Laserfiche WebLink
Gates said the city is reviewing its options on how to respond to the lawsuit. <br />The case against Huntington Beach is a rare legal action by the state against a local government <br />over housing laws. In 2009, when former Gov. Jerry Brown was attorney general, the state <br />intervened in a lawsuit against the Bay Area city of Pleasanton, where voters capped the amount <br />of housing allowed. The case ended with Pleasanton getting rid of its cap, zoning for more <br />homes and owing about $4 million in attorney fees. <br />Though cities and counties do not build homes, local restrictions on development, such as high <br />fees or a lack of land zoned for residential use, can prevent construction that might otherwise <br />occur. Higher-income coastal communities, including Huntington Beach, often maintain some of <br />the tightest development rules in the state, even as housing costs have soared in the past decade. <br />The median home value in the beach city of 200,000 people tops $834,000, according to real <br />estate website Zillow. More than half of Huntington Beach’s tenants are rent-burdened, meaning <br />they spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to U.S. Census data. <br />Huntington Beach put itself in a shortfall toward its state-mandated target for low-income <br />housing units when the council in 2015 amended the Beach and Edinger Corridors Specific Plan, <br />which was adopted in 2010 to help revitalize Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue by <br />streamlining the building approval process. <br />The amendments reduced the cap on new residential development from 4,500 units to 2,100 and <br />imposed stricter height and setback requirements after many residents complained about the high <br />rate at which high-density residential projects were popping up. <br />The original Beach and Edinger plan is tied to Huntington Beach’s housing element, a guideline <br />in the city general plan that it uses to identify ways the city can address housing needs for all <br />economic segments as the community grows. <br />The amendments meant the city no longer had enough land zoned to accommodate low-income <br />residents under state requirements, prompting a lawsuit two months later from the Kennedy <br />Commission. <br />According to the state’s lawsuit, the Department of Housing and Community Development <br />began working with the city to prepare an amended and “legally compliant” housing element <br />shortly after it issued its first letter in 2015. <br />But the Kennedy Commission sued Huntington in the midst of the state and city partnership. <br />“We’re concerned about the opportunities for affordable housing, being that Orange County is <br />among the least affordable counties in the nation and in California,” Cesar Covarrubias, the <br />nonprofit’s executive director, said in 2015. “We believe that every city should have appropriate <br />sites to create opportunities for housing all its residents, especially low-income residents.”