Lawmakers Kill Bills to Spur Housing on the California Coast

The California Coastal Commission remains a force to be reckoned with after state lawmakers killed bills meant to spur housing development along the state’s 840-mile coast.

A series of bills pushed by Yes In My Backyard activists to skirt the commission and make it easier to build apartments and granny flats along the highly regulated coast are either severely watered down or dead, CALmatters reported.

Whatever happened in Sacramento, the California Coastal Commission is still a major force.

“Californians really treasure their coast and they feel very strongly about protecting it and bills that seek to weaken coastal protections are going to run into some strong headwinds,” Sarah Christie, legislative director for the 15-person commission, told CALmatters.

For nearly 50 years, the state Coastal Commission has closely regulated construction or demolition within the California coastal zone, a swath of land from 1,000 feet to 5 miles inland from high tide.

While many recent state housing laws have required predictable, by-the-book approval of proposed developments, the commission has remained a “redoubt of discretion,” according to the newspaper.

Defenders of the coastal regulator say the coast’s public value, fragile ecosystems and vulnerability to sea rise require protection.

Last week, Assemblyman David Alvarez, D-San Diego, pulled a bill he authored to allow developers to construct taller, denser buildings and meet fewer local requirements along the coast in exchange for setting aside affordable units.

But amendments tacked onto the bill would have made it “ineffective at building more housing,” he said in a statement.

One amendment would have subjected any density bonus project to the added protections of the California Coastal Act. The amendment “undid the point of the bill,” said Will Moore, policy director at Circulate San Diego, a nonprofit that co-sponsored the legislation.

The tweak was made in the Senate Natural Resources Committee, led by state Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, a defender of the Coastal Commission.

In April, the committee also amended two coastal housing bills by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas.

One bill, which would have exempted accessory dwelling units from Coastal Commission review, was amended to simply require the commission to offer guidance to local governments on how to permit the backyard flats.

Another bill, which would have sped up the appeal deadline for apartment projects in the coastal zone, was amended to simply require the commission to submit a report to the legislature by 2026. The bill died in a fiscal committee last week.

California housing regulators are pushing local governments to permit 315,000 new homes every year until 2030.

Housing advocates say the coastal zone passes through many cities, with populations that are disproportionately wealthy and white — which they say has made the Coastal Commission “a tool of elitist exclusion,” according to CALmatters.

But defenders of the California Coastal Act argue the goals of protecting the coast and making the state’s beachfront property more accessible aren’t mutually exclusive.

“There’s a variety of ways we could increase workforce housing in the coastal zone without undercutting the Coastal Act,” Christie told CALmatters.

Local governments, often tasked with enforcing the act, could approve housing projects that don’t jeopardize coastal resources. And the Coastal Commision, stripped four decades ago of its power to require developers set aside units for low-income residents, could be given back the authority to ask for affordable housing.

— Dana Bartholomew