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[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
City of Los Angeles - Increase to Planning Applications and Affordable Housing Linkage Fees - On July 1, 2024, the fee for planning and land use applications increased by 3.5% based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban...more
The California Supreme Court, on June 6, 2024, reversed the First District Court of Appeal’s decision regarding UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) EIR. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision clears the way for...more
The California Supreme Court recently upheld the Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”) for the Long Range Development Plan (“LRDP”) for the University of California Berkeley (“UC Berkeley”) and a controversial housing project...more
“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Yogi Berra and Lenny Kravitz - In a unanimous opinion filed on June 6, 2024, the California Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the First District Court of Appeal in the controversial...more
In a published opinion filed on January 17, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 5) reversed a trial court judgment overturning a mitigated negative declaration (MND) and requiring an EIR for a 42-single family...more
2023 served up roughly the same number of published appellate CEQA cases as 2022 with a defense win percentage of over 80 percent, which has been the case in many, if not all, of the past ten years. A prominent theme of...more
The 2023 legislative session culminated in Governor Newsom signing dozens of land use bills. This post discusses the most important. The Legislature continued its multifaceted approach to addressing the housing crisis, with...more
The 2023 California Legislative session, like the last several, saw the enactment of a large number of significant new housing production laws. (See Holland & Knight's previous annual recaps of California Housing Laws in the...more
Governor Newsom recently approved multiple state housing bills passed by the State Assembly and Senate. The following is a summary of a few of the key bills that are expected to benefit multi-family, mixed-income housing...more
CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT (CEQA) - Save Our Access v. City of San Diego (4th. App. Dist., June 2023) - This case involved a challenge to the City of San Diego’s approval of a ballot measure to remove a community...more
On July 7, 2023, following a request for publication made on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, and the California Business Properties Association, the...more
CITY OF LOS ANGELES - Site Plan Review Exemption for Affordable Housing - On June 30, 2023, the city council adopted an amendment to the Site Plan Review Ordinance to exempt deed-restricted affordable housing units from...more
The California Supreme Court, on May 17, 2023, granted review of the First District Court of Appeal’s decision in Make UC a Good Neighbor v. Regents of University of California (2023) 88 Cal.App.5th 656, where the Court of...more
In a published opinion filed February 24, 2023, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 5) reversed a judgment upholding the adequacy of the EIR for the University of California, Berkeley’s long range campus development plan...more
In Save Livermore Downtown v. City of Livermore (Dec. 28, 2022, Case No. A164987) __ Cal.App.1st __, the First District Court of Appeal held that the City of Livermore (City) did not violate planning and zoning laws when it...more
City of Los Angeles - City Council Adopts Processes and Procedures Ordinance - On December 6, 2022, the City of Los Angeles City Council adopted the Processes and Procedures Ordinance amending the Los Angeles Municipal Code...more
In a partially published opinion in Save Lafayette v. City of Lafayette (2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 842, the First District Court of Appeal upheld approval of an affordable housing project in the face of the third in a series of...more
O'Brien Land Company's more than a decade-long odyssey to build 315 zoning-compliant homes – chronicled in Conor Dougherty's book Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America – has become the stuff of housing law legend,...more
The Terraces of Lafayette is a 315-unit housing development project in Lafayette, California that is perhaps the poster child project under the state’s most important housing production law, known as the Housing...more
County and City of Los Angeles - Los Angeles City and County Ordinances to Ban Oil and Gas Drilling - There are 26 oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells (active and idle) across the City of Los Angeles. On...more
On May 25, 2022, the League of California Cities (“League”) and California State Association of Counties (“CSAC”) filed a 10-page letter with the California Supreme Court requesting it to depublish the First District Court of...more
In an opinion filed on December 29, 2021, and later ordered published on January 25, 2022, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 4) affirmed a judgment upholding the City of Newark’s (City) use of Government Code § 65457’s...more
Signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on May 20, 2021, and taking immediate effect as an "urgency statute," Senate Bill (SB) 7 revives and expands the previously enacted Environmental Leadership Development Project...more
New law aims to increase individual home ownership in California - Bullet SFGate – September 29 - A bill prompted by the Moms 4 Housing occupation of a vacant West Oakland home late last year and signed by Governor...more
A recent court of appeal opinion out of San Diego demonstrates how the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) has once again been used to impede housing development—this time to the benefit of a high-end luxury spa. ...more