[link|http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/28/DD14679.DTL|http://www.sfgate.co...02/28/DD14679.DTL]

Excerpt: I direct the attention of the court to Assembly Bill 994, introduced by the Republican minority leader of the California Assembly, Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks.

Let us read together from the language of the bill. "The Planning and Zoning Law prescribes the provisions to be included in the housing element of a city or county general plan. The housing element is required to identify adequate sites for housing, including rental housing, factory-built housing and mobile homes, and to make adequate provision for the existing and projected needs of all economic segments of the community.

"Existing law, for those purposes, allows a city or county to substitute prescribed affordable housing for a specified percent of the obligation to identify adequate sites for any income category. . . .

"This bill would require the housing element to include an analysis of existing prison beds within the jurisdiction with the intention of meeting its very low, low-, and moderate-income housing requirement. The bill would provide that the prison beds in the jurisdiction count toward the requirement to identify adequate sites, and would include prison beds within the definition of affordable housing that subjects a local agency to the requirement to make those written findings."

So, stripping out the interesting legalese, we have here a bill that's saying that prison beds should be considered affordable housing, which means that a city or county with a large prison could be off the hook for building any affordable housing in the actual community.

One's jaw drops at the audacity of it. Maybe Mr. Cox is playing to the home crowd; maybe he can be so brazen because he knows this bill doesn't have a prayer. Still, I am put in mind of a great line from the late Will Cuppy: "You can't do anything about the poor. They just don't know the right people." (excerpt ends)

cordially,