Recent article in Press Democrat mentioned Rohnert Park Councilman’s participation in the CASA compact.
CASA is your elected city and county officials losing control over zoning, permitting, development planning in your town. It will now be directed by globalists at the UN through policy frameworks from “regional planning commissions”.
Members of these commissions include “social justice” groups, tech executives (Facebook, Google), tenant advocates, developers. Are you represented? Do you see yourself there? Who knows! Their plans go to Sacramento to become bills over-riding local policies. It’s brilliant. If you’re a globalist.
Glen Ellen, Kenwood – You are about to become a “High Opportunity” development area
East and West Petaluma – You too! You like that 40 minute drive across town? Get ready for 60.
Rural Sonoma – Zoning changes to change density and allow a mish mash of backyard housing units poc marking the county will now be dictated by the UN, it’s Regional associations and their fellows in the state, over-riding local control of the people you elected. And here’s a twist – some of those people you elected are serving on these regional boards, to attempt to give them legitimacy, and working to give up their control.
CASA is a spin-off of Plan Bay Area 2040, which is driven by UN 2030: Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is the globalists at the UN attempting to implement their agenda on where you should live and what type of housing should be built by circumventing federal approval and going directly to their comrades in local areas.
It’s the European Union for regional planning. Unelected bureaucrats calling the shots in local governance. The character of your neighborhood changed under control of an unelected regional board.
It’s estimated CASA policies would cost $2.5 billion annually. The Compact proposes raising $1.5 billion through a smorgasbord of taxes and general obligation bonds, including taxes on vacant homes and large employers, development fees, sales taxes, and revived Redevelopment Agencies.
CASA members also want to create an agency with taxing authority to shepherd the policies. – That’s called getting you to pay for UN initiatives to come in and control land use in your area.
The CASA Compact contains elements of rent control, eviction protections, and union labor programs along with transit-oriented development and permitting reforms, policies long sought after by competing political players that seldom see eye-to-eye. Moreover, the MTC is attempting to coordinate between cities that otherwise may have widely varying development fees and other building standards that muddle regional planning efforts. And for the first time, the region as a whole could be raising taxes for a nine-county Regional Housing Enterprise (RHE) to fund affordable housing construction. The proposal is as ambitious as it is embattled.
These plans will lead to:
- Restriction of individual mobility
- Control of and limitations on single family housing
- A gigantic commitment to a high concentration of stack and pack housing
What is missing in the CASA Compact?”
- Voter input.
- Any type of mandate.
- Vetting of advocacy ‘stakeholders’ on committee.
- Authority to do anything other than issue reports.
“The MTC cabal, otherwise known as The Committee to House the Bay Area or CASA, would have us believe that the region’s housing crisis necessitates:
- Creating a public-private agency that would standardize zoning across the region
- imposing as much as a billion dollars of new taxes on the Bay Area
- rolling back environmental review
- lowering housing affordability standards
- re-zoning “high opportunity” single-family neighborhoods for higher-density market-rate housing development, regardless of transit accessibility
- accepting the assumption that building market-rate housing lowers the price of all housing enhancing private developers’ profit margins
- ensuring continuous, explosive job growth while ignoring services and infrastructure to support that growth
These fatuous propositions inform the “CASA Compact: A 15-Year Emergency Policy Package to Confront the Housing Crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area,” a 31-page manifesto and plan of action finalized on December 12. Now MTC/CASA is lobbying the state Legislature to pass laws, including SB 50, State Senator Scott Wiener’s do-over of his failed SB 827, that implement the Compact’s recommendations.”
“Elements in the plan include state-imposed rental caps, tenant evictions that require just cause and measures that could remove some local controls over land use and zoning, among other provisions.”
It is structured around a Steering Committee and Technical Committee composed of elected officials, thought leaders and policy experts from across the region. The CASA effort is supported and staffed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and a team of consultants.
http://www.2040.planbayarea.org/
http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2019-01-04/article/47282