Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[Robert from yahoo bd]

NIMBY is still alive in CA, despite a new upzoning law passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor: "By any objective measure, nothing that happens in Woodside, Calif., is going to make much difference to a state whose housing crisis is characterized by some of the nation’s highest rents and home prices and has more than 100,000 people living on its streets. The town, a wealthy enclave of the Silicon Valley, is less than 12 square miles and contains about 5,000 of California’s 40 million residents.

But earlier this year, when Woodside’s government made a curious announcement that the town was being designated a sanctuary for mountain lions — a move that, as it happened, would also protect a hamlet of multimillion-dollar homes from a new law allowing duplexes across the state — the response was an object lesson in how California politics have shifted as housing has become voters’ primary concern.

The Department of Housing and Community Development, California’s main housing agency, said it was investigating the mountain lion plan. The state attorney general followed with a letter (and a news release announcing the letter) that said the proposed sanctuary was illegal, and accused the town of “deliberately attempting to shut off the supply of new housing opportunities.”

Source: todays NYT