So they stop move on from taxation to lawsuit, for the things that the state itself supposes to do. Welcome to commiefornia, where the problems are blamed on you.
California accused one of its own cities of blocking the construction of enough affordable places to live, filing a lawsuit Friday that signals an aggressive approach to the state’s housing crisis by the new governor, Gavin Newsom.
Huntington Beach, an upscale coastal city outside Los Angeles, is “standing in the way of affordable housing production and refusing to meet regional housing needs,” according to an announcement from the office of Mr. Newsom, a Democrat elected in November.
The first-of-its-kind lawsuit seeks to require the city to amend its housing plan to enable construction of more units accessible to people of all income levels.
Michael Gates, Huntington Beach’s city attorney, said in an email that the city “has been, in fact, complying with all applicable State housing and zoning laws.” He said delays in making more progress on housing have been caused by other lawsuits and that Huntington Beach “will review all of its options in order to respond to the lawsuit.”
California’s median home price rose 6% in 2018 from the previous year to $570,010, according to the California Association of Realtors. The national median is $259,100, says the National Association of Realtors.
Homeownership in the state is at its lowest level since World War II, and nearly a third of California renters today pay more than half of their income toward rent. Experts consider more than a third of income spent on rent and utilities to be unaffordable.
Some local communities, particularly along the coast, have placed tight restrictions on development. A recent survey of residential land use by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, found that about 10% of the state’s jurisdictions had made their zoning codes more restrictive over the past five years, including Huntington Beach.
The average rent at the end of 2018 was $2,013 in Huntington Beach compared with a national average of $1,353, according to data firm RealPage Inc.
The governor’s office said that the city has been out of compliance since 2015 with a state law that requires localities to adopt plans to provide housing that keeps pace with job and population growth.
Advocates have long said that California cities have been submitting such plans but not doing enough to execute on them, helping to drive the state’s housing crisis. “They feel there is no consequence,” said Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, a nonprofit housing group that sued Huntington Beach in 2015.
Advocates have urged Sacramento politicians to take more aggressive enforcement actions. Mr. Newsom did so Friday with the first use of a 2018 law that allows him to refer such cases to the state attorney general.
The intent of that law is to “hold cities accountable, even though they don’t build housing themselves or control the market conditions, that they have made enough land available to help meet those goals,” said David Garcia, policy director at the Terner Center.
Huntington Beach, with a population of around 201,000, is about 40 miles south of Los Angeles in Orange County. In 2015, the Kennedy Commission sued the city after officials revamped a housing plan and cut back the amount of planned, high-density affordable units.
An appellate court ruled in the city’s favor, but Huntington Beach hasn’t passed a new plan to comply with state law, the state alleged.
