About the Authorĭan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. The net result for that week was two steps forward and one step back. The settlement thus introduces a whole new set of conditions that other cities must now parse, generating uncertainty that undermines consistency. “In the name of solving the housing crisis, is signing onto a plan that, if there’s a foot-fault, will block the city from approving market-rate housing anywhere in town.”
In a lengthy analysis of the settlement he posted on X (formerly Twitter), Elmendorf argues that Bonta went beyond the law and imposed conditions on San Bernardino that could backfire.Įlmendorf is especially critical of one provision that would, in effect, block the city from approving any housing project if it falls short of embracing the settlement’s provisions. However, California’s leading authority on housing law, UC-Davis Law School Professor Chris Elmendorf, disagrees. It would appear that the action embraces the consistency that state oversight should stress. “Cities that fail to follow the law and plan for their fair share of housing will be held accountable,” Newsom added. It is the law,” Bonta said in a joint statement with Newsom. No city is spared from that legal obligation. “Our state’s housing element law is in place to ensure that all cities build their fair share of housing. State law requires city’s to enact pro-housing rules, known as the “housing element,” to meet quotas set by state and regional officials for making land available for development. It even filed for bankruptcy a few years ago and needs all the housing it can get to climb out of its civic hole. It was an important case because once-thriving San Bernardino has fallen on hard times in recent years, clobbered by poverty, crime and urban decay.
AB 1114 essentially bans post-entitlement challenges to building permits, thus reinforcing the concept that at some point there has to be finality in red tape that projects must endure.Ī week before the two bills were sent to Newsom, he and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced what appeared, superficially, to be another housing victory - settling a lawsuit against the City of San Bernardino for dragging its feet on revising city housing laws to be more accommodating. The poster child for the ploy was a 90-unit affordable housing project at 2550 Irving Street which was delayed by an additional 2 1/2 years, raising costs by $1 million.
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