Will some cities lose control over housing development?
A number of cities in Orange County failed to meet the Oct. 15, 2021 deadline to have their housing element plans approved. For Orange County, the requirement to update comes every eight years and is part of the General Plan of the jurisdiction.
The state requires cities to have housing element plans that show how the city will plan for the future housing needs of its community. They should include plans for increased population, affordable housing for lower income brackets, and mixed-use housing options among other elements.
The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) which includes the counties of Imperial, Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange, was directed by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, to provide over 1.3 million new housing units between 2021 to 2029, of those, Orange County is required to build 10,406 units.
Sixty percent of Orange County’s cities failed to have an approved housing element plan by the deadline. Several cities submitted plans but had them repeatedly rejected by the state.
Although there is a grace period of 120 days after the deadline, that time has expired. The consequences for non-compliance vary. A city may be given a shorter period of time to develop residential zoning, the state can take legal action after giving warnings, the city can lose funding grants for housing development or the city can be subject to a builder’s remedy.
Under the builder’s remedy, housing developers get the greenlight to construct housing for moderate-income households or build dwellings that cater for low income families with twenty percent of the units designated as such. The builder gets the option to forego the city’s zoning and general plan as well.
Last year Santa Monica failed to get a state approved housing plan. Developers saw an opportunity to bypass a lengthy process of approvals and took it. Santa Monica City Council was caught off guard by the number of builder’s remedy applications which do not need city council approval to move forward. Fourteen Projects amounting to about 5,000 new units are making their way through the automatic approval process as a result.
The Orange County cities that met the deadline and have implemented their housing element plans are: Brea, Cypress, Dana Point, Fountain Valley, Irvine, Newport Beach, Rancho Santa Margarita, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Stanton, Tustin, and Yorba Linda.