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California AG Xavier Becerra is suing Huntington Beach for breaking promises on affordable housing. (PDF here.) Huntington Beach is suing California for trying to force them to make some affordable housing.
The Attorney General’s 11-page complaint demands a court force Huntington Beach change its 2013 plan to make it comply with California law.
Everything involving housing boils down to the simple fact each city wants “few rich people with few children” but not “poor people with many children.” Rich people buy big houses, finance superior schools, and because there aren’t many of them, they cost little to support. Poor people have many children, do not pay enough in property taxes to give their kids requisite perks, and since there’s a lot of them, they cost a lot. Since every city faces the same incentives, 95% or more of Californian cities refuse to build sufficient ‘low income’ housing to meet their legally defined goals. Add supply/demand to this simple reality, and home owners in much of California get a windfall from this system: their homes are worth a lot on paper. Renters and non-owners get screwed. Yet renters and non-owners don’t vote in the ‘little elections’ like city council (or the upcoming March 12 special election), who cares what they want?
Why target Surf City? Some attorney schmuck in Huntington Beach did try to circulate the ‘Sodomite Suppression Act’ (aka ‘Shoot the Gays’ proposal) in 2016, so some backlash was probably imminent…and in 2017, Huntington Beach did sue California to challenge the Sanctuary Laws (“we’re exempt because we’re a charter city! We want the freedom to extort/exploit foreigners!”). Ample ground for grudges there…
But really, the California claim against Huntington Beach looks to have arisen largely from the Kennedy Commission’s lawsuit against Huntington Beach. In that claim, the Kennedy Commission convinced a lower court in 2015 that Huntington Beach had cheated on ‘low/very low’ income housing, cutting that from its plans in response to community outcry.
[Note: our own Vern Nelson’s screed against “high density development” in 2014 Huntington Beach may have expressed part of the pretext some folks in Huntington Beach sought to cut out the ‘low income’ portion from the projects they’d planned. High density is bad? OK, those poor people can move elsewhere…]
Huntington Beach lost at the lower levels in the Kennedy Commission lawsuit, but won on appeal because as a charter city, they’re exempt from several of these laws – or at least, exempt from nonprofit groups like the Kennedy Commission suing them for breach. Perhaps only the California Attorney General has the means to challenge those sorts of actions…
Which brings us to January/February 2019. The CA Attorney General is annoyed that Huntington Beach broke promises they made to a judge in 2016, and cut out the ‘low income’ housing plans. Tyler Diep (Assembly District 72), Cottie Petrie-Norris (Assembly District 74), and Tom Umberg (Senate District 34) have all weighed in, urging negotiations rather than ‘expensive’ litigation. Yet when a city council repeatedly breaks the law, promises to rectify that, then breaks their promise in response to a few comments from mere bloggers and attendees at their city council meetings – who is to say that negotiations in good faith are even feasible? Who can enforce the law if not the California Attorney General?
Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Irvine, Santa Ana, and Seal Beach are also ‘charter cities’ in Orange County, so each enjoys roughly the same position as Huntington Beach in terms of legal stature. Yet honestly, what are we to do in Orange County, where no one without a household income of $200,000/year can afford a house?
As far as why HB is getting picked on, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the freak who tried to file the Kill Fags referendum, nobody would blame that on HB, and everybody’s forgotten about it. Even though me and my brother did go out looking for the guy, now that you remind me.
It’s all about Michael Gates, HB’s hotshot, grandstanding, ambitious elected City Attorney who is always attacking the state, goaded on and applauded by his knuckledragging base.
I’ll comment on the high-density development thing later…
Correct.
Everything to do with SB54.
Bringing up the ‘Sodomite Suppression Act’ was me being snarky: it went nowhere (and was mostly interesting to me because when Kamala refused to certify it to circulate for signatures, that expanded the concept of ‘ministerial’ power for the AG). Probably the work of a deranged or drunken attorney (but a tidbit most folks missed).
But as for housing, the attorney who proposed it appears to have lived in a Surf City mailbox (residential address improperly listed as same as business address, IIRC).
Yeah, that last part is true, as me and my brother Crab found out when we tried to visit that address! We wanted to go look at the guy, give him a hard time, maybe report on the whole thing, but it was a Mailbox Express. So we just informed the nice Asian owner that he had a psycho for a client and might want to consider getting rid of him.
…and now you know the early research that attracted me to your blog in the first place when I first moved to OC. Trying to learn where the real psychos are and do something meaningful about it is a major service for a grassroots blog. That’s the sort of initiative that marks you as quite different from the other talkie talkie wonky wonky blogs.
I hope I wasn’t being too critical though of your activism against the mega-developments: my point isn’t that what you did was wrong or harmful, but that there’s a bigger story at work, which activists (both right and left) tend to overlook, but unless handled, results in the perpetuation of the same ole problem of housing. I do not support either developers or residents necessarily – I only want things to be resolved fairly between them, then let the market do its work (it will – UNLESS interfered with by a 3rd party…).
Community blogs can help even out the odds in that particular struggle as well.
This happened again typically and in miniature last night in Anaheim, as 39 new units – added to an already overcrowded, parking-starved section of the Colony, and definitively NOT affordable – were forced on the population by the corrupt Sidhu majority. This will be its own story.
“I’ll comment on the high-density development thing later…”
It’s a recurring pattern. Developers plan X hundred units in a project; community activists protest; developer adjusts plan to strike 15-30% of those units – including all the affordable ones. Rinse and repeat, in every major city in California…and every time the dance plays out, it adds $10-50k in costs to houses (which translates into ‘paper value’ – and which in turn banks finance into leveraged ‘real money’ – to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars…which some folks have, and working folks don’t).
There are reasons 95% or so of California cities aren’t meeting their mandates, so Newsom/Becerra had to identify ‘degrees of violation.’ The city attorney may be grandstanding on this, but it’s really just the same ole ‘champion of the status quo’ gambit.
“It’s all about Michael Gates, HB’s hotshot, grandstanding, ambitious elected City Attorney who is always attacking the state, goaded on and applauded by his knuckledragging base.”
And wouldn’t that make retribution appear petulant and childish? Yes, you might be right.
Perhaps.
Donovan, in case you have not heard this podcast, which includes Moorlach, one of Vern’s preferred politicians:
“A conservative Huntington Beach legislator called a state lawsuit aimed at compelling the Orange County city to build more housing a “literal cannonball” from Gov. Gavin Newsom—adding that it “seemed like selective prosecution” when dozens of other California cities could be blamed for not doing their share to alleviate California’s housing shortage.”
https://soundcloud.com/matt-levin-4/newsom-vs-huntington-beach-with-sen-john-moorlach-and-asm-miguel-santiago
Very good podcast, but the journalists should have read the legal claims against HB from years ago to know the facts that contributed to Moorlach’s ‘multitudinous befuddlement.’ If they had, they’d have known and caught Moorlach immediately when he claimed “HB was sued and won in court on building houses” – when actually, HB LOST on the facts (they’re not building houses for “those people”), but won on appeal because they’re a charter city.
Moorlach COULD have spent his whole time on the podcast grandstanding about ‘selective prosecution’ – he doesn’t do that, and speaks respectfully, as though he wants to legislate reasonably. I respect that.
But Santiago gets it right: there’s a long history here. The “selective prosecution” complaint some raised against Becerra amounts to finding it improper that his attorneys read through the facts developed in court by the Kennedy Commission. Makes their 2016 ‘triumph’ look a bit pyrrhic.
Regarding the piece I wrote in 2014, back when I lived in HB: At that time these huge beehive behemoths were going up all over town, lurching up to the sidewalks, not providing the promised/requisite infrastructure, built and lobbied for by irresponsible profiteers like Steve Sheldon.
They had nothing to do with “low-income housing.” These cramped dwellings were charging top dollar. I don’t know if they ever got filled, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still half empty. (Anyone from HB want to update?)
So there was a left-right alliance against this high-density development; actually nobody liked it except those who hoped to profit from it. Liberal environmentalists like Shaw, Boardman and Hardy joined with the loud rightwing populists of the town; it’s nice when we all agree on something for once.
But the alliance was uncomfortable – the arguments from the right were too often xenophobic, classist and racist. They’d look at these huge buildings and fear that we were going to “become LA,” clearly meaning overrun by low-income minorities.
I don’t know much of what’s been going on down there since 2016 or so … unless my friends down there say “Hey Vern!”
That piece is still good, and remains the only place you can see a photo collage of “Condom Revolution. Practically next door to Dilday Brothers. Just down the street from Phuket Thai. And not far from Mandic Motors.” Here’s the proper link: http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2014/10/high-density-development-in-huntington-beach-who-did-it-and-wholl-stop-it/
Vern, hard to nuance this one. The pattern is pretty consistent: developer plans 1000 units, with a few set aside as low income – community protests ‘high density’ – developer cuts that portion. The developers themselves aren’t always the problem: they want to profit from sales of new units. The real problem is owners using this pattern to inflate their existing holdings – they don’t want any new units anywhere that might impair their assets.
The behemoths you refer to are exactly the shape of how this plays out: giant ‘investment condos/apartments’ selling for millions, left half empty, while homelessness proliferates (and while millennials live at home because they can’t afford a home of their own…or move into single family housing with 5 room mates). Personally, rather than fretting about ‘anti-camping ordinances’ – poetic justice would require converting some of those properties into shelters (haha…real world justice would make that a fantasy).
These prefab dreary catalogue order monoliths erected are so unlovely and out of character with the existing neighborhoods that they manifest as mean spirited. Sitting in the once sunny backyard of a 1960’s cottage that is now shrouded in a sinister shadow all day is infuriating. So is losing your decades old view of snow capped mountains, ocean breeze or glimpse of the water.
There are legit non discriminatory reasons to oppose this kind of charmless, intrusive unharmonious development. Ugly architecture has a negative and depressive effect on humans. Losing your sky and sun can feel menacing. Atrocious traffic makes people cranky.
It is the BUILDINGS that are objectionable not the people in them.
Set backs, analogous locations and lots of trees would have brought far fewer complaints.
But like so many issues in Huntington Beach the weakest minds in the populace make it partisan. “Leftists” are mocked. “Everyone who voted for Newsome should be killed” <–actual quote on HBCF. And then in the same post pleading, "Please everyone send Emails to fight the buildout!" Um, not the best way to rally ALL the troops. They are being played. Stepping right into their ride or die tribal roles. Just as the powers behind the curtain desire. Divide. Conquer. Pillage. Sack the city and abscond with the riches.
But hey, at least you got the joy of calling your neighbor a "Libtard" AM I RIGHT?!!! Haha. So funny! High Five! Wait. What are they building in the Bolsa Chica Reserve?!
Magic: “There are legit non discriminatory reasons to oppose this kind of charmless, intrusive unharmonious development.”
The problem in the ‘developer/owner’ story is that the rules are made to try to resolve the endless conflict between the two: you value your views, developers their jobs, and those two things result in conflicts that must be balanced.
Meanwhile, there’s a third party behind the scenes that owns an awful lot of stuff: if that person profits from the development, he’ll want it to proceed, but if not, then he’ll want it as ugly and unlivable as possible (to increase the appeal of his own holdings). As long as it doesn’t bring in ‘the wrong sort’ of people (homeless or poor – they don’t care so much about minorities as long as they’re rich), he’ll play both sides against each other for his own profit (more accurately, to inflate his holdings – these folks don’t earn much direct ‘profit’ until they sell, which is how they avoid taxes too).