Sacramento Report: Housing Advocates Clash with Coastal Commission

This post has been updated.

Amid California’s crushing housing shortage, Circulate San Diego is blasting the Coastal Commission for decisions it claims undermine efforts to build affordable homes and fight climate change in coastal areas. 

The San Diego nonprofit unveiled its findings last week in a report that says the commission obstructs housing construction in the Coastal Zone by blocking approval of apartments, condos, and accessory dwelling units – also known as guest houses or granny flats – in parts of Los Angeles and Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, it claims, the commission has sidelined transit-friendly projects in cities including Oceanside.

“We have in the state of California recently passed a number of good, pro-housing measures that apply to everyone else in the state: density bonus laws, ADU laws, the housing accountability act, and dozens of others, but those can have exceptions for the Coastal Zone,” lead author Will Moore said at a press conference last week. “So the same rules we have to obey in El Cajon and San Diego aren’t obeyed in Del Mar, in the Coastal area of Huntington Beach or Redondo Beach.”

The Coastal Commission complained the report misrepresents its record, and said Circulate San Diego cherry-picked examples of denials. 

“A wealth of data shows that density bonus projects are regularly approved in the Coastal Zone every year,” Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the commission said in a statement.

Matt O’Malley, an alternate Coastal Commissioner from San Diego, added that the commission lacks the authority to make beach cities scale up housing production. 

“The Coastal Commission had the authority until 1980 to actually require affordable housing,” he said in an interview. “Developers and realtors lobbied to take that away. If they wanted to fix it, they could give us back the authority to require affordable housing, and we want to do that.”

Formed half a century ago, the Coastal Commission was created by voter initiative to “preserve, protect, and where possible, restore the resources of the coastal zone for the enjoyment of the current and succeeding generations.”

It has held the line on controversial  developments, sparing California’s beaches from the high-rise booms other coastal areas experienced. But it has faced criticism from the right and left. Affluent coastal homeowners complain it restricts their property rights, while some community groups say its policies favor a NIMBY approach to the coast.

Coastal Commission hits back: O’Malley countered that Circulate San Diego is doing the bidding of developers. In an official statement, the commission itself attacked the nonprofit, pointing to real estate companies on the organization’s list of corporate donors.

The Circulate report’s authors responded that the commission is made up mostly of residents from beach areas, and behaves “like a large local jurisdiction responsive to its coastal constituents.”

“Legislators are starting to become very frustrated with the power of the Coastal Commission in preventing California from meeting its housing goals,and also its environmental goals,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego.

How some lawmakers want to reform it: The state’s Housing Density Bonus Law, allows developers to add more units than normally permitted in their zones in exchange for including affordable housing. Alvarez’ bill, AB 2560, would exempt those Density Bonus projects from Coastal Act protections.

A related bill by state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, SB 1077, would require the commission to help cities and counties update local coastal programs to simplify permitting for accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units in the coastal zone. 

The Last Vestige of Slavery Persists in Prison: The California Black Caucus Wants It to End

The California Legislative Black Caucus launched a statewide tour in San Diego Saturday, to promote a package of reparations bills, as members hammer out final language of a state constitutional amendment to end forced prison labor.

The Black Caucus is sponsoring 14 reparations bills that tackle effects of slavery on education, business, criminal justice, health and civil rights. They include two proposed constitutional amendments that they hope to place before voters in November, including one to ban the last vestiges of slavery.

The California Constitution and the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime. That exception has enabled prisons to require inmates to work wherever they’re ordered, often with little or no pay. 

For example: Inmates are a big part of the state’s wildfire response team. 

An earlier bid to ban the practice failed in 2022, but  ACA 8, by Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, would put the question on the ballot this year. The bill would prohibit slavery, but a recent amendment cut out language spelling out what that means.

Wilson said in an interview that the measure would still be a big step forward.

“The first line is a very bold statement, that slavery is prohibited,” she said. “We all started with what we as legislators agreed to, as well as what we think voters agreed to.”

Another proposed constitutional amendment, ACA 7, by Assemblymember Corey Jackson, D-Moreno Valley, would authorize the state to pay for programs to improve life expectancy and educational outcomes of “groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or marginalized genders, sexes, or sexual orientations.”

“We need reparations to restore us to a healthy state,” said Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who created the state Reparations Task Force as an Assembly member in 2020.

You can read my full story here in Cal Matters.

How California Can Bring Insurance Coverage to High Risk Areas

The state Department of Insurance last week released a plan to increase insurance policies for areas with high wildfire risk.

The plan includes a statewide map showing areas where wildfire risk policies are concentrated. Nineteen San Diego areas made the list, including numerous backcountry communities.

We took a look at those areas in April, when State Farm announced non-renewal of 72,000 policies statewide, including more than 2,000 in San Diego.

Under the new plan, companies would commit to writing policies for homes in high-risk parts of California, allowing more people to move off the high-priced FAIR plan onto conventional insurance. In return, insurance companies will get to use “catastrophe modeling” to predict future losses when raising rates, instead of relying on historical wildfire records.

State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said the new system would offer customers better options and more stable costs. But consumer advocates warn that catastrophe modeling can be unreliable, and say it hiked policy costs in Florida. 

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear also hosted a webinar on high risk insurance  last week, which covered reasons for the collapse of insurance markets and steps you can take to keep their homes safe.

Correction: The original version of this post implied that California’s Density Bonus law does not currently apply in the state’s Coastal Zone. It does.

The Sacramento Report runs every Friday and is part of a partnership with CalMatters. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.