Our Neighborhood Voices | 5/20 Meeting
Here is a summary of the recent Our Neighborhood Voices Meeting for Peninsula Residents on 5/20/2024.
It was a great turnout - thanks to everyone who joined. For those who couldn't here are the highlights:
Hosted by Joan Davidson and Robert Gaddis, who is the treasurer for Our Neighborhood Voices (not to be confused with "Neighborhood Voices of Silver Spur" - that's us. ONV is a statewide organization looking to pass a ballot initiative that returns zoning control back to cities.)
In attendance were the Mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes, John Cruikshank, and PVE City Council member, Michael Kemps.
Mayor Cruikshank opened up and gave a presentation on Rancho Palos Verdes' struggle with the state and its new housing laws. Basically the state has told cities throughout California “you haven’t built enough housing, so we are taking over “.
The state mandated 1.3 million new housing units in Southern California for the counties of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura.
State government is looking at “making housing a right“ which will give them further power to force cities to build to increase density.
Rancho Palos Verdes has been "built out" (meaning no real space for new development) since at least 1973, and the population has remained at 43,000 for the most part since then for that reason. The city has been fighting "densification" since that time.
The state is putting increasing pressure on Rancho Palos Verdes to build new units. In the last cycle. RPV was asked to build something like 93 units, this cycle we're being asked to build 670.
RPV watches for “bad bills “and fights them at the state level.
RPV has joined many other cities in the “League of Cities” to fight the state.
RPV was one of the first cities to join onto a lawsuit fighting the SB9 lot split law, which allows single-family residence owners to split their lot in half and build two units. There are several of these applications going on in Rancho Palos Verdes right now (One is on Ironwood but I couldn't get the address - if anyone knows please let me know.) The city lost the initial round, but now is appealing.
Interestingly, although the state Department of Housing and Community Development has not officially given RPV “compliant” status, the city believes it is in "substantial compliance" and will not accept any more builder's remedy applications at this time.
Notably, state legislators have ordered an audit of HCD starting this fall to see if it’s doing its job correctly.
Michael Kemps from Palos Verdes Estates city Council spoke next.
He talks about the fact that PVE has had deed restrictions since 1923 even before it became a city in 1939. The rules state that they cannot have lot splits that are allowed in SB9, as well as limiting lots to single homes. So far they have not had any requests for lot splits.
Mr. Kemp said he was told by our state Senator Ben Allen that "you know we can obliterate any deed restrictions that you have”, and they’ve actually gone ahead and done that for accessory dwelling units (ADU's)
Palos Verdes Estates still has not adopted its housing element, and notably, It has a public hearing tonight, prior to the city Council meeting where it will be discussed. He says that so far they have not received any builder's remedy applications in PVE, though I mentioned that developer Jha was shopping for property in PVE.
He talked about two bills that are being developed at the state level that we need to keep an eye on:
SB1037 - would fine cities $50,000 a month for violating housing laws and for being out of compliance with their housing element.
AB1886 - removes city's ability to "self certify" their housing element (though to my understanding recent court cases have already removed this ability from cities)
Both the Mayor and City Councilman encouraged members at the meeting to contact their state representatives about these initiatives and their general dissatisfaction with housing laws.
The housing element process used to be much easier and has become quite expensive, with Rancho Palos Verdes spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars“ on consultant and other costs, and PVE has spent around $250,000.
Rob Gatddis, who is the treasurer for Our Neighborhood Voices, then talked about the initiative that Our Neighborhood Voices is trying to get on the ballot in 2026. They have to gather 1 million signatures, and are trying to raise money to do this. In order to hire a company that does this professionally it can cost anywhere between nine dollars and $15 a signature.
He talked about the 150 laws that the state has been passing since 2017 to take Local control away from cities in deciding how much will be built in their cities. The ballot initiative will introduce a law that says if local ordinances and state law conflict on land use, the local ordinance will prevail.
There were many good questions. One of the more interesting points made was that even though once our housing element is approved by the state, the state can come back in the middle of our housing cycle and "decertify" our housing element if we haven’t made adequate progress on housing. It puts you right back in the builder's remedy window.
The bottom line: They need money now so they can have the money in the bank when it’s time to start collecting signatures. Once they start collecting signatures, they have to get all the signatures collected within 180 days. They won’t start with signature collection until next year.
I encourage everyone to donate to this initiative, because if they can pass this law, it will protect our cities from the state coming in and forcing dense developments where they don’t make sense.
