Encinitas Mayoral Race Will Come Down to City’s Oldest Debate: Housing

For decades, the city of Encinitas was a flagrant disobeyer of state housing laws. 

Years of openly defying the state’s density bonus law, which allows developers to increase the size of their developments if they include affordable housing units, as well as the city’s six-year delay in approving its state-required housing plan earned the small coastal city multiple lawsuits, threats of legal action from state officials and a reputation. 

It became clear that much of the city’s leadership and many Encinitas residents were hostile to new development. 

In the past couple of years, that has started to change. At least, on the leadership front. 

Today, Encinitas is following state housing laws. The city got its current Housing Element, a state-mandated plan for future housing growth, approved in 2021. In 2022, the State Attorney General issued the city a warning over a housing project the City Council had rejected, but the council went back and quickly approved it.  

It seems some of Encinitas’ elected officials are finally relinquishing to state housing laws, including Encinitas Mayor Tony Kranz, who was a councilmember while the city was dealing with those lawsuits from developers and disapproval from state officials. 

Kranz is running for a second term as mayor, and he’s facing challenger and current Councilmember Bruce Ehlers, who used to serve on the city’s planning commission.  

The two disagree on a few issues, but perhaps their most significant difference is their views on complying with state housing laws. Whoever wins could determine if Encinitas will regain its anti-development reputation and return to the days of being at odds with developers and state officials. 

Kranz, having been through it before, believes it’s useless to try to push back against state housing laws.  

“I have been through the experience of fighting the state and it cost the city millions of dollars, and it accomplished very little,” Kranz told Voice of San Diego. “State housing law has changed over the years and has only become more challenging to implement, and the idea that we’re going to fight the state on housing laws is really a waste of time and money.” 

The focus should instead be on mitigating the impacts of new developments and urging the state to help cities deal with those impacts, Kranz said. Traffic congestion, for example, is a significant problem that’s getting worse as more multi-family developments are built in Encinitas, he said. 

“The millions of dollars that it would take to put in either roundabouts or cloverleaf interchanges is something that the state should be bearing the burden of,” Kranz said. “Developers may be paying development impact fees, but the actual impacts are significantly more expensive than what they’re paying in fees … Those mitigation requirements fall on the city.” 

Kranz told Voice that he has always recognized the obligation to comply with state housing law. The city’s efforts to get a Housing Element approved back then were made more difficult by the city’s Proposition A, Kranz said, a growth-control initiative that requires a vote by Encinitas residents for any major zoning and density changes. 

Still, Kranz was one of the councilmembers that previously supported efforts to get around the state’s density bonus law. 

Now, despite his belief that fighting state housing law is a losing battle, he still has issues with some of the state’s methods. 

“I think it’s important that the state acknowledge that coastal communities are never going to have market-rate units that meet the description of affordable under the low-income rubric that is currently used,” Kranz said. “The area median income is never going to be high enough to be able to afford market-rate units that are being built as part of our Housing Element.” 

Instead, Kranz suggested that market-rate units be subsidized for those who are in the low- and very low-income categories. That way, the city’s not constantly relying on upzoning and overdevelopment. Upzoning is a change to a community’s zoning code that allows for things like more housing units or taller buildings.  

“I do think that we can work to do more in order to give people with a little less income half a chance of living here,” Kranz said. 

His opponent disagrees with the state’s way of doing things, but he doesn’t believe the city should have to comply with all of it. 

Ehlers was the author of Proposition A, the growth-control initiative approved by voters in 2013. He was also removed from the planning commission in 2022 by the City Council, who said at the time that Ehlers had a record of opposing the city’s efforts to stay compliant with state housing laws and an inability to remain unbiased and objective when considering housing projects. 

Ehlers told Voice that, if elected, he’s willing and prepared to fight back against state housing laws that he says are impeding on local control. 

“If you look at the legal constructs, zoning is primarily in the purview of cities or local jurisdictions, not the state,” Ehlers said. “The state is not the primary legal entity to control local zoning laws.” 

As for the city’s role in making way for affordable housing, Ehlers said he supports the current inclusionary requirements of setting aside about 15 percent of market-rate units as affordable. 

“Should a city be made to accommodate lower income housing for whomever wants to come live there?  We live near the beach. Everybody in the world will want to come and live at the beach. Do we need to provide low-income housing for 100 percent of the people that wish to live at the beach?” Ehlers said. “And that’s where I think the answer, even at the state level so far, is no.” 

Ehlers is involved with multiple grassroots coalitions of cities and neighborhoods throughout California, like one called Our Neighborhood Voices, that are trying to get a statewide ballot initiative passed to restore local control when it comes to housing and development. 

He said he and leaders in other cities are hoping this initiative will get passed in the November 2026 election. He’s also supporting groups like Livable California that are working on challenging the legality of some of the state’s housing policies. 

Another strategy Ehlers plans to employ, if elected, is lobbying. The city of Encinitas’ legislative policy, which essentially discusses its lobbying strategies, says the city can take a position on state laws or policies and can communicate that position to state officials.  

The policy changed in 2019 from language that encouraged the city to “protect local control” and “seek opportunities to regain control over state-imposed density bonus law” to language that said the city should “support legislation that provides opportunities to support efforts of compliance with state housing laws.” 

In 2023, in an effort led by Ehlers, the council updated the policy and readded the previous language of protecting local control and regaining control over the state density bonus law. 

“The ways to push back against everything are multiple, and we have been supporting and pursuing none of them, not even our internal legislative lobbying policy,” Ehlers said. “By the way, you can’t say my hands are tied on what we’re allowed to lobby on, we as a city can decide to lobby on anything and take any position we choose, but we chose to gut our own lobbying. Luckily, I got on, now we put it back.” 

When asked about the risk of costly litigation that could come with resisting state housing law, something the city of Huntington Beach is facing now, Ehlers said it could come down to that, but he’s hoping for strength in numbers. 

“We will likely have to take legal action,” Ehlers said. “Whether that ends up in a long trial and high costs is a question of how we leverage and work with other entities. Right now, we’re not working with any, and therefore, we’re not making any progress at all.”