Is State’s Legacy Environmental Law Protecting Beauty or Blocking Affordable Housing?

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Maureen Sedonaen, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, stands in the vacant lot where the nonprofit is looking to build new affordable housing. Photo by Ben Bradford/Capital Public Radio

By Ben Bradford, Capital Public Radio/CALmatters

Redwood City approved more than a year ago the kind of affordable-housing project California desperately needs: a 20-unit building, downtown, near transit lines, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the state’s housing crisis is most severe. The developer was a nonprofit, Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco.

But today the lot remains vacant, except for a row of portable toilets, a trailer and a dumpster.

An attorney who works out of a two-story home behind the lot filed a lawsuit against the project last year, and it has since been stalled. He contends the city’s approval of the apartments violated a sweeping, decades-old environmental law, because the building could increase traffic. The Habitat building could also block the view from his home’s rear windows.

Read the complete story at Capital Public Radio/CALmatters.

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