- The wealthy Bay area suburb claims it can’t approve the development of new affordable housing units to help ease the statewide housing shortage. Their excuse? Mountain wildcats.
- SB 9 is a new California measure intended to make it easier to build multi-unit housing in areas that had been reserved for single-family homes previously — but it has a loophole exempting habitats for protected species.
- The California senator who co-authored SB 9 commented on Woodside’s lame excuse by saying: “This is nimbyism disguised as environmentalism… The notion that building duplexes hurts mountain lions – it’s just ridiculous.”
Maanvi Singh from The Guardian writes:
“At first glance, the town of Woodside may look more like a sprawl of mansions built on big-tech billions than crucial habitat for threatened California mountain lions.
But town officials might suggest looking again.
The wealthy San Francisco Bay area suburb has said it cannot approve the development of new duplexes or fourplexes to ease the statewide housing shortage because it encompasses the habitat of the elusive wildcats.
Residents in Woodside had long bristled at SB 9 – a new California measure that makes it easier to build multi-unit housing in neighborhoods previously reserved for single-family homes. But a clause in the measure exempts areas that are considered habitat for protected species. “Given that Woodside – in its entirety” is habitat for mountain lions that environmental groups are petitioning to list as threatened or endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act, “no parcel within Woodside is currently eligible for an SB 9 project”, the town’s planning director wrote in a memo on 27 January…”
See full story here.
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Economic Left 
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