Last week BIA Bay Area submitted a letter commenting on the Draft Plan Bay Area 2050 Blueprint released jointly by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). The Draft Blueprint comprises a set of potential policy strategies identified by the agencies for inclusion in the next iteration of Plan Bay Area (the region's Sustainable Communities Strategy adopted pursuant to SB 375). BIA's comment letter, click HERE, focuses on the strategies likely to have the most impact--positive or negative--on the building industry's ability to deliver much needed new housing. BIA's letter calls out two strategies in particular (inclusionary zoning and urban growth boundaries) for having significant negative impacts on housing and urges the agencies to reconsider or substantially modify them. Although the agencies describe the strategies as simply "potential" public policies that can be implemented over the next 30 years and not "near term actions" or "legislative proposals," BIA submitted comments on them because prior experience has shown that inclusion of a strategy in Plan Bay Area can be used by local governments to justify adopting or maintaining harmful policies at the local level