Billionaire Geoff Palmer Sued the City for Having to Include Some Affordable Housing Units While His Company Builds 1,000s of Units in San Diego.
By Dorian Hargrove / CBS8 / January 22, 2026
A Los Angeles landlord who owns more than 15,000 units in Southern California and is set to build more than 2,500 apartments in San Diego has lost his lawsuit seeking to get out of including affordable housing units in his projects.
According to court documents obtained by CBS 8, on Jan. 16, a federal judge dismissed billionaire Geoff Palmer’s lawsuit, which claimed the city’s inclusionary affordable housing rules were unconstitutional and akin to the government seizing private property.
Currently, Palmer’s company, G.H. Palmer, is finishing a 1,642-apartment project on Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa and is waiting to build nearly 1,000 additional units at a separate project in Grantville.
In Dec. 2022, before construction began on the Kearny Mesa project, Palmer’s company requested that the city exempt the project from the City’s Inclusionary Affordable Housing Requirement. The program required Palmer to set aside 10% of the units, or 164 in the case of the Kearny Mesa development, or to pay “in lieu of fees” for opting out.
The city denied Palmer’s request.
In Sept. 2023, Palmer sued the city, alleging the law was unconstitutional and violated private property safeguards.
More than two years after filing, a federal judge dismissed Palmer’s lawsuit, finding it lacked a “legal basis.”
The dismissal was Palmer’s most recent court loss.
In December 2022, Palmer agreed to pay $12.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by tenants across Southern California who accused the landlord of improperly taking security deposits from more than 19,000 tenants.
Testimony during the case reveals that staff at Palmer’s company doctored cleaning invoices to justify retaining security deposits.
Palmer is said to be worth more than $3 billion and has been an outspoken opponent of California’s affordable housing mandates. According to the Los Angeles Times, Palmer sued the city of Los Angeles over its COVID eviction moratorium, stating the ban on evictions cost him upwards of $20 million in rental income. Palmer is one of Donald Trump’s largest donors, having donated more than $2.5 million to the former president’s political action committees and millions more to conservative candidates throughout the country.
Attorneys for G.H. Palmer did not respond to CBS 8’s request for comment.
