Dylan Casey

@sfgov.sf.gov's housing plan made big promises to add capacity for new homes by upzoning large parts of the City previously closed off to new development. The Family Zoning Plan fails to fulfill these promises. CalHDF is ready to litigate (a thread): 1/6

I have never seen an impact fee enacted by urgency ordinance. Did they do a nexus study?

Nollan/Dolan doesn't require fairness across difference housing types, it only requires that where fees are charges they are proportional to impacts of the development.

Please call the Governor and ask him to sign SB 79!

(916) 445-2841

Follow up - Santa Clarita approved this housing development in part because of our HAA letter. Our "not-so-thinly veiled threat" to the city simply informed them that they should approve a housing development on a site they zoned for housing development.
signalscv.com/2025/08/our-...

Matt Haney is sort of following a similar path, no? Also some of NYC's gatekeeping (relying on low-turnout off-year primaries to protect party candidates) actually backfired by allowing outside candidates in.

The obvious answer here is that we should make it as easy to build apartment buildings as we have made it to build ADUs in California.

Nearly every other city in the state did their housing element rezoning by doing simple changes to base zoning, and none have attempted as brazen of an opt-out from state housing law reforms.

I agree that it is substantial by SF standards, but that is a low bar. What bothers me is that SF shouldn’t get it’s own rules that allow it to put more local restrictions on development.

It is more that the changes to the base zoning are just not that substantial. The city is relying on the bonus program to account for a lot of capacity, but that capacity is already there through state law.

(2) is an issue because under this framework cities could simply exempt all new zoning capacity created through their housing plans from state laws designed to provide streamlined permitting, increased density or relief from development standards.

(1) is a problem because if most of the upzoning is done through the local bonus program, the city clearly isn't doing enough because you can already achieve most of that density through state DBL.

The main issues in my mind are (1) most of the actual upzoning happening is tied up in the local bonus program, and (2) allowing cities to do this sets a really bad precedent that could be abused even more than what SF is proposing here.

HAA letter to Beverly Hills, CA for tonight's Council meeting re proposed 52-unit residential building at 412 North Oakhurst Drive, which includes 12 units located within Beverly Hills and 40 units located in Los Angeles.
drive.google.com/file/d/1o7dE...

Great, that is helpful. That is clearly illegal if it is prior to the pre-application, and I don't think they can require that prior to complete application either. It isn't on their checklist.

I am just wondering how this review gets triggered. If the city is preventing housing permit application from moving forward while these review hearings are conducted there might be an enforcement angle for us here.

Is there also a project associated with this one?

While Gov. Code § 65913.10 allows for historic determinations at the time a complete application is submitted (after the SB 330 preliminary application), I don't think the city can prevent the submission of the application while they complete the review.

In the first half of 2025, CalHDF influenced over 20,000 new homes throughout California! Read our midyear enforcement report to learn more about how we advocate for housing growth throughout the state. calhdf.org/calhdf-midye...

A very questionably historic structure

A very questionably historic structure

Always more fun to see what we are dealing with in these cases:

It is not. The city can’t force the developers to do anything prior to submitting the preapp. If the developer submits everything on the checklist they have submitted one and vested regardless of what the city says.

Seems like a good case for a pro-housing group to intervene in, and argue against any form of preliminary relief.

That is fantastic

For SoCal it looks like only LA and San Diego would be above 15, or am I missing something?

I don’t think so. Montana is about the same for SFH but allows for more development standards on <800 sq ft ADUs. If you factor in multifamily ADUs then California is way ahead.

The federal government doesn’t own this anymore. When they sold/gave it to the city they capped the number of housing units that could be developed on it at around 1500. Your point still stands though.

bsky.app/profile/hous...

This situation is the closest I've come to a collision while biking and the driver had to have passed the cyclist shortly before. If the cyclist couldn't stop before the collision then the car was basically turning directly into the cyclist.

Letter to Sausalito, CA for tonight's Planning Commission meeting re proposed objective design standards, which will violate numerous sections of state law if adopted as proposed.
@agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov @california-hcd.bsky.social
drive.google.com/file/d/1-Veg...

I don’t know about that, it all works together