Forced by courts, Huntington Beach passes its overdue housing element plan
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After years of battling with the state of California over its mandates and eventually being hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, Huntington Beach officials voted to pass a housing element update on Tuesday night,
The City Council voted 5-2 to approve the housing plan brought forward by city staff. Mayor Casey McKeon, Mayor Pro Tem Butch Twining and Council members Don Kennedy, Pat Burns and Gracey Van Der Mark voted to approve the plan, while Councilmembers Andrew Gruel and Chad Williams voted against it.
“Reluctantly yes,” Kennedy said of his vote, adding that he didn’t believe that the city’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment requirements were fair. “At this point, I believe I need to be a ‘yes’ vote for the sake of our taxpayers, which we all are as well ... Sitting in this chair, at this point, I believe that the path of non-compliance will lead to much more financial pain than I’m willing to put on the citizens.”
Huntington Beach has been on the hook to plan for 13,368 housing units in the current Regional Housing Needs Assessment cycle, which began in 2021 and runs until 2029. But despite a zoning plan being brought before the council in 2023, no action had been taken since then.
Meanwhile, the city lost a lawsuit brought forward by the state of California and Atty. General Rob Bonta, as well as a federal countersuit filed by the city. Last month, San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal ruled that Huntington Beach already owes $170,000 in fines, and will pay $50,000 a month going forward — with possible additional penalties and multipliers in the future — until it adopts a compliant housing element.
Jennifer Villasenor, Huntington Beach’s director of community development, told the City Council Tuesday night that she believe the updated housing element was substantially compliant with the state regulations, addressing concerns made earlier this year by the state Department of Housing and Community Development and the Kennedy Commission.
But Daniel Sasse, a Huntington Beach resident and a lawyer representing the Kennedy Commission, said during the item’s public hearing that the organization believed that the current draft was not yet compliant with state law.
The Kennedy Commission has been fighting with the city for more than a decade over its housing plan. In 2023, a judge awarded the organization $3.5 million in legal fees.
“Tonight is not the final step,” McKeon said. “We’ll submit it to the judge and see what happens from there. Fighting for local control is imminent, it’s imperative.”
He added that 8,000 of the required RHNA units were deemed “affordable” — at the very low, low and moderate income levels. Since most projects have at most 20% of their units affordable, McKeon said, that actually means that Huntington Beach would need to zone for about 40,000 units to satisfy the RHNA requirements.
Williams said he could not vote for the housing element update because of California Environmental Quality Act concerns, and because Measure U, which was passed by voters in 2024. It gives residents a vote on any city-initiated change to the city’s zoning or general plan that could negatively affect the environment.
He made a motion to ask Bacal for clarification on how the city could move forward.
“This council has no authority to declare a law on the books unenforceable,” Williams said. “Only a court can do that. No court has held Measure U preempted.”
But that motion failed 5-2, with only Williams and Gruel in favor. A second substitute motion by Williams, to make a couple of edits to the plan related to power given to the city manager and Measure U, also failed by the same vote.
Anthony Taylor, outside counsel who has represented the city in the housing battle, told the council that lawyers had already addressed Measure U with the judge.
“There’s nothing that’s before the council this evening that in any way is counter to what the intent of the voters is,” Taylor said. “The council is not overriding Measure U in any way by adopting this resolution.”
