On April 12, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its much-anticipated ruling in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado. The case concerned the legality of a local jurisdiction’s imposition of a traffic impact mitigation (TIM) fee upon a project applicant as a development permit condition. The threshold question in Sheetz was whether a legislatively authorized and broadly applicable permit condition is subject to the same analysis as an administratively imposed, ad-hoc permit condition for the purpose of determining whether it violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court held that there is no reason to distinguish between permit conditions imposed legislatively or administratively. Consequently, the Court explained that the two-part “Nollan/Dolan” constitutional test indeed applies to legislatively imposed permit conditions. In California, where local governments routinely use legislatively authorized development impact fees to impose sizeable mitigation fees on new development, this ruling could represent a sea change for developers and local governments alike.
After nearly a decade of trying to peel away the red tape holding back housing construction in California, legislators this year are nibbling away at the last of the low-hanging fruit: impact fees. None of the proposed bills would actually reduce these fees. That’s because doing so would require tackling a much thornier question of how to make up for cities’ lost revenue. Instead, these bills aim to address other issues that developers have with the fees: that they don’t often know going into a project how much the fees will cost and that they are often due before projects even break ground. Among these bills, SB 937 would make payment due only once people are actually living in the new housing. AB 2144 and AB 1820 would both require cities to post easily accessible information about the fees they charge, and AB 1210 would cap the fees developers have to pay to connect new homes and apartment buildings to utility services, limiting the fees to 1% of the project’s estimated value.
A year after Palo Alto first adopted its housing plan, which has yet to be certified by the state, the City Council voted to revise it for a second time — including by attempting to ensure minority and low-income residents have access to housing. The city submitted its housing element, which was due last January, to the California Department of Housing & Community Development in June last year, but it has yet to be certified and was sent back to Palo Alto requesting revisions.
Laguna Beach continues to work toward ways to drive the development of affordable housing in town, its latest move a decision to form a local housing trust fund. The City Council adopted a resolution on Tuesday to establish the fund, which came at the recommendation of the housing and human services committee. Council members approved up to $2.5 million to go toward the fund, a pool of money to further support efforts to provide affordable housing.
U.S. lawmakers from California on Tuesday introduced a bill to create the Chuckwalla National Monument in the Southern California desert and to expand the adjacent Joshua Tree National Park. The bicameral legislation was introduced by U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler and by Representative Alex Ruiz. With its unique, biodiverse ecosystem, the area is home to species like chuckwalla lizards and the endangered desert tortoise, and it contains critical migration corridors for desert bighorn sheep.
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