Court Ruling a Setback for California’s ‘Builder’s Remedy’

California is within the midst of a singularly consequential experiment with state preemption and native management. Planetizen has been monitoring the so-called “builder’s treatment,” which is designed to carry native governments accountable for failing to plan for sufficient housing growth to accommodate the state’s inhabitants.

The latest mainstream media consideration to the builder’s treatment, an article by Liam Dillon revealed by the Los Angeles Instances on the finish of October, famous that the legality of the state’s new housing coverage regime had but to be contested in court docket.

Quick ahead a couple of weeks and Chris Elmendorf, a regulation professor on the College of California, Davis who has positioned himself on the forefront of the event debate in California, writes {that a} state court docket just lately delivered a blow to the state’s hopes of forcing native governments to plan for extra growth.

In a paywalled article for the San Francisco Chronicle, Elmendorf explains the court docket ruling concerning the “notorious 469 Stevenson venture in San Francisco,” a venture described in a current paywalled article by J.Ok. Dineen as a “poster little one for the madness” of San Francisco housing politics.

“The developer seeks to switch a valet car parking zone with 500 properties, many reasonably priced, only one block from a BART station and in a precedence growth space as recognized by the area’s local weather plan,” writes Elmendorf.

A “neighborhood gadfly” satisfied the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to reverse the approval for the venture, in line with Elmendorf’s telling of the episode, and demanded a growth deal that would come with evaluation of potential gentrification results of the venture, whereas downsizing the venture and donating a few of the land on the parcel to town.

“In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s housing enforcement crew launched an investigation. It referred to as the supes’ choice an ‘efficient denial’ and warned that they could have violated the Housing Accountability Act, which says that cities typically can’t deny or downsize housing initiatives that adjust to no matter guidelines are in place on the time the venture software was submitted,” explains Elmendorf.

A current ruling by a state court docket, nonetheless, throws out the state’s intervention.

“State housing legal guidelines, she dominated, don’t apply to a venture till after a metropolis ‘certifies’ the venture’s environmental evaluate. Underneath the logic of this ruling, years could cross — or a long time — and nonetheless the venture proponents don’t have any authorized recourse — even when town’s calls for for added examine are frivolous, don’t have anything to do with the surroundings or represent a clear ruse to strain the developer,” in line with Elmendorf. “Though CEQA places a one-year restrict on environmental evaluate, the court docket held that this deadline is simply advisory and that courts don’t have any authority to order a metropolis to take any motion on a venture — and even to evaluate town’s calls for — whereas the environmental evaluate is ongoing.”

California State Senator Scott Wiener is quoted within the article evaluating the “outrageous” choice to the ruling that just about compelled the College of California, Berkeley to cut back enrollment by 1000’s resulting from a CEQA ruling by a state court docket.  Based on Elmemdorf, there’s nonetheless a means ahead for this growth proposal, specifically an enchantment of the ruling. The builder’s treatment may require a brand new state regulation, modeled on AB 2656, written by planning assume tank SPUR and Assembleymember Phil Ting, to inoculate itself from related state rulings sooner or later.