Burlingame hit with lawsuit over late housing element

“We just want cities like Burlingame to do the right thing: legalize enough housing for the people who live and work in the community,” YIMBY Law attorney Keith Diggs said in an email.

The danger is the ongoing humanitarian disaster of California’s housing shortage, said Diggs, who added he lives on an air mattress in an attic to afford living in the Bay Area.

“Young people, like me, are sick and tired of not having anywhere to live because local governments care more about regulating the way homes look than about how unaffordable homes have become,” Diggs said.

However, Burlingame Mayor Michael Brownrigg said his city has embraced and created housing at all income levels in its 6 square miles. The city is in the process of transforming a city-owned parking lot downtown into a five-story 130-unit building, 60% for median income, Brownrigg said. He said the development is targeted for low-income seniors and working families and is set to open this summer.

“We already have 13,000 housing units, we have approved and are seeing 2,500 additional built, almost 20% more,” Brownrigg said, who added there are another 500 units in the pipeline.

Still, the state assigns Regional Housing Needs Allocation with an eight-year goal to address the region’s jobs-housing imbalance. This year’s numbers are significantly high for Burlingame, 3,257 units. Of these units, the city will need to accommodate 1,360 low- to extremely-low-income housing units, according to the city’s housing element draft. It does not have to build the housing, but must offer building and zoning opportunities.

If a city does not plan for the number of homes required by the state, or if its housing element is not “substantially compliant,” then the California Housing Accountability Act indicates a city cannot use its zoning or general plan standards to reject any housing project that meets the affordability requirements and will be forced to approve any housing project as long as at least 20% of the homes are low-income or 100% of them are moderate-income, according to the YIMBY Law website. This has been called the builder’s remedy.

Every city in California has been required by the Legislature to plan for its fair share of housing; and Diggs said they are enforcing that law. Many of the cities in the state are out of compliance, he added.

San Mateo, South San Francisco, San Bruno, San Carlos and Belmont all submitted a draft, got rejected and decided to adopt anyway, Diggs said.

“Some cities just started the process too late,” Diggs said.

According to Diggs, Foster City and Millbrae have submitted but not adopted plans and Half Moon Bay hasn’t submitted anything. Redwood City is functionally compliant, Diggs said, because they have been approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, however, it has yet to be adopted.

All of those cities are at risk for the builder’s remedy, he added.

While other cities have met the Jan. 31 deadline for state compliance, Burlingame is planning to turn in its housing element by Feb. 13. It plans to complete its environmental impact report by April and receive comments from HCD by May 15, before adoption, according to a Burlingame staff report.

Brownrigg’s frustration with the lawsuit is that YIMBY Law failed to recognize the efforts the city has made to make it an affordable place to live.

“It’s tone deaf and missing the point but, of course, it’s America so people get to sue who they want,” Brownrigg said. “There may be bad actors in local government and the state of California, but we are not one of them.”