Editordude: This is an excellent summary of the very current trends in California and San Diego housing and a must-read.
By Michael Smolens / Columnist – San Diego Union-Tribune / May 3, 2024
In recent years, the Legislature has passed several laws to increase housing density across the state.
But a ruling by a Los Angeles County judge and pushback from the California Coastal Commission may slow that momentum.
Both developments highlight perhaps the most disputed notion in the politics of housing — that producing more market-rate housing will lower sale prices and rents.
That has been a key argument by many housing advocates over the years as home prices in California have soared and affordability has shrunk. But the contention that simply more supply will substantially change that has been challenged constantly.
Affordable housing was central to a ruling last week by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin, who declared a law that could increase housing density in most neighborhoods was unconstitutional. The law approved in 2021 under Senate Bill 9 by state Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, allows lots zoned for single-family homes to be split, with duplexes on each parcel.
That means the number of units on such lots could quadruple. One of the stated purposes of the bill was to provide more affordable housing. The law is often described as ending single-family-home zoning in California.
Opponents of SB 9 maintain the law would increase traffic congestion, overburden infrastructure and destroy neighborhood character. Some residents simply don’t want more people in their neighborhoods.
Five cities — Del Mar, Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance and Whittier — challenged SB 9, contending it illegally supersedes local zoning authority and doesn’t necessarily provide affordable housing. Kin’s ruling applies only to those cities, but if appealed and upheld, it would apply to more than 121 charter cities — including San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco — that have certain prerogatives when some conflicts with state laws arise.
“Because the provisions of SB 9 are not reasonably related and sufficiently narrowly tailored to the explicit stated purpose of that legislation — namely, to ensure access to affordable housing — SB 9 cannot stand,” Kin wrote.
Unlike some other state and local laws aimed at boosting housing density, SB 9 does not mandate any units be restricted to low-income residents.
“To justify SB 9’s interference with municipal concerns of land use and zoning regulations, the legislature cannot rely on a potential, eventual decrease in prices resulting from increasing housing supply to demonstrate SB 9 would increase the supply of affordable (i.e., below-market-rate) housing,” Kin added.
Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said the state “will consider all options in defense of SB 9.”
Chris Elmendorf, a law professor at UC Davis, told the Los Angeles Times he did not agree with Kim’s ruling and that the Legislature could adjust the law to address the decision. Atkins said in a statement she is considering doing so. Getting SB 9 approved was a hard-fought battle and required changes. Amending it now may not be easy.
“The goal of SB 9 has always been to increase equity and accessibility in our neighborhoods while growing our housing supply and production across the state,” Atkins said, adding that she believed Kin’s decision was “very disappointing and sadly misguided.”
The ruling came as a surprise to an attorney representing the cities.
“We knew the stakes were high, but we also knew that it was an uphill battle,” Pam Lee, an attorney with Aleshire & Wyndner, told KQED in San Francisco. “So many of the (housing) laws that have been challenged — in particular, cases against charter cities — have just not been met with a favorable fate.”
Meanwhile, the Coastal Commission has ramped up opposition to legislation streamlining projects increasing housing density in the coastal zone.
While many Californians and environmental advocates in particular see the commission as a strong steward of coastal protection, some lawmakers have been criticizing the agency as anti-development — and a hurdle to affordable housing near the seashore. Commission officials reject that label.
Last year, a bill to limit the commission’s power to review certain projects was initially opposed by the commission. After Assembly Bill 423 was changed to prohibit development in areas subject to sea-level rise, the commission went neutral on the measure, which was then passed and signed into law.
This year, Politico reports that the commission has been battling against bills by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas.
Politico suggested the commission influenced committee decisions to basically gut a Blakespear measure that would have made it easier to build accessory dwelling units near the coast and turned another measure creating deadlines for the commission into a study.
Still advancing, however, is a bill by Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, for developer density bonuses in the coastal zone allowing the construction of more units if some are designated for low-income residents.
The value of requiring rent-restricted units for low- or moderate-income people in return for larger projects is frequently debated, depending on the number of affordable units produced. But that argument pales in intensity to the disagreement over whether increasing market-rate housing alone impacts affordability.
Richard T. Carson, a UC San Diego economics professor, just this week suggested there could be “real housing issues causing many in the region considerable pain.
“But there is no serious academic research showing that building sizable numbers of housing units, almost exclusively at the high end of the market, makes housing more affordable over a time period relevant for current residents,” Carson wrote in a column published by the Times of San Diego.
“That is because,” Carson added, “the process of housing filtering down to a level affordable to lower income households is quite slow.”
There have been signs recently that increased apartment construction in San Diego and across the nation may have moderated rent increases, but doesn’t necessarily make the housing substantially more affordable.
Recent studies show “increases in housing supply slow the growth in rents in the region,” three New York University professors concluded, according to an abstract of their review. “In some circumstances, new construction also reduces rents or rent growth in the surrounding area.”
Housing affordability is determined by many factors beyond government policy over density — land costs, construction costs, cost of materials, the state of the economy, mortgage rates and more.
Regardless of what happens with economic conditions, SB 9 or the jousting between the Coastal Commission and Legislature, the argument over the impact of boosting the housing supply will remain.
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If the city wants affordable housing, make the Midway area 100% affordable and reinstate the 30ft ht restriction Todd’s crony bought. Contact the Texas outfit and see if they’d be onboard with an arena in Mission Valley by Snapdragon. Or a new combined deal between the city and SDSU (with or without the Texas outfit) I’ve heard SDSU is looking at a $200 million renovation of Viejas. Traffic can then be normalized in the Midway and SDSU campus areas. Look at the forest, not the trees gang.
Perfect example of a blatantly & patently unsubstantiated, un-sourced, ambiguous innuendo masterfully blended into what masquerades as an evaluative analysis news report:
“Politico suggested the commission influenced committee decisions to basically gut a Blakespear measure that would have made it easier to build accessory dwelling units near the coast and turned another measure creating deadlines for the commission into a study.”
The New York times “suggested” there were cylinders used to enrich uranium for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” after the whitehouse deliberately “leaked” intelligence (discredited and knowingly false) of the fabricated story details to the New York Times. Then Condaleeza Rice, and Cheney took to the Sunday News shows to cite the story that they had planted as the prevailing reasoning to go to war in Iraq.
Michael Smolens relentlessly pounded the KPBS Roundtable, for more than a decade as a regular contributor, joining forces with Andrew Keating to redundantly scream “BUILD BABY BUILD!”
Most effective though was Smolen’s campaign to convince us that it would be futile to oppose high density build-to-Rent policies. To get San Diegans acquiesce, to suck it up, there is nothing we can do about it.
Soon-Shiong’s U-T was wholly propped up by developer and corporate real estate and RE related advertising, so Smolens knows who buttered his bread. And where his paycheck will continue to come from under the new U-T ownership.
Never, not once, has Smolens ever mentioned the catastrophic monopolistic collateral damage that Wall Street Corporations that have systematically inflicted on our entire state as they’ve vacuumed up almost all single family houses that have been made available on the market since 2008. Bupkis!
Smolen’s repeated the hell out of “the housing shortage” narrative, now revamped as “the housing crisis.”
He can say whatever he likes but rents have not stopped increasing. Everyone has bore witness to the overdevelopment tens of thousands of luxury rentals; in fact more housing units since ’08 than at anytime in our city/county history.
I implore everyone to do yourself and your hometown a favor and call Toni Atkins and Rob Bonta. Tell them to let SB9, this horrible piece of predatory development legislation die.
Toni Atkins:
Capitol Office
Phone: (916) 651-4039
San Diego District Office
Phone: (619) 688-6700
https://sd39.senate.ca.gov/
Rob Bonta:
https://oag.ca.gov/contact
I guess you missed the point of the article, which is still an excellent one. You consistently rail against Smolens yet he is the best the U-T has in terms of columnists now and he supports progressive media. We agree to disagree. It’s kind of part and parcel of your smashing of all Democrats, I guess, no matter if they’re in the progressive, non-corporate wing or not. But here we do agree re Atkins.
I did not miss the point of the article at all. I take exception with his ruse.
What I am exposing is a rather dishonest presentation of innuendo as fact when it is not factual, at all.
I’ve posted comment this in order to point out how narratives get crafted, planted and implemented.
If you take the paragraph in quotations word for word, I would imagine you’d have difficulty not agreeing.
I rail against Smolens abdicating his responsibility while presenting his editorial work or opinions as news-stories when they obviously contain ambiguous hearsay solely intended to influence public opinion.
Not one column, nor one Round Table appearance does Smolens mention, even briefly, the largest contributor to inflation, homelessness, drain on municipal budgets, the death of empathy that is the $8 Trillion Wall Street Real Estate Gorilla in the room?
Wall Street Real Estate Investment Trusts totaling 192 corps on NYSE and 24 more on the NASDAQ usurping all the available residential housing to manipulate the market. While manipulating the real estate market by simultaneously flooding metropolitan markets with overvalued rentals by the hundreds of thousands? Michael Smolens, you couldn’t pen, nor speak one word in all of these years, not one column, not one sentence of dialog?
Democrats abandoned locals for corporate Real Estate donations.
The Central Democratic Committee continues to all but eliminate the hopes of any grassroots candidates, abdicating any of the Party’s obligations to it’s constituents. So when they keep the ratio low progressives literally have no say.
Maybe a good time for the Democratic Party to do some soul searching before November. But not me. Because I and my neighbors continue to go unrepresented, I’ve been gerrymandered out of my own district and we are incessantly force-fed candidates that will continue to defy us constituents with impunity. Kind a hard to love the Party making you consume the agony imposed on our city that we once referred to as America’s Finest that worsens daily.
Even a good dog will bite you if all you do is beat it.
You’re equating yourself with the ‘good dog’ I suppose? And I’m supposed to be ‘beating’ you? Or is it the Democratic Party? You and I have had this same conversation numerous times.
That would be in terms of “the Party”, to clarify. Specifically the Democratic Central Committee, which has been giving us all the beat down Frank.
I was a good dog for decades, like many of the contributors to the Rag. I for the life of me though, can no longer afford to climb out of that clown car and I refuse to carry water for the Dems that abandoned us.
This isn’t a conflict in ideology, this is the result of deliberate Party mandated policies absent of representation, and many of the issues are reported on in this publication frequently.
We are living the nightmare result of one party rule and it will never cease until we all say enough is enough.
Lori Saldaña is a Saint for trying to pull the Central Committee out of the muck for decades and decades. Members of that committee have impugned her good character repeatedly. Yet Lori valiantly tries to change them from the inside, and I do not know how that benevolent San Diegan maintains her sanity.
In my opinion it is similar to the Compton Police Department getting dissolved because corruption ran too deep. I’ve given up on them and maybe that is the only way to clean house, but in the meantime I think wholly independently.
I don’t hold you, nor your opinions responsible for any this Frank.
I sincerely believe that extricating myself from a Party dictating policy instead of working with the communities to establish solutions is the best option for me.
I don’t think that all of the shortcomings, misgivings, improprieties, insatiable greed, and disdain for constituents is representation. And I most definitely do not think I should somehow be the one held accountable for the Party running roughshod over me and other San Diegans with impunity.
Okay, okay and okay. Your contributions in other comments are commendable.
Thank you. I look up to you Frank, and appreciate your insight, respect your wisdom and I am grateful for the forum the OB Rag provides San Diego.
I never post anything to “own” anyone, to get personal or even to rant.
Intonation and inflection cannot be readily established via a written comment.
I do have a voracious appetite for information, taught myself to speed-read decades ago as an adolescent, and I regularly geek out reading public records, peer reviewed white papers, and independent investigative reporting that I cross reference with what stories can get past the corporate media boardrooms.
I am blessed that I can efficiently research and I am able to access, digest, and share information. Especially with the predominantly critically thinking community that is your beloved OB Rag.
I learned two important things from Donna Frye.
Read everything.
Sunshine is not only the best disinfectant, it is the only disinfectant.
The whole escapade with SB9 & 10 would be moot if the city would have focused on 100% affordable housing without all the developer political donation bells and gimmicks. The Midway area. The Fry’s location. The dead commercial off Mission Gorge north of the 8. Prime locations to renew.
But yet, with Sacramento, let’s build “affordable” in the coastal protected areas and be “green”. It is the Dem political super majority structure using people.
I wish the people promoting the construction of new housing would be honest and admit that there is no such thing as affordable new market rate housing. I also wish that they would admit that trickle down is a fantasy promoted by the wealthy to justify their large, expensive homes.
Just sayin’.
Is this a variation of the ‘trickle down theory’ of Reaganomics? Sure reads like it…
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