The San Diego Association of Governments has shielded two North County cities from the strictest parts of a new law allowing for high-rise housing near transit stops.
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SANDAG admits it declined to follow state guidance when it made the decision.
That move’s now getting them sued.
Two groups affiliated with the real estate industry are taking SANDAG to court over the agency’s implementation of Senate Bill 79, a controversial law opposed by key elected officials who control the agency’s board of directors.
The bill allows for buildings up to 95 feet tall within a certain distance of bus stops and train stations, a standard meant to trump local zoning restrictions. The new rule applies within a quarter-mile of all eligible transit stops, but for the busiest ones, it applies to everywhere within a half-mile.
That’s caused elected officials to argue the law takes development decisions away from local communities. Housing advocates counter that local officials exert too much control over what kind of housing is getting built, thereby fueling California’s housing shortage.
Ahead of SB 79 taking effect in July, regional planning agencies like SANDAG had to use state guidance to draft maps identifying what transit stations were subject to new high-density zoning.
But Matt Gelfand, an attorney for Californians for Home Ownership, a nonprofit that filed the lawsuit, said SANDAG is the only planning agency in California that disregarded what state guidance told them to do.
“SANDAG and the other (planning agencies) have a very limited specific role in this law,” Gelfand said. “SANDAG has instead chosen to do a bunch of its own analysis and rethink (state) guidance, and that’s just not their role.”
SANDAG declined comment.
The Times of San Diego first reported on the lawsuit, which was filed last week. Gelfand’s group is joined in the lawsuit by the California Housing Defense Fund, a nonprofit pro-development law shop.
At question in the lawsuit are transit stations in Solana Beach and Oceanside.
In its draft map, SANDAG did not include Solana Beach’s train station, which is serviced by the North County Transit District and Amtrak.
The draft maps also drew a smaller boundary for rezoning around Oceanside’s downtown transit center, which is serviced by four different lines — the Amtrak Surfliner, the Los Angeles-area commuter rail system Metrolink and two NCTD lines: the Coaster and Sprinter. Under the maps, rezoning applies within a quarter-mile of the site.
But those decisions conflict with guidance from California’s Department of Housing and Community Development on how regional planning agencies like SANDAG are supposed to implement the law.
According to state guidance, a quarter-mile around a train station has to be rezoned if 48 to 71 high-frequency commuter rail trains make daily stops there. If 72 or more of those trains make a stop, a half-mile area around the station has to be rezoned.
Transit schedules show 56 different commuter trains stop at Solana Beach’s station every weekday. At Oceanside’s Transit Center, 130 trains stop there every weekday.
State guidance also calls for regional planning agencies to count the total number of trains.
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But SANDAG says it didn’t do that. Instead, the agency counted each line individually.
SANDAG’s defense is that the guidance conflicts with the language of SB 79, but the agency has refused to share its legal interpretation.
Under the law, regional planning agencies are legally required to draft maps in accordance with state guidance, the lawsuit said.
Beyond SANDAG, the pro-housing groups are also taking aim at decisions related to SB 79 by San Diego and Oceanside.
In August, the groups sued San Diego for its decision to exempt certain transit stops from the law because there is not a walking path less than a mile from the stop.
According to the lawsuit, San Diego improperly judged whether a walking path existed by only counting sidewalks, whereas the law requires that the right-of-way on streets be considered a walking path.
The city declined to comment on the litigation.
On Friday, the groups served Oceanside with a lawsuit alleging similar violations of the law.
Oceanside City Attorney T. Steven Burke Jr. declined a request for comment.
Much like SANDAG’s decisions with SB 79, Gelfand said San Diego and Oceanside are unique in California in how they’ve made decisions about the law.
“It’s not as if compliance is perfect, but we are not seeing this sort of bulk disobeying of the law elsewhere in the state by and large,” he said.
The legal fight against local resistance to SB 79 comes as cities have had mixed success in building enough housing to meet state-mandated housing goals.
Data shows San Diego has issued permits for about 29,000 units since 2021, about 27% of the 108,000 homes the state wants by 2029.
Solana Beach has seen similar outcomes.
The city has issued permits for 215 housing units this decade, about a quarter of the 875 units mandated by the state by decade’s end, according to city data.
More progress has been recorded in Oceanside, though.
Since 2021, the city has permitted nearly 3,285 housing units — about 60% of its target of 5,443 units
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