LAGUNA HILLS, Calif.—A nonprofit housing group sponsored by the California Association of Realtors filed lawsuits against the City of Laguna Hills and five other Southern California cities that failed to meet state housing planning requirements.
Californians for Homeownership, a nonprofit organization calling for public interest groups to “fight local anti-housing policies,” according to its website, filed the lawsuits, as an effort to “address California’s housing crisis,” on April 19 in Los Angeles County and Orange County superior courts.
“The goal of these lawsuits is to fundamentally change the way that California’s cities and counties approach their housing planning obligations,” Otto Catrina, president of the California Association of Realtors, said in a statement. “For far too long, cities have treated compliance with these laws as optional, and we hope to put an end to that approach.”
Matthew Gelfand, the in-house litigator for the nonprofit, told The Epoch Times that the organization is not seeking damages through the lawsuits.
“What we are seeking is an order requiring these cities to adopt their plans or revised plans within a short period so that we can get things going,” Gelfand said.
Every eight years, California requires municipalities to update their housing-element plans to follow the 60-year-old state housing mandate—the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), which asks all cities, towns, and counties to submit housing plans to meet the housing needs of all its residents, regardless of income level.
The RHNA process requires cities to have a general plan to make way for a certain total number of new housing units separated into four levels of affordability—ranging from extremely low to moderate-income.
Compliant housing-element plans must identify existing non-residential sites, like shopping centers or office buildings, that can be freed up for housing development over an eight-year planning period.
Laguna Hills has been working with the Southern California Association of Governments—the nation’s largest metropolitan planning organization—to “[take] into consideration how population changes, the regional economy, and the region’s transportation network affects the need for housing,” according to the city’s website.
“We are working on it diligently,” Larry Longenecker, community development director for the city, told The Epoch Times. “We’re meeting with the City Council, we have a consultant on board who’s been working with the city for over two years now, and we’re moving towards getting a certifiable housing element update.”
However, the city’s delay in planning comes with the challenge of addressing the updated RHNA requirements that mandate many more units—almost a 1000 percent jump in eight years—to be created in the city.
Longenecker said that in the previous eight-year RHNA cycle—from 2013 to 2021—the city had to identify sites for only two units. For the current cycle, city officials must locate areas for rezoning to accommodate 1,985 additional units, which he said is not practical considering the limited space available in the city.
“Laguna Hills, for the most part, is virtually built out,” he said. “We’re analyzing the sites, we’re updating the element, and we will be compliant with all state law.”
Aside from Laguna Hills, five other cities in Southern California—Bradbury, La Habra Heights, Manhattan Beach, South Pasadena, and Vernon—were also defendants because they missed the state’s October 15, 2021, deadline to finalize their housing-element plans.
