Costa Mesa blasts state housing mandates as overreaching and unreasonable
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Costa Mesa city leaders this week weighed in on an Orange County Grand Jury report that characterizes the state’s housing mandates as well-intended legislation that is burdensome and impossible for city governments to realize.
City Council members shared notes they’d like to add in the city’s formal response to the 67-page document, “California Housing Mandates: The Unintended Reshaping of Orange County Neighborhoods,” circulated May 27.
The report criticizes what it calls strict, top-down measures that forestall public input while failing to increase housing inventory — from the “opaque” methodology behind setting cities’ housing targets to the bypassing of local control to forcing the inclusion of affordable units without providing funding.
“These measures are intended to overcome decades of the perceived under-building and restrictive zoning within cities, yet their cumulative effect has been to create unnecessary local government costs, confusion, inequity and growing tension between state directives and local realities,” the report concludes. “All of these efforts have led to minimal housing being built.”
For Costa Mesa officials, the topic hits home. Last month, the city was among five California municipalities to be sued by the state for not releasing a certified a housing plan that outlines how the city, through zoning, would accommodate the development of 11,760 residential units by 2029.
Costa Mesa is one of five California cities being sued by the state, a move the city’s mayor says is misleading and unfair.
The July 16 lawsuit seeks legal remedies for non-compliance, including restricting Costa Mesa’s ability to issue certain permits and allowing many types of high-density housing projects by right, superseding the typical planning process. It could also be a precursor to a formal challenge of city ordinances placing restrictions on sober living homes, which California deems a form of disability housing that cities cannot easily regulate.
The council discussed the formal response to 16 specific grand jury report findings during its regular council meeting Tuesday.
Councilmember Mike Buley said the state’s mandates are making it impossible for cities to build more housing.
“To me, on balance, as I was reading through this, I thought, ‘Boy, they’re getting it. What we’re seeing here down on the street, at the grand jury level they’re seeing it countywide,’” he said.
“When I took on this role as a City Council member I didn’t realize 90% of my time was going to be spent on affordable housing issues — which is not a bad thing, it’s a significant issue. But sometimes it seems as though the solution is possibly part of the problem.”
Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner David Martinez, speaking at the meeting as a resident, disagreed with the grand jury, which is made up of volunteers.
“It’s written by people who are not experts in this field, who don’t really know what they’re talking about,” he said. “[This] is a report of people who have the time and have those beliefs that are expressed in that report that I and many others would disagree with.”
Resident Cynthia McDonald, a member of the Costa Mesa First advocacy group, recommended the city separate its squabble over the sober living ordinance from pursuing housing element compliance, as stalling the latter could bring stiff penalties.
“As long as we don’t have a compliant housing element we’re not going to receive all the grants and funding we’ve been receiving,” McDonald said via Zoom.
Councilmembers Arlis Reynolds said the penalties of not meeting the housing mandates have come home to roost.
She described how a state law making non-compliant cities ineligible for certain housing-related grants left a low-income housing project planned for the Costa Mesa Senior Center underfunded to the tune of about $3.5 million.
In March, the city moved $3.25 million from a federally funded Local Housing Trust Fund to cover the shortfall and keep the project, and its 70 units of housing for very low-income seniors, on track.
“It’s an example of the system not working the way it’s intended to,” Reynolds said.
