Focus

S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

San Francisco Chronicle – February 11

A consortium of San Francisco landlords and property owners filed a lawsuit last week challenging the city’s new tax on vacant residences as unconstitutional and a violation of state law. Proposition M, “The Empty Homes Tax,” passed by 54.5% of voters in November, imposes a tax on property owners for each unit left vacant for more than 182 days in a given year, starting in 2024. It applies to buildings with three or more units, not to single-family homes or duplexes. The measure’s goal was to help alleviate the city’s punishing housing crisis by motivating property owners to rent their units, according to proponents. But the lawsuit said that was misguided. “The government cannot compel a property owner to rent his or her property to third parties without violating” the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit alleges.

News

Appellate court denies group's rehearing request in Eden Housing case

Pleasanton Weekly – February 5

The state appellate court has rejected Save Livermore Downtown's petition for a rehearing after previously denying the group's appeal against the city's approval of a 130-unit affordable housing development. The court also opted to certify its ruling as a published opinion, granting requests submitted from multiple organizations, including the city of Livermore, developer Eden Housing, Inc., the California Building Industry Association, and state Deputy Attorney General Andrew R. Contreiras. SLD's case hinged on the argument that the plans for the project are inconsistent with the city's own Downtown Specific Plan and violate state environmental requirements.

Lawsuits accuse at least a dozen Bay Area cities of housing plan failures

CBS News – February 8

Affordable housing advocates have filed a bevy of lawsuits against cities in the Bay Area, including Burlingame, Palo Alto, and Cupertino, alleging that each failed to meet a state law deadline of Jan. 31 for adopting an updated General Plan Housing Element to accommodate its share of regional housing needs. State law empowers any interested party to sue a non-compliant city and obtain an order requiring the municipality to revise its housing element. The plaintiff can also recover its cost of suit and reasonable attorney fees. To put more teeth in the remedy, state law also contains a penalty provision designed to usurp the local zoning prerogatives of a non-compliant city.

As discussed in our prior alert, that penalty is referred to as the “Builder’s Remedy”.

Huntington Beach vows to continue housing fight, despite state warnings

Los Angeles Times – February 15

Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates said at a press conference on Tuesday that his office is preparing a lawsuit against the state, challenging the city's Regional Housing Needs Allocation number of 13,368 units for the current cycle. The state, meanwhile, may be preparing a lawsuit against Huntington Beach on a separate but related issue. The Planning Commission voted 4-2-1 on Tuesday to recommend approval of a “builder’s remedy” zoning text amendment. The vote came a day after state Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a warning letter to Gates, advising him the zoning text amendment violated the state’s Housing Accountability Act by hampering affordable housing projects.

Is living in an empty office the answer to the housing crisis?

The Guardian – February 10

The 2022 State of the Nation’s Housing report from Harvard University revealed that the U.S. housing supply is at a deficit of 3.8 million homes. Meanwhile, in a city like San Francisco, where the availability of affordable housing has reached an acute crisis, the downtown business district has all but hollowed out. Now that remote work has become the norm, with knowledge workers logging in from everywhere and anywhere, only 73% of the city’s office space is in use, according to one study by the real estate firm CBRE. To many, the fix is obvious: turn the unused office space into apartments.

As we reported previously, California's Assembly Bill (AB) 2011, which will go into effect on July 1, 2023, provides for the “by right” conversion of office space to residential use for qualifying projects. This new law is likely to be a game-changer for multi-family housing developers providing on-site affordable housing.

New law in LA: Landlords must pay relocation costs if they raise rents too high

Los Angeles Daily News – February 7

The Los Angeles City Council adopted an ordinance on February 7 requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance to tenants who move out after getting rent increases of 10% or more. Under the ordinance, if a landlord increases rent by more than 10%, or the Consumer Price Index plus 5%, the landlord must pay the tenant three times the fair market rent for relocation assistance, plus $1,411 in moving costs.

More than 500,000 acres of public land in California are inaccessible to the public

The New York Times – February 1

Across the United States, 15 million acres of state and federal land are surrounded by private land, with no legal entry by road or trail. Most of these inaccessible public lands are in the West, and, until recently, their existence was largely unknown. That changed because of a hunting app called OnX, a Google Maps for the wilderness that combines state and county maps to show wind patterns, fire histories, and, most importantly, property lines.