You might have read something about the new — perhaps capricious, certainly creative — legal strategy recently discovered by California housing developers trying to build multi-family units in a state famed for NIMBYism both on the part of residents and city Planning Department officials.
It’s called the builder’s remedy, and in some cases can allow development of almost any size essentially “by right” in the many California cities that have failed to update the Housing Element of their General Plan.
For decades, it turns out, proposed housing projects that include enough units deemed “affordable” rather than simply market-rate have been able to use this “remedy,” an end-run around zoning codes and plans not in compliance with state rules about how a Housing Element must be updated every eight years.
But it wasn’t until very recently that developers were actually going forward with building remedy projects aimed at getting around local regulations.
And get around them big-time.
As has been reported by this and other state news organizations, developers who had been looking at building a few apartments instead are saying that, since they are allowed to and since there is demand for it, they will instead put dozens of units on the same site.
And while this outrages city officials, they have no one to blame for it but themselves.
A recently infamous case was reported last month by Liam Dillon in the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this fall, a developer sent the city of Santa Monica plans to build 4,500 apartments — now. “That would be more new housing than the pricey, beachfront city has built in all of the previous decade,” the Times reports.
And the electeds whose fault that is are just, you know, shocked: “Santa Monica Councilmember Phil Brock called the 15-story high-rise,” one of the properties being proposed by developer Scott Walter along with 13 other buildings, “‘beyond the pale’ and an ‘unacceptable bar for the rest of the city.’”
A Planning Department insider in another medium-sized Southern California city told a member of this editorial board a similar, if smaller-scaled, tale: A developer had plans to build affordable units on a small formerly state-owned lot now declared surplus property. At first three units were proposed, and then the developer asked to push that to four, and local officials agreed. Then the developer found out about the builder’s remedy, knew that the city hadn’t properly updated its Housing Element, and has a new plan for the tiny lot: 100 units. High-rise. Like it or not, City Hall.
It would be a lot harder to endorse this extremism in the defense of liberty if it weren’t for the decades of pig-headed no-growthism in and excessive regulation of affordable multi-family housing in California that is a big part of the reason tens of thousands of people are without housing and live in tents on our sidewalks and in our parks. You reap what you sow. If you don’t allow homes to be built in a desirable part of the world, lots of people will be homeless.
State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is one of the pro-growth lawmakers who, when told about the builder’s remedy, wrote some successful legislation making it easier to take advantage of.
“We haven’t taken away local control,” Skinner told Dillon. “The localities themselves gave up their local control when they chose to ignore state law.”
He reports that “Beverly Hills, Huntington Beach, Malibu, Palm Springs, Pasadena and West Hollywood are among the 124 jurisdictions in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties where the builder’s remedy can currently be put in play because the cities haven’t successfully submitted plans that allow for (probably more controlled) growth of affordable housing.
Santa Monica rushed to rectify its mistake and passed a hurried housing plan on Oct. 11. But there’s every chance the 4,500 proposed units will still be grandfathered in.
Lawsuits? Expect a passel of them.
Instead of wasting your time and taxpayer dollars in court, city officials, why not get ahead of the game and finally come to terms with the need for housing here? Cut the red tape. Plan for density that works. Get people living in those disused office buildings on your main drags. Promote ADUs in backyards. And, oh, yeah: If you update your housing elements with real plans for growth, developers won’t be able to bigfoot you wherever they want to.