Lawsuits Claim California Cities Evade Mandates to Build More Housing
Three California cities are being sued by pro-housing groups that have accused them of unfairly blocking more housing development near transit.
The lawsuits from the nonprofit Californians for Homeownership accuse San Diego, San Francisco, and Montebello of putting up barriers that contravene Senate Bill 79, the state’s law pushing dense residential development near transit.
The group, financially backed by the California Association of Realtors (CAR), said the suit aims to compel the three cities to speed up approval of new projects.
Californians for Homeownership is a nonprofit organization that seeks to address California’s housing crisis through impact litigation.
“Cities throughout California must play by the same set of rules established by our Legislature for the development of housing,” said C.A.R. President Tamara Suminski, a Southern California broker and REALTOR. “Through these new lawsuits, Californians for Homeownership continues to play a vital role in addressing housing affordability through impact litigation.”
Development Near Public Transit
The CAR said that the lawsuits seek to enforce provisions of Senate Bill 79, a 2025 bill that enables the development of housing near major public transit, such as metro and commuter rail.
It said that under the law, housing developments that meet certain criteria are allowed on sites zoned for residential, mixed, or commercial uses within one-half or one-quarter mile of a qualifying transit station. CAR said cities can delay the law’s effect in certain areas, and can exclude other sites altogether, but only if they adopt valid local implementation ordinances.
“The Legislature has included strong local control provisions in this law, allowing cities to adjust the state policy to better fit the needs of their communities,” said Matthew Gelfand, the in-house litigator for Californians for Homeownership. “We are committed to ensuring that cities strictly comply with these provisions in adopting local transit-oriented development policies.”
In addition to Californians for Homeownership, the nonprofit California Housing Defense Fund (CalHDF) is a plaintiff in all three lawsuits, and nonprofit YIMBY Law has joined the lawsuit against San Francisco.
CAR said that the lawsuit against San Diego challenges that city’s use of a “walking path” exemption in state law to exclude a broad range of sites, including sites within blocks of San Diego Trolley stations, based on small gaps in sidewalks or the need to walk along multi-use alleyways. CAR said that state law does not allow cities to use their own failure to provide or maintain sidewalks as a basis for limiting transit-oriented development.
The Realtors said San Diego’s planning staff has published inconsistent and erroneous maps, leading to uncertainty for developers, and the litigation challenges those maps as well.
CAR said the lawsuit against San Francisco challenges its exclusion of areas that it has improperly designated “industrial employment hubs.”
San Francisco Exclusion Areas
The areas identified by the city of San Francisco violate several state law standards for excludable employment areas, the lawsuit alleges. The city also is unlawfully restricting the use of the State Density Bonus Law, a state law tool for housing production, according to the suit.
CAR said that the lawsuit against Montebello challenges a complete moratorium on developments under the new state transit-oriented development law. It said the city’s ordinance violates several state laws, including the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 that banned moratoriums on housing.
Yahoo! News reported the suits come amid Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign to enforce more dense housing statewide to help the state mitigate its skyrocketing housing costs. Newsom has gone as far as to sue localities that put up barriers to additional affordable housing, Yahoo! News reported.
