A Pleasant Lawsuit

by Tony Chavira

Very cool news for Californian advocates for affordable, sustainable development and the environment, California State Attorney General Jerry Brown is joining a lawsuit against the city of Pleasanton, CA to keep the city from limiting the amount of housing it’ll have available.

“Why sue the city though?” you might ask. “Shouldn’t the community decide how it develops?” Well, yes and no. When research shows that well-designed urban (and even suburban) communities can fight the averse affects of global warming AND allow for residents to feel safer in their walkable neighborhood, a rogue group of city council members shouldn't continue to advocate for housing sprawl. In fact, trying to keep their neighborhood sprawled out is the leading cause of Pleasanton's increasing traffic congestion issues, which are a much more urgent issue both environmentally and socially for the Pleasanton residents. The CBS news article points to so many more averse affects due to Pleasanton’s current saturation…

Brown said the lack of an adequate number of houses in the city is a significant cause of traffic congestion, pollution, and urban sprawl in the area.

“Pleasanton's draconian and illegal limit on new housing forces people to commute long distances, adding to the bumper to bumper traffic along (highways) 580 and 680 and increasing dangerous air pollution,” Brown said in a statement.

“It's time for Pleasanton to balance its housing and its jobs and take full advantage of its underutilized land and proximity to BART,” Brown said.

In April, the city released its general plan update, which would call for the creation of 45,000 additional jobs by 2025 while retaining the housing limit, according to the attorney general's office.

The lawsuit contends that the cap violates state law, saying that the Legislature has declared that the availability of housing is a matter of “vital statewide importance,” yet many workers are unable to find affordable housing within Pleasanton.

A 2005 study by the Association of Bay Area Governments found that 79 percent of the 58,000 employees working in Pleasanton lived outside the city, and that their commutes can take two hours per day or more.

The housing shortage and long commutes come despite what the attorney general's office said was ample land for development, including property adjacent to the Pleasanton BART station.

Although I'm almost always an advocate of local control (since the residents will actually need to find a way to live in these communities), you can't argue with the cold, hard facts. Also, passing a local development law that counteracts state housing and environmental mandates usually isn't a smart move in the first place. Either way, housing shortages and traffic congestion don't sound like an pleasant situation for Pleasanton, CA. Ultimately, the lawsuit will hopefully help the area live up to its name.

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