Advocacy Update: Infill housing is a sustainable transportation strategy!

Twice each year, the states housing, climate, and transportation agencies hold a joint meeting - the perfect venue for some urban environmentalism! (That's HCD, ARB, and CalSTA, for those of you who enjoy getting into the weeds.)

At this November's meeting, a key item on the agenda was review of a progress report on implementation of the state's Climate Adaptation Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI), recently released by CalSTA. We called in to make public comment, and also submitted written comments to CalSTA. Here's an excerpt of what we said:

​As state agencies' own studies and reports acknowledge, we cannot meet our greenhouse gas and vehicle miles traveled reduction goals, not to mention address our housing affordability crisis, without building more infill housing. Infill housing is thus an essential issue that requires policies and programs with teeth across multiple agencies, and not just aspirational goals or process requirements

The CAPTI report suggests that work on infill housing (S7.1) is "complete." However, as with many other elements of the report, the implementation to date is insufficient and would better be described as "in progress." To more effectively incentivize jurisdictions to be pro-housing, additional implementation could include:

1. Programs pointing to the pro-housing designation and similar process indicators could also consider whether a jurisdiction currently has a compliant Housing Element and is currently on track to meet its regional housing needs allocation (RHNA), on a prorated basis.
2. Pro-housing designation could be a mandatory criterion for projects serving high-resourced locations with a jobs-housing imbalance, rather than optional.

No other commenters mentioned infill housing, an indication of how far we still have to go as a movement in bringing infill housing to the forefront of the climate action narrative. We invite you to join us in this activism, and hope our state agencies start listening!