BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Cities that are against state housing mandates have won their lawsuit against the state of California that challenged a controversial law allowing four homes on properties where only
one home had been allowed before. The ruling means that Senate Bill 9 has been invalidated in charter cities, including Palo Alto, according to the lawyer who won the lawsuit.
“This is a monumental victory for all charter cities in California,” said attorney Pam Lee, who represented five Southern California cities against the state and Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Charter cities have their own local constitution, or charter. California has 121 charter cities, including Palo Alto,
San Mateo, Redwood City and Mountain View.
The rest of the cities are “general law” cities, which operate under the general laws of the state. The SB9 ruling doesn’t apply to general law cities.
Councilwoman Lydia Kou, Palo Alto’s harshest critic of Sacramento’s housing laws, announced the ruling on Monday night.
“We received news today that (SB9) has been struck down. This is a great win, and I look forward to hearing more about it,” Kou said. Five Southern California cities had asked Judge Curtis Kin to invalidate SB9, and Kin granted their request on Monday, court records show.
Kin hasn’t published his full order yet, so details about how his ruling will apply and the reasoning behind it were not available yesterday. The decision can be appealed.
A representative for Bonta’s office said they are reviewing the decision and “will consider all options in defense of SB9.”
California’s pro-housing lawmakers passed SB9 in 2021, and it took effect in January 2022.
Under SB9, lots that are zoned for a single-family home can be split into two lots without a city hearing. Two homes can then be built on each resulting lot for a total of four homes, where previously just one was allowed.
Cities can’t deny SB9 projects. There’s a few exceptions, like if a house is historic or if the lot isn’t big enough.
The town of Woodside tried declaring its entire town a mountain lion sanctuary to get around the law, but Bonta made council reverse course.
A lobbying group called Our Neighborhood Voices tried to put a statewide initiative ballot to overturn SB9, but they didn’t get enough signatures to qualify.
The city of Palo Alto has approved three SB9 projects and is reviewing another five applications, Chief Planning Official Amy French said yesterday.
In response to the lawsuit, Bonta said that SB9 is an “important tool” to combat California’s statewide housing crisis by promoting supply and affordability.
“In California, the average price of a home is a record-breaking $880,000, leading to the lowest home ownership rates in more than a century,” Bonta said.
“Our statewide housing shortage and affordability crisis requires collaboration, innovation, and a good faith effort by local governments to increase the housing supply. SB9 is an important tool in this effort, and we’re going to make sure homeowners have the opportunity to utilize it.”
But five cities — Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier and Del Mar — said the state shouldn’t be making land-use decisions for them.
“In essence, SB9 eliminates local authority to create single-family zoning districts and approve housing developments, a right that has existed for practically a century,” the lawsuit said.
The League of California Cities filed a brief supporting the lawsuit.
People in our state need to understand that residents have been sold a polemic policy lead by Wiener et al to destroy democracy at the local level in the name of affordable housing. Their semantics embrace a morally superior view that they and they alone will bring housing to Californians. When you examine the YIMBY factions investing in pushing out local control you will find investors and developers. Truly affordable housing is needed. Yet most of the housing coming down the pipeline is market rate and luxury rate housing. Look at the lay offs happening right now. Why are there so many vacant apartments in San Francisco? Where did the missing middle go? Do take caution when you see smiling faces and zealous missionaries like PAForward who with YIMBY polarize the community. They are for housing for techies.
They are pushing bike lanes on a state highway the El Camino Real because they desire a commuter corridor. Palo Alto already has Park Blvd. Bike lanes are unsafe on this artery state highway 82. The bike coalition like that in SF is a well-oiled lobby pressuring the PA city council to approve the removal of parking along the El Camino Real. Residents will lose when businesses are not supported and sadly people including cyclists will get injured should bike lanes be implemented. Pure folly.
I applaud Pam Lee along with the other lawyers who spoke truth to power.
I totally agree with you.
Amen this is well said. Realtors and developers are not out to help the missing middle and are now given handouts by state decision-makers who receive their lobby money. None of these people show up to support policies that protect the vulnerable houses, or limit unhosted short-term rentals which would be permanent housing (and often not contributing but draining to public resources). Thank you Ann. I hope more of us gather strength and voice against this sad perversion of the housing crisis.
S.Lee: Realtors have nothing to do with this! As a real estate broker who would be THRILLED to offer affordable housing to buyers, I’m wondering why you think realtors are “not out to help the missing middle”? Do you not understand that my job is to help make people’s dreams of owning their own home come true? The combination of high interest rates (so people don’t want to leave their current home with a low rate) and decades of politicians not paying attention to housing infrastructure have led to this affordability crisis. In addition, there are not enough incentives for developers to build lower cost housing. Labor and materials costs are through the roof, plans take forever to be approved, permit fees are stupid expensive…if we want to solve this housing problem, there needs to be a coordinated effort from the State government that addresses all of these obstacles and makes it easier and more cost effective for builders to want to build!
You’re definition of “affordable” is trivial. The focus and legal term of “affordable” is for those incomes from 0-80% of median income in defined areas as set by HUD. Please don’t conflate it with you making sales *generally* affordable for buyers.
So, what happens to thr house price when supply goes up?
We are fighting a ONE MILE bike path on the LA
River which will cost more than 20M+. It against a dog park and continues into an isolated are which has no plans for enforcement. The kicker is there are already TWO paths, one only 350’ away from this proposed waste of funds. The entire path of 13 miles will cost 225M and growing. They have a 100M shortage and the city council voted to ask the city to ok spend another $500,000 on a consultant to find funds that they have had 7 years to raise. Our Councilmember came into office facing a petition of over two thousand against it and ignored it. She told park patrons that it was already funded, which is not true, her name is on the motion supporting the consultant to find the 100million dollar shortfall. You would think they would not build the redundant path and say 20M but that is not how anything works now. While I used to call myself progressive, this is beyond considering the community, or ultimate money it will cost in the long term, or caring about the city deficits at alls on top of the fact that only 1 out of 5 bikers that are women will not go down an isolated path like this, so it is 20M spent on a path used predominately by men. It makes no sense.
Either the AG will win on appeal ot sb450, which was placed on hold last year before passing, will be amended, to clarify that sb9 was actually meant to help with affordability by increasing supply. Judge Kin doesnt understand economics. I actually did an sb9 lot split. Bought house foe 790k, split lot and sold house with half lot for 777k. Now, almost done building new house with 13k lot and will have house in LA county for about 400k. How is that not affordable?
Yes, Pam Lee was masterful and logical. The previous poster above got in right when she wrote ” destroy democracy at the local level in the name of affordable housing” because it’s in NAME only since it does nothing for truly affordable housing and most for market rate housing that benefits big developers and big tech.
The fact that Bonta and Newsom refuse to reconsider the housing element targets in light of the drastically changed environment since the targets were established and were based on the number of jobs shows how little regard they have for democracy — and common sense — and honest.
The huge budget surplus is now a huge budget deficit at the state level, the county level and the local level. There’s no money for public transit =– even though so much of the housing is slated for transist corridors and — my favorite — public transit PARKING LOTS — which obviously discourages people from taking public transit!
If Newsom. Bonta, the YIMBYs big tech and big business truly cared about affordability they’d stop caving to the insurance companies and the utilities who keep raising raites and they’d START forcing companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc to start paying their poor workers more than minimum wage with no health benefits, no unemployment, etc.
But they don’t. They just keep peddling their dishonest lies that $4K monthly rates is affordable, that no one wants cars or trees so developers can cram in a few more units.
Enough with the fairy tales!
It is truly obvious who is behind this. We have reached capitalism at its worst, driving policies and calling it “affordable housing” with no other options than to mandate residents to move or face change in these neighborhoods that they have lived in and supported for decades before any of these people got elected and started deciding for us
Bike lanes on El Camino do not seem like a good idea.
As an avid cyclist I can promise you that I would never ride on El Camino, bike lane or not. Side streets are much safer.
Re bike lanes along El Camino, I don’t get why they want to destroy so many businesses. If they support the housing that’s being forced onto transit corridors like El Camino, where are the new residents supposed to go shopping? They also tell us people don’t want cars any more but they don’t address how people are supposed to get to work.
Their fairy tales are just that — dishonest spin designed to enrich their deep-pocketed backers.
SO glad that Pam Lee and Democracy prevailed!
If Bonta, Newsom, the YIMBYs etc cared about affordability, maybe they could start forcing the insurance companies and the utilities to cut their rates and their executive compensation. Instead they keep caving to the deep-pocketed lobbyists whether it’s shoving 2,000,000 more people into the already crowded Bay Area and caving to companies endangering us with their unproven driverless taxis pinning people to the ground.
Setting the groundwork for their 15 minute cities .. we can only go 15 minutes away from our home and we will get supplies from deliveries..
Just that “15 minute cities” is a real urban planning term says it all — that they want to restrict our lives, friendships, work, entertainment, health care etc to 15 minutes away.
Such a narrow, sad and irritating and authoritarian world view!
I totally agree with you.
A rare and pleasant note of sanity. Thank you Judge Kin.
Re: El Camino Real bike lanes – Younger workers often have to work off shifts. Younger women in particular need car transportation to get home safely on off shifts. It is not safe to ride a bike home on El Camino Real at night, and less traffic then even makes it more unsafe for them.
I hope AG Bonta appeals this ruling, and that the California appellate courts reverse this ruling and uphold SB 9. California has a housing crisis, with through-the-roof prices, super-commutes by school techers burning greenhouse gas both ways, and more homeless people per capita than the rest of the country. Every city in California must do its part to increase the supply of homes. Adding some ADUs and lot splits are a good step in the right direction.
This is a great ruling, but remember, this is ONE law out of 150+ housing laws that Sacramento has passed since 2017, all in the name of affordable housing crisis. Are ANY of them working?? The answer is NO. Relying on the free market and deregulation has NEVER solved a social issue like our real affordable housing crisis. But it does fund our Sacramento politicians.
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Let us not forget that our local member of the assembly Marc Berman and member of the state senate Josh Becker both voted for SB9. They are on the ballot this November.
I look forward to voting for them.
Yes, and please remember what SB9 allows a person to do. Like many of the ADU laws, SB9 allows for NO additional off street parking if the home is located within a half mile of public transportation. So where a single family home is now, you can make it into four units and it still only has the original two car garage and driveway. I am sure that will have no impact on the parking on that street. Oh, and don’t forget…no rear and side yard setback requirements….just a minimum of four feet from the property line! So the person who SB9’s their lot walks away with a pile of money and the neighbors are left with no on street parking and loose all of the privacy.
One single family home…2 to 4 cars. Same lot…same amount of off street and on street parking now has 4 units with 2 to 4 cars for each unit…potentially 16 cars coming from what used to be a single family home lot. Do the math folks. The end of the suburbs as we know it, compliments of our lovely state legislature and Gavin Newsom. Did anyone ask us, the voters of California, what we wanted?
Thanks Dan, and let’s not forget a bit farther up the Peninsula, Kevin Mullin, who voted for both SB9 and SB10, with both being signed into law by yours truly, Gavin Newsom.
Yeah, Bonta.
Housing is a hard problem because building anything here is expensive, and hardly anybody wants to pay. 180,000 homeless in California, times how much does building a housing unit cost, plus the necessary social services? equals … way more than Sacramento is willing to spend.
So instead we get these “posturing” laws like SB9, that will produce a few expensive units but not measurably move the needle on housing costs or homelessness; and then Electeds and Advocates fall all over themselves to tell you “every little bit helps,” which is not true if (a) the little bit is so little that its con’s outweigh its pro’s, or else (b) it’s a distraction not to do other, harder things that help a lot. Both of which are true of SB9. “Squirrel! Look over there, not here!”
Like SB9 will do anything for homelessness. Most people are not so gullible. But apparently some are, even in Palo Alto; and as long as they are, guys like Bonta will keep hiding behind those people in order to avoid accountability — and the hard work, political risks, and real money it would actually take.
Land use zoning is the jurisdiction of local municipalities, not the State. It’s ridiculous to think that land use laws should be written by people hundreds of miles away from our neighborhoods. SB9 is a power grab. Furthermore, with corporations and private equity firms buying up vast numbers of Single-Family Homes, we need to further protect R1 zoning. SB9 would make the purchase and conversion of Single-Family homes more appealing to investors. We are already seeing this happening with investment firms outbidding individuals and driving up home prices. R1 zoning is the tool needed to keep land in the hands of individuals and families and should be protected at all costs to preserve the endangered middle class.
What is the status of SB9 developments currently in the permitting process in the Los Angeles area? I believe L.A. is a charter city. There is a development going up which is ridiculously large, 4 buildings, 3 stories next to small single family homes. The neighbors are furious!
If the state truly cared about affordable housing, they would look into limiting the amount of new buildings/businesses that are built in an area. Every time you look, there is a new Biotech or Hitech office campus being built here on the Peninsula. If we don’t have the housing, why do we keep creating more and more jobs in this area? Hmmm, let’s see…follow the money!
Didn’t the people in his District elect Weiner? Everyone should be careful about who they elect, they can do a lot of damage in so many areas of peoples lives. Especially when they are only concerned about themselves, gaining power, and moving on to higher office.
This is a hilariously parochial comment section.
Do you all realize that
1. This ruling will be overturned at the state supreme court. Charter or not, state law supersedes local law and local control only exists when the state allows it.
2. High housing prices are set my the market, not individual developers. So all this hand wringing over greedy developers charging high prices doesn’t make any sense. Again, this is simply a statement about how the market works, not about whether that is a good thing or not. If we wanted housing to work differently, we’d have to set up housing vouchers or have government housing, both of which we should probably have more of, but at the current numbers of those things, the market dominates. If housing prices are set by the market, the only way to bring prices down is to allow developers to make so much housing (millions of units) that prices come down because scarcity decreases.
State law does NOT always supercede local law, particularly when cities have their own constitutions. The same is true at higher levels of government—federal laws do not always preempt state laws either. Only when there is appropriate legal power to do so. The state used specious arguments to take power they didn’t legally have. That’s what this ruling was about.
Re homelessness, let’s recall that Big Tech — the major contributors to YIMBY’s and their politicians — spent HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars to deny minimum wage and any type of benefits like health coverage and unemployment to gig workers.
Maybe that money could go toward ending homelessness and increasing pay equity for the groups who’ve successfully waged class action lawsuits for the tens of thousands of workers — women, minorities, contractors etc — who’d been discriminated against at each company like Google, Facebook, etc.
Will they stand up to their donors or just continue with their usual illogical virtue-signalling?
Get ready for the housing market to collapse. People are leaving in droves. The population has dropped so much that we’re losing congressional seats. Companies can’t get employees to move here. As a result there will be plenty of housing in the days ahead. In that context SB9 is meaningless. There will be no demand for lot splits.
California has been horribly expensive for decades, yet people still came here and were willing to sacrifice for the quality of life. Destroying the quality of life so that both those who weren’t willing to sacrifice to put down roots, and those who were, moved out, does not help.
Our Congressional seat situation is because of a 1929 law limiting the size of the House so that it became no longer proportionately representative the way the Constitution said it should be. That law should be overturned whether or not the logistics can be put in place immediately, because the number of electors each state has is calculated based largely on the number of representatives. Each member of CA House represents hundreds of thousands more people than members of some other states, not because of the Constitution, but because of a 1929 Law that now violates the Constitution.
But those concerns have nothing to do with how the state dishonestly seized land use power from localities under a pretext of solving affordability. Density does not equal affordability, just look at any expensive city in the world. Without specious arguments, the state simply doesn’t have the legal right to pass those laws.
Re people leaving in droves, I believe the state demographer who studies population changes is LEGALLY required to certify the accuracy of the housing element targets in view of CURRENT population has been left totally out of the loop by Bonta et al because they KNOW how much the population has changed.
Yet they blatantly refuse to reconsider their mistakes for 8 — EIGHT — long years.
What a crock.