As reported by the Voice of OC on October 9, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals recently rejected Huntington Beach’s argument that its status as a charter city exempted it from the state’s high density housing mandates, and threatened it with fines, loss of its little remaining control over zoning decisions and other penalties. Attorney General Bonta stated that he plans to make an example of the city for asserting its rights under the California constitution.
Asserting your rights in court is not something that can be left unpunished.
The issue
The California legislature has passed a series of laws, ostensibly aimed at “solving the housing crisis,” chiefly a system known as the Residential Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA. Bureaucrats in the state Housing and Community Development agency (HCD) come up with projections of housing needs by area, which are then allocated to cities by, in this case, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). The resulting requirement, a numerical mandate in the style of Soviet five-year plans, bypass any pretense of democratic government by allowing no voice of the local people affected to be considered. No “voice of OC,” you might say.
You may vote for your city council, but it is the bureaucrats at HCD you must obey.
What is a “Housing Element?”
All cities are required to have a General Plan, which contains eight elements, including housing, open space, traffic flow, public safety, and others. It makes sense that a general plan should consider how all of these elements work together. You would not, for example, want the impact of the housing element to ruin the traffic, parking, or open space elements, would you?
Well, with the HCD mandate housing element, it will. This more-or-less arbitrary housing number is dropped on the cities without regard to its impact on other considerations
But what about the Housing Crisis?”
Apart from Huntington Beach, nearly every other of the state’s 482 cities have meekly adopted their mandated housing element. Has this helped the housing crisis? Not so much.
Before these mandates, about 100,000 housing units a year were constructed. Governor Newsom promised to increase this by a factor of four. Now, with mandates accepted by nearly all cities, construction of new homes has jumped to … 100,000 units a year, a factor of one.
Why is this not working?
Our state dogma is that neighborhoods zoned for single family homes is the problem, and that the only solution to housing availability and affordability is the destruction of neighborhoods zoned for single family homes. So why is Sacramento’s war on single family homes not helping?
Single family home zoning is not the problem. The biggest problem is that development of the undeveloped 95% of the state is effectively prohibited by “anti-sprawl” legislation. Forcing only very expensive “redevelopment” in the already built-out 5% of the state is the least practical way to get more housing.
Why single-family home zoning is essential
Owning a single-family home is not just a place to live: it’s the American Dream. Given a choice, that is what people aspire to. It has proven to be the most successful pathway for working families to rise to middle class. Given a choice, it is the preferred way for families with children to live.
People work hard an save to improve their lives and that of their families. People aspire to live in nice, single-family homes and neighborhoods. It is not just the house; it is the neighborhood as well. No one will sink their life savings into such a house if their next-door neighbor can destroy their property value and quality of life by selling his house to an apartment developer or some other incompatible use.
No single-family zoning, no single-family homes, no middle-class families.
So why are they pushing this?
It only takes forcing a few high-rise subsidized apartment buildings, impacting traffic, parking, schools, and infrastructure, to ruin the neighborhoods middle class families have worked so hard to enjoy. When people see it happening to other neighborhoods as a matter of state policy, they realize it can happen to them too, and start looking for the exits. Add to this the state policy of driving good paying middle class jobs out of the state and a clear pattern emerges. Middle class people are being driven out of the state to create a neo-feudal society of a few very rich people renting to a very large lower class, a dependent class with no hope of upward mobility or economic independence.
This is population relocation for political control. Google The Curley Effect.
Standing up to the bully
There is a reason so few people stand up to bullies, they do not want to get beat up. It’s easier to just give him your lunch money.
Huntington Beach is standing up to the Sacramento bully. It may get beat up, and it may lose its lunch money anyway, but at least it will know that it stood up.
Huntington Beach is standing up for you. It is time for you to stand with Huntington Beach.
One way you can do that is by supporting the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative.
Russ Neal is a 21-year resident of Huntington Beach, former Naval officer and retired engineer. He is active in several Republican and conservative organizations.
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