Naughty & Nice: CA Edition

A city’s elected officials and staff have significant power over how much housing gets built in their community. Builders can even get free land on which to build homes, but only when city leadership is committed to making their city more affordable.

Of course, not all cities make it easy to build new housing. Some CA cities perfect the art of making it downright impossible to build.

If YIMBY Santa were to rank CA’s 482 cities by how easily they allow new homes, these would be his Top 5 Naughty & Nice lists:

Naughty:

• Los Altos Hills: In response to pressure from state housing laws, this wealthy enclave (median home value: $5.6M) reluctantly upzoned a centrally-located vacant lot to allow 600 condominiums. When the developer proposed to build these 600 condos, everyone freaked out and the town down-zoned the lot back down to just 100 units, an amount that is not financially feasible to build.
• Carmel: This coastal town planned to build affordable housing on their downtown parking lots. But after facing backlash, the town submitted a fake, unenforceable plan to convert existing hotels into affordable housing.
• La Cañada Flintridge: This city received its first multi-family housing proposal in a decade, and it wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to stop it in court, against the advice of their city attorney. Although the proposal was “entitled” this fall, La Canada Flintridge found new ways to delay the development during the permitting process.
• Huntington Beach: This city has done everything it can to evade its housing commitments, which includes arguing that: 1) state laws don't apply to Huntington Beach, and 2) planning for their required 13,368 new homes would violate state environmental laws. The State of CA sued them and won.
• Cupertino: Several developers submitted building applications in this town, the home of Apple’s headquarters. Some applications were denied, prompting the state to step in. Cupertino sent a letter back to the state, saying it “disagrees with the conclusions” made. There’s been no rebuttal from the state yet.