For months, many North County leaders have criticized and tried to blunt the impacts of a new state law that overrides local zoning to allow high-rise housing near transit stops.
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They just got some help in that effort from the San Diego Association of Governments.
In a move that conflicts with state guidance, SANDAG exempted Solana Beach and parts of Oceanside from the most dramatic potential impacts of that law, Senate Bill 79, which took effect at the beginning of July.
On the regional planning agency’s board of directors, North County politicians hold outsized sway — among them Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, who has chaired the board for a year and a half.
Pro-housing groups have pointed to the influence of Heebner and other North County leaders to say the new maps’ treatment of Solana Beach and Oceanside reeks of political influence.
Ahead of the law taking effect, SANDAG released a draft map in June identifying which transit stops will be subject to new high-density zoning.
The law allows for buildings up to 95 feet tall within a certain distance of transit stops, even if the area is zoned for single-family housing. It applies within a quarter-mile of all eligible transit stops, but for the busiest ones, it applies to everywhere within a half-mile.
In San Diego, the law could have a greater reach than the city anticipated. Officials had estimated only four bus stops would be subject to new higher-density allowances — but in SANDAG’s maps, 21 meet the criteria.
Yet in Solana Beach and Oceanside, a different story played out.
The area surrounding Solana Beach’s train station, which is serviced by the North County Transit District and Amtrak, is not subject to upzoning, according to the maps.
In Oceanside, the neighborhood around the city’s downtown transit center will see a laxer upzoning designation despite being serviced by four different train lines.
In an interview, Heebner said she gave agency staff no input on how to draft the maps.
At Solana Beach City Hall, Heebner has publicly opposed SB 79, and her city lobbied state lawmakers against it. Meanwhile, at SANDAG, Heebner successfully pushed the agency’s board to formally oppose the legislation last June.
But she said that political opposition held no sway on the maps SANDAG staff drew.
“Our legal staff and our professional experts on our planning staff read the language of the statute,” Heebner said. “They presented a map that reflected how they interpreted it.”
In Oceanside, officials have also lobbied against the law and are already working to mitigate the law’s impact.
In June, Oceanside’s City Council voted unanimously to exempt multiple sites from the law and deferred others from high-density zoning until 2032, relying on carve-outs for areas with existing housing capacity, lack of walking paths and more.
Ahead of the vote, Mayor Esther Sanchez said she was in talks with SANDAG about SB 79’s impact on the city weeks before the agency released the maps.
“We are basically being forced into somehow allowing intensive development in the city of Oceanside,” Sanchez said at the meeting. “I think this (law) is very unfair.”
Sanchez did not respond to requests for comment.
Departing from state guidance
Under SB 79, regional planning agencies like SANDAG are tasked with determining which transit stops are subject to new rules allowing high-density housing, and how much of it.
In March, California’s Department of Housing and Community Development issued advisory guidance to help agencies draft the maps.
But SANDAG says it did not follow that guidance, leading to Solana Beach and Oceanside’s Transit Center avoiding higher-density zoning.
In a statement, SANDAG said that parts of the guidance conflict with the language of the law and that as a result it decided to rely only on the law’s language to draft its maps. Spokesperson Stacy Garcia would not elaborate.
The language of SB 79 specifies that regional planning agencies must draft their maps “in accordance with the department’s guidance.”
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A number of possible criteria can make the area around a California transit stop subject to SB 79’s density rules. But in Oceanside and Solana Beach, the key metric is the number of trains that serve them.
If between 48 and 71 high-frequency commuter rail trains make daily stops at a station, the area within a quarter-mile radius of the stop is supposed to be upzoned. If at least 72 trains make daily stops, the upzoning applies to everywhere within half a mile of the station.
According to transit schedules, 56 different commuter trains stop at Solana Beach’s station every weekday. At Oceanside’s Transit Center, 130 stop there every weekday from four different lines — the Amtrak Surfliner, the Los Angeles-area commuter rail system Metrolink and two NCTD lines, the Coaster and Sprinter.
SANDAG says it did not add up all the trains, but rather only counted those lines that individually met the threshold.
That runs counter to the state’s guidance, which instructs regional planning agencies to assess service by the total numbers of trains. “This approach reflects the overall level of transit access and frequency experienced by riders at a given stop,” the guidance says.
Of all the trains serving North County, only NCTD’s Sprinter line makes at least 48 stops every day.
That led SANDAG to order only a quarter-mile radius around the transit center to be upzoned. Under a city ordinance passed last month, Oceanside has decided to defer upzoning there until 2032.
In a to SANDAG, a coalition of pro-development and transit groups have called on the agency to follow state guidance to include Solana Beach in the map and expand upzoning around Oceanside’s Transit Center.
For Zack DeFazio-Farrell, treasurer of YIMBY Democrats of San Diego County, the current maps reflect the sway North County politicians hold at SANDAG.
Whereas North County cities account for about 20% of the county’s population, their mayors control 40% of the seats on SANDAG’s 20-member board.
“You need to do your best to leave those kinds of localized political considerations at the door,” DeFazio-Farrell said of SANDAG.
The exemptions in Solana Beach and Oceanside come as both cities fall far short of meeting their state-mandated goals for new housing construction.
In Solana Beach, the city has only permitted 215 housing units this decade, about a quarter of the 875 units mandated by the state by 2029, according to city data.
It has made even less progress in building housing for low-income residents, a pervasive challenge for many local governments in the county.
State mandates call for the coastal city to build 316 units for people with very low incomes — under roughly $88,000 a year for a family of four. This decade, zero units have been permitted for people at that income level.
Heebner said state law and mandates don’t account for how difficult it is to build housing in a small city so close to the ocean.
“We are not an anti-housing city by any way, shape or form,” Heebner said. “We’ve approved every single project that’s come forward to us.”
But she says SB 79 wouldn’t help housing production in her city.
“If the purpose of SB 79 is to provide more affordable housing for people, it absolutely would not be accomplished in Solana Beach, with extremely high property values and very close to the beach with ocean views,” she said.
Oceanside has made better progress toward its state housing mandates. Since 2021, the city has permitted nearly 3,285 housing units — about 60% of its target of 5,443 units by 2029, according to city data.
But like other cities, Oceanside is still lagging in low-income housing. This decade, the state calls for Oceanside to build about 2,500 units for people with very low incomes. So far, the city has permitted about 260.
The city’s efforts to limit the impacts of SB 79 come as it expects dramatic growth in the coming decades.
In June, the city updated its general plan to account for estimates showing it will add 45,000 new residents by 2050. Considerable construction is already underway in the city’s downtown — including within walking distance of its transit center.
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