San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bonta tougher on housing than predecessors, rivals
Housing advocates cheered when Attorney General Rob Bonta called BS on the bougie town of Woodside — median home listing price $5.7 million — after it tried to dodge a law that would allow more housing in single-family neighborhoods by claiming that the whole town was a mountain lion sanctuary.
You know, because mountain lions like to live large in the burbs. Or something like that.
Bonta didn’t buy the shameless ruse, and called it “a deliberate and transparent attempt to avoid complying” with state law.
“My message to Woodside is simple: Act in good faith, follow the law, and do your part to increase the housing supply,” Bonta said then. “If you don’t, my office won’t stand idly by.”
Finally, advocates said, the state’s top law enforcement official is taking the state’s top problem seriously. Bonta has made housing oversight part of the AG job — one that the Democrat’s rivals in the June 7 primary don’t take as seriously.
“One of the key missing factors in why housing policy in California for decades has failed so spectacularly is that we were missing leadership and accountability in the attorney general’s office around enforcing state housing laws,” Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-housing California YIMBY Action — which stands for “yes in my backyard” when it comes to building more housing. “We just weren’t doing it before.”
“The pro-housing advocacy world has absolutely noticed and is appreciating the attorney general’s dogged enforcement of ” state housing laws, Todd David, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, which advocates for
building housing of all types throughout the Bay Area, told me.
It wasn’t just Bonta’s decision to call out Woodside that was important, Foote and David said. It’s that Woodside took Bonta seriously. Town leaders backed down almost immediately from their ridiculous premise.
“Part of the job of enforcing laws is setting up examples and saying, ‘Here is where the line is,’ so that other cities are on notice that they can’t just absurdly try to thwart state housing laws,” Foote said.
So why should people care that the attorney general — the state’s “top cop” as Kamala Harris described herself in the job — is more focused on wonky housing rules? Because for decades, California municipalities have tried to weasel out of creating more housing — particularly of the affordable kind — and faced few consequences. That NIMBYism has led to a scarcity of housing, which drives up the price for all of us.
That’s why Bonta has very publicly drawn the line for other municipalities, particularly when it comes to SB9, legislation that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last year. The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, is designed to address the housing shortage by making it easier for homeowners to split lots, convert homes to duplexes or build second units on their property — allowing up to four units on lots that had one before.
No, that doesn’t mean fourplexes will suddenly sprout in every single-family neighborhood. The law could enable new development on about 5.4% of lots zoned for single-family homes statewide, according to a UC Berkeley study last year. That could
Attorney General Rob Bonta squelched Woodside’s mountain lion sanctuary ploy to dodge a law allowing more housing.
make up to 710,000 new housing units financially feasible under current housing conditions.
The scaremongering about SB9 freaks out some living in California’s more posh enclaves. In March, Bonta called out Pasadena after the city attempted to dodge SB9 requirements by designating large parts of the city “landmark districts.”
Nice try, Bonta’s office said in a March letter to Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo. It told the city that Bonta’s office was “aware of local efforts to create new ‘landmark districts’ for the sole purpose of avoiding SB9.”
While individual properties may be landmarks exempt from SB9, Bonta’s office said that Pasadena’s new ordinance to create large historic districts was “extremely broad and untethered to historic resources so as to potentially encompass large swaths of the city.” It gave the city 30 days to comply with the law.
This month, Pasadena complied.
Bonta’s more conservative opponents don’t share his enthusiasm for this new section of the attorney general’s portfolio.
Oh, sure, they acknowledge that housing is a top concern. But beyond that, when asked what they’d do to enforce new laws designed to increase the state’s housing supply, their common refrain is that they will “follow the law.”
“There’s no question that we are in a housing crisis and that we’re not keeping up,” said Republican-turned-independent Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
“However,” Schubert told The Chronicle’s editorial board recently, “with that being said, as the AG you know, I’m going to follow the law, whatever the law is. Now does that mean I go drop a bomb on every city and county, right off the bat? No ... it’s about working with local municipalities, getting compliance, enforcing the law and ultimately, if you got to sue them, you got to sue them.”
Eric Early, a Los Angeles attorney, said he would support any law that was constitutional — and suggested SB9 is not. He expressed more zeal for assigning a team of attorneys to investigate state regulations and “all the various costs that have turned building a home in California into such an incredibly expensive exercise.”
Early would start by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, which requires public agencies to examine the impact of development projects on the environment. Californians across the political spectrum agree that the law has been commandeered by NIMBYs who want to slow, if not stop, all development.
The attorney general’s office can step in here, too. Last month, Bonta announced a settlement with the San Bernardino County city of Fontana over allegations it violated CEQA in approving a new warehouse project. Bonta takes a softer approach on CEQA, telling The Chronicle’s editorial board that, while he believes its “bones are strong,” he is open to ways to “root out its abuses.” Reforming the law, however, would be largely up to the Legislature.
(Former Gov. Jerry Brown — a former seminarian who has been on both sides of CEQA— used to call CEQA reform “the Lord’s work.” Those reform prayers have gone largely unanswered, however, under Democratic rule in California.) Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles former federal prosecutor endorsed by the California Republican Party, was troubled by Bonta sending “draconian” letters to Pasadena.
“I would do my best to work with each one of the cities to deal with their real concerns,” Hochman told The Chronicle’s editorial board. “And some of the concerns are completely legitimate. In many situations, a city might be in charge of zoning, but they do not actually develop property. The only way to develop property in a particular city is you have to convince a developer to spend money in that city.”
That sentiment is shared by California’s powerful League of Cities, 240 of which opposed SB9. In response to Bonta forming a Housing Strike Force last fall, staffed by 12 attorneys, to investigate housing-resistant municipalities, CEO Carolyn Coleman chided him for “demonizing all cities for things they do not control.”
“If the state is looking for a real solution to this decadesin-the-making housing crisis,” Coleman said, “we urge a pause on unproven top-down state mandates and enforcement policies and call on the state to work as a true partner with local governments to get housing built for all Californians.”
That’s just the point, housing advocates say. Municipalities have had decades to address California’s housing shortage and too many of them have not just failed to act, but also erected barriers to building. Following the law is the least of what the state’s top cop should do when it comes to housing.
Bonta’s actions “show that the state is being serious, and that the Department of Justice is taking the housing laws incredibly seriously,” David, the housing advocate, said. “I think it makes a huge difference.”