After more than two years of resistance, the city of Coronado, a wealthy island city in San Diego County, has agreed to follow state housing law by setting aside more land for development, Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced last Friday. In a legal settlement with the state, the city will allow for the construction of more than 900 homes, over 70% of which should be accessible to low- and moderate-income families.
In an effort to help encourage office-to-residential conversions, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is putting a measure to voters on the March 2024 ballot that would waive the city’s transfer tax on buildings that have been converted from office to residential use. The measure would need approval by a simple majority of voters to go into effect. Currently, the transfer tax rate for properties over $10 million is 5.5%-6%, higher than the top rate of any other major city in California. Developers argue that the tax burden makes it more difficult to garner interest in conversion projects from investors because of the hit to potential returns when the building is sold.
There have also been efforts at the state level to support office-to-residential conversions. As explained in our prior legal alert, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 529 (Gabriel and Haney) into law on October 11, 2023. AB 529 requires the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to convene a working group to “identify challenges to, and opportunities to help support, the creation and promotion of adaptive reuse residential projects statewide while not reducing minimum health and safety standards, including identifying and recommended amendments to state building standards.”
For decades, Stanford University looked well beyond its campus to find housing for its faculty, staff, and postdoctoral students, which has created an outcry from surrounding cities struggling to meet their own goals for housing construction. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors made it clear on October 17 that it shares the cities' concerns when it approved a series of significant changes to the Stanford Community Plan, a document that has been governing the university's growth since 2000. The amended plan requires Stanford to build three-quarters of this housing within its campus.
New land use regulations could bring updated zoning and opportunities for new housing to unincorporated communities in the South Bay, according to a notice distributed this month by the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. The South Bay Area Plan is intended to establish new areawide and community goals relating to land use and development, while also implementing zone changes required by Los Angeles County's new housing element. This would result in changes to certain residential and commercial areas to facilitate greater housing construction, such as the West Carson Transit Oriented District Specific Plan area, with an expected horizon year of 2045.
Residential density in downtown Oceanside will be capped at a maximum of 86 units per acre under a limit approved this week by the City Council. The City Council voted 3-2 last Wednesday for the limit, though with density bonuses allowed by the state density bonus law for including affordable housing, the final density could be significantly higher.
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