Sausalito sued by housing advocates over alleged quota violations

Sausalito has been sued by a nonprofit housing advocacy group that says it has failed to comply with a state mandate to plan for 724 new residences by 2031.

Yes in My Back Yard alleges that the city violated state law by failing to identify an adequate number of potential housing sites in the new housing element of its general plan.

The suit also asserts that Sausalito failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by deciding not to conduct an environmental review of the sites it did identify in its housing element.

“Sausalito has blatantly ignored state housing law by including an infeasible site inventory and bypassing necessary environmental review,” said Keith Diggs, a lawyer for the nonprofit.

Sausalito is the fourth municipality in Marin to be sued by housing advocates in connection with their housing elements. Yes In My Back Yard, commonly known as YIMBY, sued Fairfax in February. In January, Californians for Homeownership, a nonprofit group affiliated with the California Association of Realtors, sued Novato and Belvedere.

Like the other suits, the action against Sausalito seeks a declaration that would open the door for a penalty known as the “builder’s remedy.” The remedy prevents cities and counties from using their zoning or general plan standards to reject any housing project that meets certain affordability requirements.

“Fortunately, the Builder’s Remedy exists for just this circumstance: to make sure the housing people need will still get built,” Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law, wrote in a statement.

Trauss is San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s appointee to the Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments, which decides how many new residences to assign to every county and municipality in the Bay Area every eight years.

On Thursday, Sausalito Mayor Melissa Blaustein said, “The city has not been served in the lawsuit and has not seen it or been able to evaluate the claims so we can’t speak about the lawsuit or its merits at this time.”

It might seem odd to some that YIMBY’s lawsuit asserts that Sausalito violated CEQA by failing to conduct environmental analysis of its housing sites. Several new state laws have been passed in recent years that give developers the ministerial right to build new housing without conforming to local zoning laws or CEQA.

But YIMBY’s suit states that, “This failure to conduct CEQA review robs affordable housing developers of an environmental baseline off of which they could otherwise ‘tier’ their much-needed housing projects.”

To substantiate its assertion that Sausalito failed to identify an adequate number of housing sites, YIMBY quotes extensively from a letter submitted to Sausalito by Home3, a San Francisco real estate development company, on Jan. 30.

In the letter, Home3 said, “Our analysis of 12 housing inventory sites in the Housing Element shows that NONE are feasible for development under current market conditions. Due primarily to low density and height constraints, high construction costs, and costly minimum parking requirements, all 12 projects have a negative residual land value, and would require substantial subsidies to pencil. “

Home3 added that some sites were unsuitable because they were “mostly underwater.” It cited 100 Spinnaker Drive as an example stating that it “has a significant portion in the water,” and a negative residual land value of just under $15 million, which makes it financially infeasible to develop.

The suit states that the Sausalito City Council initially proposed allocating 28 lower-income homes to “an underwater patch of eelgrass offshore Dunphy Park,” before ultimately deciding not to include the site in the sixth and final version of the housing element.

That version was adopted by the council on Jan. 30 and submitted to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development on Feb. 27.

The council, however, did assign 30 lower-income homes to a marina, despite the fact that, according to the suit, houseboats are “prohibited by established Bay Area Conservation and Development Commission policy.”

The suit notes that when the Sausalito Planning Commission met on Jan. 25 to discuss the planning element, one commenter said he had heard from multiple property owners whose properties had been included on the city’s list of housing sites without being consulted.

Jim Girardeau said he showed up for the council’s Jan. 30 meeting to protest the fact that his property at 927 Bridgeway, where he lives about half the year, had been placed on the list without his consent.

Girardeau said the town’s housing element committee, which started the meeting by taking public comment, voted to keep his property on the list despite his objections. However, when the committee reported its findings to the council, he said, “They summarized it wrong, where it was taken out by accident after they voted it in.”

“It just shows how incompetent they are,” he said.