It’s the battle of the housing bills.

First, there’s SB 50, San Francisco Sen. Scott Weiner’s attempt to end local control over zoning decisions in “transit rich” areas of the state. He proposed a similar bill last year, SB 827, which was met with various levels of alarm and support among localities and housing activists—but died in committee.

Then there’s SB 4, Healdsburg Senator Mike McGuire’s response bill to Weiner’s bill. McGuire says his bill seeks similar aims—to streamline the process for building high-desnity housing in transit-rich zones by giving the state a bigger hand in local zoning decisions—but of a less draconian nature, given the number and scope of the exemptions in SB 4.

McGuire, who helped kill Weiner’s bill last year in the Senate Transportation and Housing committee, put up a trio of housing-related bills this year as he was also elevated by Sen. Majority Leader Toni Atkins to his position as second in charge of the senate Democrats.

McGuire emphasizes workforce housing in his legislative package this year and criticized Weiner’s “one-size-fits-all” San Francisco–centric housing bill.

McGuire is also seeking a reanimation of the state’s redevelopment program, with the introduction last month of SB 5. That bill aims to ramp up state and regional efforts at building middle and low-income housing.

With SB 4, he offers a rejoinder to Weiner’s bill, which has received surprising support from construction trade unions and the construction industry, along with “YIMBY” groups, while being condemned by Marin electeds, Marin Independent Journal columnists, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Both bills passed through their respective committees earlier this month, with both men refraining from voting on the others’ proposal and pledging to hash out their differences in advance of hearings and committee votes on the bills this week.

Critics of Weiner’s proposed SB 827 last year variously accused him of being a “WIMBY” (Wall Street in My Backyard), and for abandoning any pretext of building an affordable-housing component into his bill. He responded with an upgraded bill this year that mandates a 20 percent affordable housing ratio in new housing developments in transit rich zones. The criticisms continue over the bill’s core push to end local control over sensitive zoning issues—even as a broad consortium of developers, housing advocates and unions have supported Weiner’s approach.

McGuire’s bill, by contrast, pushes for a 30 percent affordable housing set-aside for new residential projects in transit-rich areas. That’s twice the average in the North Bay, and represents the Highway 101 and SMART train corridor. Cities up and down the line have development projects in the pipeline that, in their own way, underscore the region’s dilemma when it comes to building affordable housing in a region with the highest valued real estate markets in the country that’s also facing a huge population boom in coming years to go along with various natural and man-made disasters.

McGuire’s bill would limit the new state zoning mandates to cities and towns with a population greater than 60,000 in a county with fewer than a million people. Marin’s population is 250,000; Sonoma is about 500,000.

In McGuire’s district, his bill’s population parameters mean that while Santa Rosa, Petaluma and San Rafael could be subject to new state zoning mandates (and be impelled to approve, for example, three-story mixed-use apartments near SMART stations), smaller cities such as Cloverdale and his own high-end home base of Healdsburg would not.

In Healdsburg, home to Sonoma County’s priciest median home value ($888,000, according to the latest Zillow figures), the city council recently gave the green light to an ambitious build-out of an old lumber yard that’s located yards from a proposed SMART station scheduled to arrive in town by 2022. The plan is very Healdsburg to the extent that it cozies up to the tourism industry while making an earnest effort at dealing with its workforce-housing crisis.

Replay Healdsburg LLC is a corporation under the umbrella of Vancouver-based developer Replay Destinations, which is mostly in the hotel business. Their public-private plan was approved by the city council and, when fully developed, will include 208 new residential dwellings split between 146 market-rate residencies, 40 multi-family rental units, and 48 “micro units” of 500 square feet or less. The latter represents twice the number of low-income units required under Healdsburg’s zoning code.

The Replay plan also calls for a 53-room hotel with a spa, and the company specifically noted in its 2017 proposal to the city that it would “take advantage of . . . the future SMART transit center,” along with providing numerous amenities to the town that include a new park and commercial district. The low and very-low income housing would be managed by Eden Housing, a Hayward-based supportive housing nonprofit that’s emerged as a go-to agency for private-public partnerships that are simultaneously pro-business and pro–affordable housing.

Under McGuire’s bill, Healdsburg, with a population of 12,000, would be exempt from any future state-driven attempts to seize control of local zoning decisions in the downtown area.

Meanwhile in Santa Rosa, there’s a SMART station at Railroad Square but an empty former freight train depot lot across the tracks that’s been a hot potato property since the SMART District was created in 2002 and subsequently purchased the land.

In the aftermath of the 2017 wildfires, which saw Santa Rosa lose five percent of its housing stock, the property has continued to languish under the weight of known soil contamination and complex issues related to the five acre lot’s extensive title history, according to city documents and published reports on the Santa Rosa snafu.

SMART’s been trying to jump-start trackside development where it’s been flagging—especially in Santa Rosa. According to SMART documents, General Manager Farhoud Mansourian tried to fast-track a development deal with the Santa Clara–based ROEM Development Corp. in 2018 with a planned high-density development of 321 apartments, including 48 below-market rate units. But, citing title and oil contamination issues, ROEM backed out of the deal early this year. Cornerstone Properties then stepped into the breach and bought the land from the SMART district for $5.4 million. A project plan is pending from Cornerstone.

What impact might a McGuire-Weiner compromise bill have on Santa Rosa? It’s unclear. Santa Rosa has the highest population in the North Bay, at 175,000, which puts it squarely within the population parameters set by McGuire. But McGuire’s bill also offers exemptions to areas where there’s a high risk of wildfire.

Marin County has been especially vociferous in denouncing Weiner’s bill and any legislative attempt to seize control over local zoning decisions. Marin’s been the much-publicized flashpoint for local control over high-density development along the travel corridor, with its rich “NIMBY” culture of older homeowners who have resisted the renewed rush to develop, met with a new YIMBY push that’s highlighting an outsized cost of living in Marin that’s driven largely by its pricey real estate market. San Rafael has seen several projects in recent years that demonstrate McGuire’s overall point about the “one-size-does-not-fit-all” approach to residential development.

In one pending project, San Rafael and the county have tentatively embraced a public-private partnership model that also makes use of support services from the nonprofit Eden Housing. Several years ago, BioMarin and the Whistlestop senior services facility both put forth ambitious redevelopment plans that were approved by city planners in San Rafael, only to have them face the regulatory buzzsaw of the county and the state—not to mention a funding wall for Whistlestop, thanks in part to the end of redevelopment.

Last year the entities combined their plans into one new project that would see a new plant for the local pharmaceutical firm, a residential tower for seniors and as well as parks, bikeways and other amenities. That plan is now being reviewed by numerous county departments, and an environmental review is underway. The Biomarin-Whistlestop plan serves as a demonstration model for how local control can play out and provide the maximum benefit to all parties—including those who are having a hard time making the rent in Marin. But as the YIMBYs like to point out, Marin County has been very slow to approve new residential developments in the past decade and has exacerbated
its own housing crisis through a local control regime that’s heavy on the control.

Weiner says his bill is designed to remediate the failings of local control when it comes to upzoning transit-rich areas, and it remains to be seen how or if Wednesdays hearings will address projects in the pipeline. McGuire’s staying mum on the subject. “Nothing to report yet,” says McGuire spokeswoman Kerrie Lindecker. “But more to come on [April 24] when the bills come to [the] Governance and Finance Committee.”

MORE THAN THEY CAN CHEW Symptoms of those who ate too much pot include severe anxiety, vomiting, an exacerbation of asthma and severe intoxication.

We’re officially in the post-legalization era.

Five years after Colorado legalized recreational cannabis—and five years after New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had her scary fetal-position encounter with a Rocky Mountain state edible in a hotel room (she ate too much of a candy bar)—that state has raised an alarm over an emerging problem with ingesting edibles in unhealthy amounts, and winding up in the hospital with severe anxiety or other symptoms.

How is this problem playing out in California, which legalized marijuana in 2017 and is now offering recreational cannabis consumers a range of edible products that range from chocolate bars to “ gummy bears“ to THC-infused soda?

In some measure, it’s a bit early to tell, say health officials and other experts. The state has only just embarked on legalization and the data is just starting to roll in to Sacramento officials charged with ensuring a safe rollout of California’s ambitious legalization regime for recreational cannabis.

The Bohemian/Pacific Sun contacted some 50 healthcare providers in the North Bay, from Marin General Hospital to small-town health clinics. We contacted paramedics and county health officials. What came back indicates that, if anything, this is an emerging story with scant detail from the state about the frequency of emergency-services calls and hospital visits related to cannabis use.

The survey of local healthcare providers, county health officials and emergency service revealed they don’t track the information. For example, Dean Fryer, a representative of Sutter Health in Sonoma County, said that the company does not monitor hospital admissions by cannabis-related admissions, and couldn’t therefore say whether they’ve seen a spike in edibles-related health issues since 2017.

“We have no way of really quantifying or knowing if this is an issue [or] if there’s a rise in admissions,” Fryer says. “It’s not tracked in that way.“

Edibles-related calls for service do not appear to be tracked at the ground level, either. A representative of REDCOM Dispatch, the centralized agency which directs calls to fire and emergency service responders within Sonoma County, said the organization does not track emergency calls related to cannabis use.

Veteran emergency service officials in West Marin say that they have not seen any uptick in edibles-related calls since legalization took hold in California. For them, alcohol-related calls for service are predominant. Those officials amplify what others interviewed for this story have noted: Those who overdose on THC-infused edibles are often older persons who have not experimented with cannabis for some time—and are unaware that the cannabis they are ingesting has gotten far stronger since their youth. If anything, notes one high-ranking emergency services official in West Marin, young people are keenly aware that eating cannabis can be a far more potent experience than smoking it. And, say those officials, the handful of edibles-related calls they’ve gotten over the past couple of decades have not been for pre-packaged edibles on the legal market, but rather for an overly potent homegrown brownie or other food infused with cannabis.

Those edibles don’t come with the same degree of product information as is required under California law, including information about the potency of the product. But the state has struggled to square up its own regulations concerning THC potency in edibles, with conflicting regulations coming from two key state agencies—the Bureau of Cannabis Control and the California Department of Public Health.

Meanwhile, the production and manufacturing of edibles is overseen by one of the three legs of the California cannabis regulatory regime, the Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch (MCSB). But, says CDPH spokesman Matt Conens, the MCSB’s role is not to assess whether edible health-related problems are on the rise—but to make sure the products it approves are safe and properly manufactured and packaged.

In February, as California’s interim cannabis regulations became permanent—and as first reported by the Marijuana Business Daily—state regulators moved to update regulations in the edibles industry. Officials moved in when it was discovered that the CDPH and the Bureau of Cannabis Control had differing regulations concerning the amount of THC that an edible could contain. The agencies in charge of regulating California’s legalization rollout, noted the MBD, “issued seemingly conflicting rules detailing THC limits, testing and packaging for infused products. That caused some testing labs to unexpectedly fail products based on different interpretations of the rules.“

The snafu caused great upset in an edibles industry worried that, among other things, the discrepancies could expose edibles-producers to lawsuits from consumers, reported MBD, claiming they were harmed because the THC limits printed on the packaging didn’t reflect the exact THC contained in the product.

What this means is that localities are now sending their cannabis-health data to a state cannabis bureaucracy that itself may be in need of fine-tuning when it comes to allowable potencies in the products it is regulating. And, while the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development is in charge of collecting patient data reported by hospitals (including ER visits and visits for cannabis poisoning) it’s yet to undertake an analysis of the data, says spokesman Andrew Diluccia, “and would not be able to provide any information/context as to why there might be rises or falls in cannabis poisonings. OSHPD does not have subject matter experts to address this issue. Also, the poisoning data does not contain how the cannabis entered the body (i.e., inhalation, ingestion), so there would be no data specific to edibles.“

While the county “supplies all kinds of data to the state,“ it’s also just getting up to speed on any edibles-related health impacts that may be afoot in the county,” says Roshish Lal, the spokesperson for the Sonoma County Department of Health.

He notes that when the county eventually sends its cannabis-related data to the state Department of Health, “I don’t know whether it will be broken down specifically—there are so many products.“

The main barrier to tracking the problem is that California has not formally defined the symptoms of a cannabis overdose and has not created a system to record cases, says Matt Willis, Marin County’s Public Health Officer. Although medical providers are likely able identify a cannabis-related incident when an individual comes into their care, they are currently unable to record it since the state has not defined the criteria.

The lack of state leadership has left county and city governments to attempt to track the problem on their own, he says. Many do not, but some are trying.

Six months ago, Marin Health and Human Services partnered with the county coroner to begin recording the level of THC during toxicology screenings in cases of accidental deaths.

“We are unlikely to have the same quality of data as Colorado does until we build a system to collect it,” says Willis, who adds that his department is also discussing ways of tracking cases in Marin County’s three emergency rooms.

If there has been an increase in the number of overdoses, Willis expects that it is due to the potency of cannabis since legalization. Legislators may be operating under outdated assumptions about the strength of the product; edibles are particularly dangerous because those experimenting with them may take a second or third dose while waiting for the drug to take affect.

While cannabis products are unlikely to be fatal on their own in the same way opioids and other drugs can be, Willis says he is concerned that the rate of DUIs because of cannabis use could increase.

Cannabis-related health issues are showing up in the South Bay since legalization, says Dr. Greg Whitley, chief medical officer at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. The symptoms that users most often come in with, Whitley explains, include severe anxiety, vomiting, an exacerbation of asthma or emphysema, and severe intoxication. He says the last symptom is the most common one they are seeing in Santa Cruz which, like Sonoma County, has an historically liberal embrace with marijuana.

“Those people can come in with symptoms of just basically feeling really, really stoned—off-balance, difficulty walking, dizziness,” he says, and often it’s as a result of over-consumption of edibles. Sometimes people are lethargic,“adds Whitley, who’s worked at Dominican since 2001 and served as the emergency room’s medical director until taking his new position April 1. “Sometimes people look like they’re having a stroke because they’ve had basically an overdose of THC.”

Whitley also noted, anecdotally, that over the past couple of years, the number of people coming to the Dominican emergency room with acute cannabis-related symptoms has skewed older. A decent-sized chunk of the patients, he reports, have included fathers and grandfathers who’ve gotten into a family member’s pot brownies without realizing there might be any special ingredients.

And Whitley echoes the West Marin emergency services officials when he notes that lots of times, it’s older people who are surprised at the enhanced potency of the cannabis they are ingesting.