State sides with Brisbane in housing dispute
For the past year, cities throughout California have grown accustomed to bad news from the state agency charged with enforcing an ever-growing list of laws aimed at increasing housing production.
But last week the small San Mateo County city of Brisbane actually got some good news from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD.
The agency ruled that Brisbane, which has fewer than 5,000 residents, did not violate state housing element laws by missing a deadline related to the massive redevelopment of the Baylands, the 660-acre railyard and former landfill planned for 4,000 housing units.
Two pro-housing groups filed a complaint over the delay, but after an investigation, HCD sided with the city, not the YIMBYs, an unusual turn of events.
HCD had required that Brisbane include a detailed timeline of when project milestones would be completed because the project is expected to deliver 90% of the homes mandated by the state in the next eight years. That timeline said the city would publish an environmental study by October, but the city failed to do so.
But HCD determined that the city still has time to publish an environmental study on the project. While the city missed the October “milestone,” it has until January of 2026 to complete all the approvals and changes needed to make the Baylands a reality, HCD said.
The decision comes at a time when 38% of the state’s more than 500 cities and counties are out of compliance with state housing element laws, according to advocacy group YIMBY Law. Being out of compliance exposes cities to “builder’s remedy” projects, where housing developers can bypass local approval processes — which are often lengthy and politically fraught — and quickly receive building permits.
The groups that called for the inquiry, the Bay Area Council and the Peninsula and South Bay chapter of the Housing Action Coalition, said they “remain concerned about the potential impact of these delays on our community and on the availability of affordable housing.”
“We firmly believe in the importance and urgency of the Baylands project and are eager to see it move forward without further delay,” the groups stated in a letter to HCD.
The groups said that the October deadline for publishing the environmental report was important given “the history of the delays the city of Brisbane has imposed on the project” and that the project is the only one in the city that’s big enough to deliver the number of units mandated by the state.
The controversial project has been in the works since 2005 when the property owner filed the first of several redevelopment plans.
Brisbane officials told HCD that the environmental report would be published in spring — with the final report voted on in 2025. The two organizations requested that HCD “produce a revised specific timeline” that Brisbane would be held to.
The Baylands project represents 90% of the housing Brisbane is on the hook for by 2031 in its housing element, which requires the city to permit 1,588 units by 2031, of which 803 are supposed to be affordable to lowand moderate-income households.
The Baylands project, slated to start construction next year, is located on both sides of the San Francisco/Brisbane border.
The developer, Baylands LLC, declined to comment on the HCD decision.
In an interview in November, Brisbane City Manager Clay Holstine said he disagreed with the characterization that the city had missed a deadline.
“That was an aspirational date,” he said. “It was a best-faith effort to try and reach, but we have three years from May of this year to get the zoning in place and we are working towards that.”