Outdoor community connections are essential for our wellbeing, quality of life, and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic. SPUR supports the proposed San José Al Fresco Initiative to reopen businesses safely and further recommends additional policy measures to support small business and commercial districts throughout San José.

Legislators from Southern California have been seeking to redistribute high-speed rail's remaining funds to regional projects in the Los Angeles area. SPUR supports high-speed rail and the vision of a future California it will help to achieve. We support the continued buildout of the high-speed rail initial operating segment to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles through the Central Valley.

SPUR joined Transportation 4 America and other transportation advocates around the country urging Congress to issue an emergency relief package including $32 billion for transit.

SPUR urges BART to work with transit agencies and MTC to develop a coordinated response to service cuts and restoration, develop the capacities to respond rapidly to changing demand, and to pursue short-term and long-term cost savings outside of service cuts. Now, more than ever, the region’s many operators need to come together to design service cuts and restoration plans.

SPUR urges Congress to: 1. Provide at least $1.3 billion to Bay Area transit for 18 months to enable states, regions, and local governments to help maintain our transit system and keep projects moving. 2. Provide a supplemental, large-scale transportation investment in the form of a Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act reauthorization. 3. Advance policies aimed at expediting transit and sustainable transportation project delivery.

SPUR supports SB 882, which would simplify the state's CalFresh food assistance application for many older adults and people with disabilities and would increase access to CalFresh during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill would eliminate burdensome ongoing reporting requirements and would ensure all applicants can complete the application and interview processes by phone, rather than having to complete the process face-to-face with staff.

Current law allows the demolition of "demonstrably unaffordable" single-family homes without a conditional use authorization. SPUR supports the same treatment for these projects as for less valuable homes, but we suggest eliminating conditional use approvals for the demolition of non-historic single-family homes where additional units would be added post-demolition, regardless of their value.

SPUR calls on Honorable Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and members of the Judicial Council to clarify that Emergency Rule No. 9 does not change the statutes of limitations for CEQA and land use claims. Unless it is amended, this rule will impose a hold on housing developments that are desperately needed to address California’s housing crisis – a crisis that is intensified by the COVID-19 emergency.

AB3205 establishes the Regions Rise Grant Program within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development to enable regions to collaborate and create interdisciplinary and cross-sector regional strategies to address key regional issues and challenges, such as economic development, transportation, housing climate change, and more.

SPUR joined the Bay Area Council, labor unions and housing organizations in calling for all construction — given proper health and safety protocols — to be allowed to move forward as "essential" to our region's long-term health.

SPUR joined NPH, All Home and more than 100 other organizations in calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the California Congressional Delegation to implement rental/debt relief for households unable to pay for housing as a result of COVID-19 and to designate affordable housing as essential infrastructure in any future stimulus packages.

SPUR endorses 98 Franklin mixed-use development project.

SPUR’s Seamless Transit report argued that the Bay Area is threatened by fragmentation in the public transit system and made the case for integrating our many public transit services so they function like one rational, easy-to-use network. AB 2057 will initiate a process for reform that can support this goal.