Fred Keely, co-chair of Housing Santa Cruz County, will tell us about the historic role of local government and land use, the imbalance of job and housing, the RHNA process, SB 9 and SB 10, and the proposed constitutional amendment regarding local land use control.
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Housing Director Report, in January 2022 Voter Newsletter:
SB 9, State-Mandated Ministerial Approval Process or Local Democracy
Starting from SB 35 in 2017, the state legislature has passed more and more bills that require the cities to approve housing or mixed-use projects through so-called by-right or ministerial approval without any public hearing or oversight based on “objective standards” only. Such ministerial approvals used to apply only to small projects or small amendments to large projects, but there was still a potential to appeal to either the Planning Commission and/or the City Council in case of any dispute on the interpretation of the code or the approval criteria. But the state-mandated ministerial approval with no public hearing would make the approval by the planning staff final with no recourse, except through lawsuits. This is a tool intended to expedite housing production in California.
With AB 68 in 2019, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) or attached ADUs (granny units) could be approved through the state-mandated ministerial approval process with a minimum of 4 feet of setback and no parking requirements. With SB 9 in 2020, the state-mandated ministerial approval would be expanded to a lot split into two lots and/or any project with one or two units on a single-family lot with/without ADUs. “SB 9: It’s Not a Duplex Bill, It’s a Fourplex Bill!, by Best Best & Krieger LLP, provides a good summary of SB 9. It recommends the following for the cities:
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Local agencies should adopt objective standards for these mandatory, ministerial lot splits and two-unit development projects so that the standards take effect before January;
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And agencies looking at discretionary approvals in and around residential zones might need to consider this new four-fold by-right development potential.
Therefore, since local zoning standards were usually written with discretionary approval in mind with no consideration for regulations of duplexes or lot splits, many city councils are scrambling to adopt emergency ordinances to take effect by January 1, 2022. But the majority of the city governments might not have the legal resources to do anything before SB 9 becomes effective.
Ever since 2017, a few hundred housing bills would be signed by the Governor in September to become effective in the coming January changing the way projects are approved or the way the Municipal Code is interpreted through the state bills that uniformly apply to all cities. “The [2020] new housing laws, among other things, relax regulations, streamline development procedures, increase incentives for the construction of affordable housing projects and further limit local control over housing development,” according to Best Best & Krieger LLP’s Legal Alerts. Some argue that the housing crisis justifies such state control of local zoning, which “could include more lawsuits against local governments'' brought by the Attorney General. But others are concerned that these bills exacerbate gentrification in vulnerable communities, erode local democracy, and limit the local city council’s ability to negotiate more affordable units than the state laws require.
As the cities absorb the new state bills and revise their general plan to accommodate for multiple times more units in Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) for the next 8-year Housing Element cycle, a local control resolution by California Cities for Local Control was signed by hundreds of city council members along with a Constitutional Amendment initiative, titled “California Local Land Use and Zoning to Supersede Conflicting State Law Initiative (2022), by OurNeighborhoodVoices.com, are being circulated for signatures in order to qualify for the November 2022 ballot.
On Wednesday, January 19, at 7 p.m., Fred Keeley, former Speaker pro tem of the California Assembly and affordable housing advocate will give a talk on SB 9 & 10 and the proposed constitutional amendment mentioned above. Mr. Keeley will cover
1) the historic role of local government and land use;
2) the imbalance between jobs and housing;
3) the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) process;
4) SB 9 and 10; and
5) the proposed constitutional amendment regarding local land use control.
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Watch the webinar below.
