week in San Diego. However, that transformation will require cities to change their land-use policies.

Greyfield land may be the most underutilized resource in the state’s harried attempt to create the more than 2.5 million housing units required to meet demands set forth by the Department of Housing and Community Development in March. A bill introduced last week by state rep Buffy Wicks would include them along with disused offices and environmentally unhealthy parking lot spaces in a zoning update that could allow developers to make relatively quick conversions into mixed-use sites with job-site provisions for apprenticeship employment.

With a portion of the state's population moving east, the measure has the most potential in embattled urban areas like LA or San Diego. According to a report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, around 40% of the state’s 50 largest cities do not allow for residential development on designated commercial plots currently....

California may be about to clear a major hurdle in its mad scramble to find more affordable housing

2021-08-27T14:20:00-04:00

California needs more affordable housing — quickly. 1.8 million homes by 2025 to be exact. What the state will actually do about is becoming clearer after a Thursday decision to advance Senate Bill 9, a measure that would allow for multi-unit development on suburban lots previously reserved for single-family dwellings, in the state assembly and (hopefully) to the desk of Governor Gavin Newsome ahead of his September 14th recall election.

The vote comes after years of legislative attempts to unstick the state from its current housing predicament. Since 2010, California has been able to add only one housing unit for every five new residents to the state, which only began to contract in the last year owing to a variety of economic and environmental factors.

The squeeze has produced attendant problems like increasing homelessness and a debilitating loss of younger professionals who can no longer aff...

Making the case for more density, not less

2020-05-12T13:42:00-04:00

The further threat is that the pandemic becomes a rallying cry to maintain our sprawling fortress neighborhoods designed to foster exclusion rather than inclusion. We have an obligation to ignore the short-term reactionary impulse to blame density for the spread of the coronavirus and instead use this opportunity to rethink the policies that impede the construction of new housing, at more price levels, in the places where housing is most needed.

Writing in an Op-Ed published by The New York Times, Carol Galante, professor in affordable housing and urban policy and faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley, makes the case for reinvigorating American approaches to affordable housing and urban density in a post-pandemic world.

Galante argues that instead of viewing density as an condition that fuels the spread of disease, the close proximity of goods, services, and people created by urban life, if guided by economic diversity, can actually help societies make it through troubled times.

Galante writes, "This pandemic is reminding us that we need communities where teachers, child- and elder-care workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, construction workers, baristas, tech executives and engineers all share in the prosperity and the comfort of an affordable home."

Berkeley's housing innovation center launches cost-saving startup lab

2019-05-24T20:15:00-04:00

A growing number of entrepreneurs are leading the way, challenging our antiquated housing system and creating new ways for housing to be more equitable and affordable across the board. However, they need support navigating the complex policy environment and accessing the necessary capital. The Housing Lab will advise promising ventures while they evolve their business models and connect them with the industry leaders and capital to achieve greater scale.

In California, the collapse of proposed statewide legislation that would have eliminated single-family zoning and could have boosted density along transit corridors has left housing activists scrambling.

While state legislators regroup to tackle the structural issues, like zoning, underpinning California's housing crisis, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation is putting its money on...well, money. This week, The Terner Center, a partnership between the College of Environmental Design and the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled the nation's first housing innovation startup lab focused on lowering the cost of housing. The group has partnered with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is currently accepting applications from existing housing innovation ventures that are ready to be incubated to success.

Applications for the inaugural cohort are due June 10th.