SAN FRANCISCO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday urged cities to clear homeless encampments, escalating once again his efforts to address an intractable issue of his time in office: the makeshift tents that line many underpasses, parks and local streets in the state.

Newsom’s administration drafted a local law that counties, cities and towns can directly adopt or modify to achieve the Democrat’s goals. He’s also releasing $3.3 billion in voter-approved funds to expand housing opportunities and treatment options for homeless residents.

“The time for inaction is over,” he stated. “There are no more excuses.”

Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, made tackling homelessness a priority of his administration when he took office in 2019. Other Democrats in government have since joined the effort to crack down on encampments. More than 187,000 Californians need housing; the state has one quarter of the nation’s homeless population.

With tents lining streets and disrupting businesses in numerous urban areas, homelessness has become one of the most pressing public health and safety issues in California and one sure to dog Newsom if he runs for national office.

His declaration comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for officials to ban homeless individuals from camping outside in public. It was a ruling welcomed by many Democratic leaders, including Newsom, despite critics describing the decision by the conservative court as cruel.

The key provisions of the model ordinance announced Monday include prohibitions on “persistent camping” in one location, a ban on encampments that block sidewalks and a requirement that local officials provide notice and make every reasonable effort to identify and offer shelter prior to clearing an encampment.

Providing a ready-made local law could bring uniformity to how cities and counties deal with encampments though Newsom is urging local officials to modify his proposal as needed.

Major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have already started clearing out encampments, saying they are not fair to children, seniors and people with disabilities who need access to sidewalks and parks.

San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, pledged to clean up city sidewalks. Meanwhile, in San José, Mayor Matt Mahan has proposed arrests if a person refuses shelter three times. Both cities have ramped up the number of shelter beds available, so more people have somewhere to go.

In Los Angeles, first-term Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, has made clearing encampments a priority. But sagging tents, makeshift shelters and rusting RVs remain an all-too-common sight in just about every neighborhood. An annual tally last year estimated that more than 45,000 city residents were homeless.

Efforts to reduce homelessness are facing increased stress, as the city contends with a nearly $1 billion projected budget gap along with the massive and costly job of rebuilding the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that was destroyed in a January wildfire.

Bass’ office did not promptly respond to a message sent Monday seeking comments on Newsom’s announcement.

Critics say there is no evidence that punitive policies reduce homelessness, and camping bans make it harder to link people up with stable housing and employment. People may lose critical documents or contact with a case manager, forcing them to start all over again, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The California State Association of Counties stated that the state has not provided as much money to address homelessness as it says it has, and that half of the money has gone to housing developers.

In 2024, California voters approved a measure that imposes strict requirements on counties to spend money on housing and drug treatment programs to tackle the homelessness crisis. It was a signature proposal for Newsom, who campaigned for the measure’s passage.

Under the measure, counties are required to spend about two-thirds of the money from a voter-approved tax enacted in 2004 on millionaires for mental health services on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse problems.

The governor has also pushed for laws that make it easier to force people with behavioral health issues into treatment. And he has repeatedly threatened to withhold state money from cities and counties that do not step up to address homelessness.

But despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California does not have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to a 2024 state audit.

The audit found California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the previous five years but did not consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money improved the situation.

Editor’s note: Associated Press writers Christopher Weber and Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The post California cities urged to clear homeless encampments appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

By Adam Beam and Tran Nguyen

The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged to fast-track hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of construction projects throughout the state, including two large water-related ones that have languished for years amid permitting delays and opposition from environmental groups.

For the past decade, California officials have pursued the water projects in the drought-prone state. One calls for construction of a giant tunnel to carry large amounts of water beneath the natural channels of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to drier and more populous Southern California.

The other project would be construction of a massive new reservoir near the tiny community of Sites in Northern California. The facility could store more water during deluges – like the series of atmospheric rivers that hit the state earlier this year – for delivery to farmers.

But neither project has been built, despite promises from multiple governors and legislative leaders. Environmental groups have sued to block the tunnel project, arguing it would decimate threatened species of fish, including salmon and the Delta smelt. The Sites reservoir project team is still trying to acquire necessary permits to begin construction.

Newsom is seeking a slew of changes to make it much faster for these projects to gain required permits and approvals. Other projects that could be eligible include solar, wind and battery power storage; transit and regional rail; road maintenance and bridges; semiconductor plants; and wildlife crossings along Interstate 15, Newsom’s office said. His efforts to accelerate projects would not apply to housing.

One key proposal would limit the amount of time it takes to resolve environmental lawsuits to about nine months. Newsom said his administration is “not looking to roll over anybody,” including what he called the “fierce champions” of environmental stewardship.

“I mean, nine months, you can have a kid, OK? I mean, that’s a long time,” Newsom said May 19 while visiting the site of a future solar farm in Stanislaus County.

But some environmental groups were furious. Newsom “wants to do away with standard environmental protections to build the Delta tunnel,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of advocacy group Restore the Delta.

“We have never been more disappointed in a California governor than we are with Governor Newsom,” she said. “How is perpetuating environmental injustice, which harms public and environmental health, really any different than red state governors perpetuating social injustice in their states, which Governor Newsom likes to criticize vigorously?”

California has hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on infrastructure projects over the next decade, Newsom says, from voter-approved bonds, bountiful budget surpluses during the pandemic and an influx of cash from the federal infrastructure bill.

But the state is often too slow to approve those projects and federal money is “going to other states that are moving more aggressively,” he said. His proposals could shorten projects’ duration by more than three years, he added.

The legislation would allow various state agencies, including the transportation department, to approve projects and issue permits more quickly, according to Newsom’s office. Earlier this month he signed an executive order creating what he called an “infrastructure strike team” to identify fast-track projects.

Jerry Brown, executive director of the Sites Project Authority that is overseeing the new reservoir, said he thinks Newsom’s proposals could allow construction to start a year early and reduce costs by about $100 million.

“That saves a lot of money and gets a lot of jobs in the pipeline,” he said.

Newsom wants the legislation to be part of the state’s budget, which must be passed by June 30. That means, if approved, it could take effect sooner and would require only a majority vote of the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego and the leader of the state Senate, said “the climate crisis requires that we move faster to build and strengthen critical infrastructure,” and that lawmakers will “ensure we can do so responsibly, and in line with California’s commitment to high-road jobs and environmental protection.”

Some Republicans cheered Newsom’s proposal, with Republican Senate Leader Brian Jones saying the governor “is finally taking action.” Others were more skeptical, with Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher saying Democrats in the Legislature are the biggest obstacle to Newsom’s proposals.

“Gavin Newsom loves to brag that he can ‘jam’ Democratic lawmakers; let’s see it,” Gallagher said. “Republicans are ready to work with him towards real reforms.”

The post High-value construction projects in California may zip ahead appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

By Amy Taxin and Jae C. Hong

The Associated Press

LEMOORE, Calif. — Ron Caetano is packed and ready to go. His family photos and valuables are in the trailer, and he’s put food in totes. He moved the family’s rabbits and chickens and their automatic feeders to higher ground.

Caetano and his family and dogs could get out in less than an hour, they figure, should more heavy rain or hot weather melt so much mountain snow that gushing water overwhelms the rivers and channel that surround their tight-knit, rural Island District community.

“The water is coming this way,” said Caetano, who started a Facebook group to help organize his neighbors. “I am preparing for the worst and praying for the best and that’s all we can do.”

After more than a dozen atmospheric rivers on California, a reservoir that stores water upstream is expected to receive three times its capacity in the coming months. Caetano and his neighbors in the tree-lined Island District, home to a school, pistachio orchards and horse ranches about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, could soon be marooned by rising rivers or flooded out.

Water managers are concerned that the spring snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada will be so massive that the north fork of the Kings River won’t be able to contain it and carry it toward the Pacific Ocean. Much of the water is being channeled into the river’s south fork, which winds through the area near the small city of Lemoore to fill a vast basin.

More than a century ago, that basin was an enormous body of fresh water known as Tulare Lake – the largest west of the Mississippi River. It would grow in winter as snowmelt streamed down from the mountains. But over time, settlers dammed and diverted waterways to irrigate crops, and the lake went dry. Now, Tulare Lake reappears only during the rainiest years, like this one, covering what is now a vast swath of farmland with water.

Today, paved roads sit beneath the lake’s lapping waves, and utility poles and trees jut out above the water. Fields that typically grow wheat, tomatoes and other crops lie underneath.

The Pine Flat Reservoir about 50 miles upstream can hold up to 1 million acre feet of water but is expected to receive more than 3 million acre feet this spring from snowmelt, said David Merritt, general manager of the Kings River Conservation District. Officials have been forced to increase the flow of water out of the reservoir to make space for more, he said.

“Once we’re at capacity, now you’re putting a lot of stress on those conveyance channels,” Merritt said. “It’s a very fast-moving stream and it’s very deep right now.”

Island District residents have revived a decades-old network of neighbors for the first time since 1983 to assist each other in the event of a crisis. The previous time the Island Property Protection Association was activated, there was no such thing as text messages or even emails to quickly spread the word, said Tony Oliveira, a former county supervisor and the network’s administrator.

In a week, more than 200 people, via the network, volunteered to help neighbors. The group’s website received more than 4,000 hits.

“It’s going to be four months of holding our breath,” Oliveira said.

The winter rains were welcomed by California’s parched cities and desperate growers, who have been grappling with intense drought for the past several years. The state has long tended toward wet and dry periods, but scientists at University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have said they expect climate change will lead to drier dry years and wetter wet years.

What will determine how communities fare now is how quickly the weather heats up. If temperatures remain cool, snow will melt slowly, with water gradually flowing from the mountains. But a hot spell could send massive amounts of water churning through rivers that could potentially overflow, officials said. A beaver or a squirrel that tears a hole in a levee could also bring trouble.

Recent rising temperatures have many residents on edge. Park officials announced plans to  due to the threat of flooding. Reservations for campgrounds and lodging in eastern Yosemite Valley will automatically be canceled and refunded.

Michael Anderson, California’s state climatologist, said water inflows into some reservoirs are expected to double, though he doesn’t expect the warming trend to cause immediate flooding in residential areas.

But that could change in the coming weeks and months. Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the reemerged lake on April 25 and said the worst is likely yet to come as more water reaches the basin.

“Where we’re standing likely will be underwater in a matter of weeks, if not months,” he said. “That’s very sobering.”

It isn’t the first time Kings County, home to 150,000 people in the fertile San Joaquin Valley, has faced these challenges.

Many longtime residents recall when Tulare Lake reappeared 40 years ago. Officials believe crops will remain under water much longer this time due to the massive snowpack, said Dusty Ference, executive director of the Kings County Farm Bureau. To date, more than 60,000 acres of farmland have flooded, he said.

Tulare Lake returned on a smaller scale in 1997, said Nicholas Pinter, associate director of the University of California, Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. The lake has always fluctuated in size due to California’s highly variable water cycle, and farmers have long known there would be periods like this, he said.

“It has been an engineering problem all along,” he said. “This is a bathtub with no drain.”

Near the lake, the city of Corcoran – home to 22,000 people, including 8,000 state prisoners – began emergency construction to raise a levee that protects the community. The water behind the levee is already at 178 feet, just 10 feet below the top. Officials want to raise the levee 3.5 feet more, city officials said.

“If that water rises above that amount, we will have water coming into our city and we will be in a critical situation,” said Greg Gatzka, Corcoran’s city manager.

In the Island District, residents don’t have a levee to protect them. They snap photos of wooden sticks placed near waterways to gauge water levels and banks and post them online to keep others informed. They’re helping place sandbags on elderly neighbors’ properties and paying close attention to reports from water and county officials, and from each other.

Oliveira, whose family has lived in the area for generations, said he remembers moving cattle and horses when the rains came in 1983, and will do the same this time, if necessary.

“We’re farmers,” he said. “We have bulldozers and backhoes. We have trailers. We can bring things to bear sometimes faster than the public agencies can. The people who live in the Island are just kind of those neighbors taking care of neighbors.”

Editor’s note: Taxin reported from Orange County, California.

The post A California community braces for massive snowmelt appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A large West Coast real estate firm announced Tuesday that it has expanded its reach into Southern California.

Kidder Mathews, with five offices in the Seattle area, one in Portland and three in Northern California, has opened one in San Diego.

The firm hired Mark Read to serve as the managing partner in the San Diego office. Read will oversee three senior brokers – Bob Willingham, Ron King and Joe McDermott; all have extensive experience in the San Diego real estate marketplace.

“We see a tremendous opportunity to expand our commercial brokerage footprint in California, and these individuals represent just the type of quality, seasoned professionals and respected business and industry leaders that will help us be successful,” said Jeff Lyon, Kidder Mathews’ CEO. “In addition to being a vibrant, growing market, San Diego is a natural fit for us since Kidder Mathews currently manages 800,000 square feet of biotech space in La Jolla.”

The firm employs 450 people in its 10 firms. Kidder Mathews manages 30 million square feet of space, and each year performs $2.9 billion in annual transactions and conducts 1,300 appraisals.

The post Kidder Mathews adds Southern California office appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I want to take a moment and follow up on my two previous blog posts (here and here), which examined the potential closure of all 425 redevelopment agencies in California. The idea was pitched by retread Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month as a cost cutting tactic to .

When I first started looking into this issue I noted a bunch of correlations between the situation in California and how it could repeat itself here in Oregon. Oregon has a comparable per capita debt, there’s a growing lobbyist core for special taxing districts against urban renewal in Oregon and there’s lots of citizens who distrust urban renewal and tax increment financing.

I will admit that the idea of Oregon losing all of its redevelopment agencies, like the Portland Development Commission here in the city, is hard to believe. But as I’ve started to look into the idea more, it definitely feels like Oregon is somewhat heading in that direction.

First is this by longtime guest columnist and Southwest Portland resident Jill Warren. Most notably Warren calls out the long anticipated project, a sustainable office tower in Northwest Portland that has been proposed for over a decade but still sits as a vacant lot. The PDC has invested more than $1.2 million in the project to help get it off the ground.

While I don’t agree with the entire column – most notably that only rich people are benefiting (sometimes the case, but not always) and that Portland doesn’t have a good enough public process (I mean, really?) – but she really hits her point home when she said:

“Here’s my problem: taxes in Multnomah County are too high. People grumble about this all the time. The PDC has the power to pledge tax dollars however it sees fit. It’s easy to lose someone else’s money.

I’m suspicious of any project that’s reliant on subsidies to exist. Development should pay for itself. Tax abatements and cash infusions from the public are out of control and should be reigned in. It’s a drain on public coffers.”

There is an inherent flaw in how urban renewal and tax increment financing is used these days: it lends a financial hand to projects that wouldn’t be able to go forward or survive without the subsidy in a normal free market, capitalist society. This is why there are still so many failed redevelopment projects: a bad project is still a bad project no matter if it gets public training wheels.

So, the public distrust for urban renewal is there, as it always has been, and it’s growing.

But in addition to public dissatisfaction, public entities that lose operating funds because of urban renewal and politicians are also getting more vocal and brash about their opposition to it.

Both the Clackamas Fire District #1 and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue last year adopted inter organizational policies about when to support or denounce an urban renewal area within their respective regions.

Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen also sounded off against a new downtown Portland urban renewal area last October, which eventually led to Mayor Sam Adams deciding to suspend the process of developing the urban renewal area.

In an email between Cogen and PDC staffer Peter Englander, Cogen wrote:

“(Discussing the new URA) is important now because we have to remember that we’re facing a $3 billion shortfall here in Oregon. We need to see where things are with the state budget before we start freezing property taxes in specified areas.”

And while the thought of eliminating the PDC, and other redevelopment agencies like it, seems far fetched, there is .

These potential legal changes include permitting school construction and fire vehicle replacement with urban renewal funds, which would help two of the public services that are financially affected by urban renewal. Other legislation would give taxing districts affected by urban renewal a process to be removed from the plan and receive full property tax allotment. And the most drastic idea is requiring a citizens’ vote of approval on new urban renewal plans or amendments to existing ones.

The PDC and urban renewal across the state may not die, but I am pretty confident that things are going to change. And when they do, Oregon will be one of the first places to find out if urban renewal is a helping hand or an expensive illusion.

The post Portland could lose the PDC appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I want to take a moment and follow up on my two previous blog posts (here and here), which examined the potential closure of all 425 redevelopment agencies in California. The idea was pitched by retread Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month as a cost cutting tactic to .

When I first started looking into this issue I noted a bunch of correlations between the situation in California and how it could repeat itself here in Oregon. Oregon has a comparable per capita debt, there’s a growing lobbyist core for special taxing districts against urban renewal in Oregon and there’s lots of citizens who distrust urban renewal and tax increment financing.

I will admit that the idea of Oregon losing all of its redevelopment agencies, like the Portland Development Commission here in the city, is hard to believe. But as I’ve started to look into the idea more, it definitely feels like Oregon is somewhat heading in that direction.

First is this by longtime guest columnist and Southwest Portland resident Jill Warren. Most notably Warren calls out the long anticipated project, a sustainable office tower in Northwest Portland that has been proposed for over a decade but still sits as a vacant lot. The PDC has invested more than $1.2 million in the project to help get it off the ground.

While I don’t agree with the entire column – most notably that only rich people are benefiting (sometimes the case, but not always) and that Portland doesn’t have a good enough public process (I mean, really?) – but she really hits her point home when she said:

“Here’s my problem: taxes in Multnomah County are too high. People grumble about this all the time. The PDC has the power to pledge tax dollars however it sees fit. It’s easy to lose someone else’s money.

I’m suspicious of any project that’s reliant on subsidies to exist. Development should pay for itself. Tax abatements and cash infusions from the public are out of control and should be reigned in. It’s a drain on public coffers.”

There is an inherent flaw in how urban renewal and tax increment financing is used these days: it lends a financial hand to projects that wouldn’t be able to go forward or survive without the subsidy in a normal free market, capitalist society. This is why there are still so many failed redevelopment projects: a bad project is still a bad project no matter if it gets public training wheels.

So, the public distrust for urban renewal is there, as it always has been, and it’s growing.

But in addition to public dissatisfaction, public entities that lose operating funds because of urban renewal and politicians are also getting more vocal and brash about their opposition to it.

Both the Clackamas Fire District #1 and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue last year adopted inter organizational policies about when to support or denounce an urban renewal area within their respective regions.

Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen also sounded off against a new downtown Portland urban renewal area last October, which eventually led to Mayor Sam Adams deciding to suspend the process of developing the urban renewal area.

In an email between Cogen and PDC staffer Peter Englander, Cogen wrote:

“(Discussing the new URA) is important now because we have to remember that we’re facing a $3 billion shortfall here in Oregon. We need to see where things are with the state budget before we start freezing property taxes in specified areas.”

And while the thought of eliminating the PDC, and other redevelopment agencies like it, seems far fetched, there is .

These potential legal changes include permitting school construction and fire vehicle replacement with urban renewal funds, which would help two of the public services that are financially affected by urban renewal. Other legislation would give taxing districts affected by urban renewal a process to be removed from the plan and receive full property tax allotment. And the most drastic idea is requiring a citizens’ vote of approval on new urban renewal plans or amendments to existing ones.

The PDC and urban renewal across the state may not die, but I am pretty confident that things are going to change. And when they do, Oregon will be one of the first places to find out if urban renewal is a helping hand or an expensive illusion.

The post Portland could lose the PDC appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on over at the Portland Development Commission right now, but the redevelopment agency is poised for some big changes.

The PDC is deep in the process of looking for a new executive director after the current executive director Bruce Warner, somewhat surprisingly, announced his retirement on Jan. 6. His retirement was effective the first of the year, but he agreed to stay on board with the PDC through April to help the agency through the budgeting process.

Yet yesterday, the that Warner would be taking the city of Hillsboro city manager job on an interim basis, replacing former city manager Sarah Jo Chaplen, who resigned last month. Warner, who has worked for several public agencies including the city of Hillsboro and Washington County, will start his new job Jan. 22.

Besides the overlap of the two jobs, what’s bizarre about this revelation is that Warner, on three separate occasions, cited his reason for leaving the PDC as having a desire to enjoy the retired life. He noted that reasib after his retirement announcement in an interview with me a few weeks later and in his final , which was released only days ago.

I’m not saying he has a different reason for leaving or that the Hillsboro job isn’t anything more than him trying to help out a city he cares about on an interim basis, but no one is getting back to me at the PDC and it makes me wonder.

Warner served as the PDC’s executive director since August of 2005. He has done a great job. Not only has he done what he set out to do – increase the transparency and trust between the agency and the public – but he has also surpassed his expectations through several successful redevelopment projects.

But with that said, he really couldn’t have left at a better time. Only a month after he announced his retirement, and in the heat of the search for a new executive director, the retread governor of California, Jerry Brown, announced his controversial plan to eliminate every redevelopment agency in California (all 425 of them).

The issue has already caused a huge battle and will most likely end up in the courtroom because of the lobbying juggernaut that is the California Redevelopment Association. But at the same time, California is facing a and cutting the redevelopment program would cut a huge chunk out of it.

With all that said, the PDC needs to send a team of developers, PDC staffers and other city representatives on a campaign across California offering the job to some of the best executives the state has to offer. With 425 agencies potentially closing down, the talent pool of qualified applicants just increased substantially.

The PDC has to be the home of some of the most attractive, available jobs in the country. Portland has a great quality of life, the PDC has their hands on tons of projects around town right now, the building industry has a few bright spots in the area and Portland is located close enough to California that it wouldn’t be too much of a life change.

The PDC might be listening as they were initially going to make an announcement on a new executive director at the beginning of the year. But there has yet to be an announcement and the agency could be waiting to see how the issue in California plays out. Regardless, the PDC needs to keep a close eye on what’s going on in California because there is about to be a lot of redevelopment professionals and private developers looking for work.

The post PDC should look South for new executive director appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on over at the Portland Development Commission right now, but the redevelopment agency is poised for some big changes.

The PDC is deep in the process of looking for a new executive director after the current executive director Bruce Warner, somewhat surprisingly, announced his retirement on Jan. 6. His retirement was effective the first of the year, but he agreed to stay on board with the PDC through April to help the agency through the budgeting process.

Yet yesterday, the that Warner would be taking the city of Hillsboro city manager job on an interim basis, replacing former city manager Sarah Jo Chaplen, who resigned last month. Warner, who has worked for several public agencies including the city of Hillsboro and Washington County, will start his new job Jan. 22.

Besides the overlap of the two jobs, what’s bizarre about this revelation is that Warner, on three separate occasions, cited his reason for leaving the PDC as having a desire to enjoy the retired life. He noted that reasib after his retirement announcement in an interview with me a few weeks later and in his final , which was released only days ago.

I’m not saying he has a different reason for leaving or that the Hillsboro job isn’t anything more than him trying to help out a city he cares about on an interim basis, but no one is getting back to me at the PDC and it makes me wonder.

Warner served as the PDC’s executive director since August of 2005. He has done a great job. Not only has he done what he set out to do – increase the transparency and trust between the agency and the public – but he has also surpassed his expectations through several successful redevelopment projects.

But with that said, he really couldn’t have left at a better time. Only a month after he announced his retirement, and in the heat of the search for a new executive director, the retread governor of California, Jerry Brown, announced his controversial plan to eliminate every redevelopment agency in California (all 425 of them).

The issue has already caused a huge battle and will most likely end up in the courtroom because of the lobbying juggernaut that is the California Redevelopment Association. But at the same time, California is facing a and cutting the redevelopment program would cut a huge chunk out of it.

With all that said, the PDC needs to send a team of developers, PDC staffers and other city representatives on a campaign across California offering the job to some of the best executives the state has to offer. With 425 agencies potentially closing down, the talent pool of qualified applicants just increased substantially.

The PDC has to be the home of some of the most attractive, available jobs in the country. Portland has a great quality of life, the PDC has their hands on tons of projects around town right now, the building industry has a few bright spots in the area and Portland is located close enough to California that it wouldn’t be too much of a life change.

The PDC might be listening as they were initially going to make an announcement on a new executive director at the beginning of the year. But there has yet to be an announcement and the agency could be waiting to see how the issue in California plays out. Regardless, the PDC needs to keep a close eye on what’s going on in California because there is about to be a lot of redevelopment professionals and private developers looking for work.

The post PDC should look South for new executive director appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

California’s new governor Jerry Brown is taking no time to shake things up in the Golden State.

Only a week after his inauguration, Brown released his budget proposal, which calls for $12.5 billion in cuts coupled with five years of tax increases that is meant to close the state’s $25.4 billion deficit. Of the potential cuts listed, one in particular has the greater real estate and development community concerned.

Brown is calling for the closure of , only operating in a limited capacity retire debts and contractual obligations. The money that would have gone to the agencies, which is used to help get development projects out of the ground, would then be distributed to local governments to fund public services.

For example, the . The .

This money is used to fund development projects, either by infusing public funds into private projects that will eventually increase the tax base or through the use of tax increment financing to leverage funds for public projects that entice future private development.

I’m not going to get into whether closing the agencies is a good or a bad idea (it’s a bad idea) because when you are facing that type of deficit there are few bad ideas. But I will talk a bit about how it can affect some Oregon firms.

First, Oregon is facing its own budget crisis, a predicted $3.5 billion budget shortfall for the next fiscal year. And urban renewal, like in many parts of the country, is often the target of citizen groups around Portland, which call it a behind-the-scenes way for developers and public officials to get private developments done.

When Oregon starts to look at nifty ways to close the budget gap, perhaps an entity like the Portland Development Commission could end up on the chopping block.

I don’t see this happening, and I have doubts that it will even happen in California, but it would be interesting to see what Portland would look like without the PDC. Look at what has been done on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or in Old Town and Chinatown. There is a good argument that a lot of the success of those areas wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for the groundwork started by the PDC.

Another issue is that Oregon firms, whether they be developers, architects, engineers or builders, do a lot of work in California. Both Gerding Edlen and Williams & Dame Development have developed several mixed-use projects around Los Angeles. And TVA Architects has designed large buildings in the city as well.

With Portland’s notoriety as an eco-friendly city, firms from around the Portland area get sustainable building work in other parts of the country. San Francisco and Los Angeles are close enough for Portland firms to work in their markets.

Whether this happens in California remains to be seen. But when a decision is made, it could be a telling sign of an overall national sentiment on public-private development projects.

The post California looks at axing redevelopment agencies appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

California’s new governor Jerry Brown is taking no time to shake things up in the Golden State.

Only a week after his inauguration, Brown released his budget proposal, which calls for $12.5 billion in cuts coupled with five years of tax increases that is meant to close the state’s $25.4 billion deficit. Of the potential cuts listed, one in particular has the greater real estate and development community concerned.

Brown is calling for the closure of , only operating in a limited capacity retire debts and contractual obligations. The money that would have gone to the agencies, which is used to help get development projects out of the ground, would then be distributed to local governments to fund public services.

For example, the . The .

This money is used to fund development projects, either by infusing public funds into private projects that will eventually increase the tax base or through the use of tax increment financing to leverage funds for public projects that entice future private development.

I’m not going to get into whether closing the agencies is a good or a bad idea (it’s a bad idea) because when you are facing that type of deficit there are few bad ideas. But I will talk a bit about how it can affect some Oregon firms.

First, Oregon is facing its own budget crisis, a predicted $3.5 billion budget shortfall for the next fiscal year. And urban renewal, like in many parts of the country, is often the target of citizen groups around Portland, which call it a behind-the-scenes way for developers and public officials to get private developments done.

When Oregon starts to look at nifty ways to close the budget gap, perhaps an entity like the Portland Development Commission could end up on the chopping block.

I don’t see this happening, and I have doubts that it will even happen in California, but it would be interesting to see what Portland would look like without the PDC. Look at what has been done on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or in Old Town and Chinatown. There is a good argument that a lot of the success of those areas wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for the groundwork started by the PDC.

Another issue is that Oregon firms, whether they be developers, architects, engineers or builders, do a lot of work in California. Both Gerding Edlen and Williams & Dame Development have developed several mixed-use projects around Los Angeles. And TVA Architects has designed large buildings in the city as well.

With Portland’s notoriety as an eco-friendly city, firms from around the Portland area get sustainable building work in other parts of the country. San Francisco and Los Angeles are close enough for Portland firms to work in their markets.

Whether this happens in California remains to be seen. But when a decision is made, it could be a telling sign of an overall national sentiment on public-private development projects.

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