The California Planning and Development Report (CP&DR) writes that Attorney General Rob Bonta has become increasingly aggressive on the planning housing front in the past two months, warning several cities for allegedly violating state housing law and calling one county’s general plan to account on environmental justice issues. Most of the actions are the result of the “housing strike force” that Bonta created last November.
Two of Bonta’s warnings have been aimed at cities that have sought to make expansive use of the exemptions contained in SB 9 – the so-called duplex law – to shield themselves from the law’s impact. The first warning came in early February, after Woodside declared the entire city a mountain lion habitat.
The next warning came on March 15, when Bonta’s office sent a warning letter to the City of Pasadena, which in December had adopted an ordinance protecting its landmark districts from SB 9.
On March 24 — nine days after the Pasadena letter – Bonta’s office issued another warning letter, this time to the City of Encinitas, which had denied an apartment complex on Encinitas Boulevard.
Five days later, on March 29, Bonta’s office took on a different set of issues in Fresno, claiming that the Fresno County General Plan violated state housing discrimination laws by targeting the Hispanic communities of Malaga and Calwa for industrial development.