Encinitas’ battle against state housing laws may end up being a losing one.
Leaders of some small cities across the state, including Encinitas, want to change state housing laws in favor of more local control, but lawmakers and officials at the state level say that’s unlikely to happen.
Resistance to new development and higher density isn’t new. For decades, the need for more housing at different income levels has clashed with efforts to preserve community character, especially in smaller cities.
In recent years, California lawmakers and elected officials have been cracking down on cities that don’t follow state housing laws. These laws force city leaders to approve affordable housing projects that are viable and legally compliant, create and fulfill plans to accommodate for housing at all income levels, allow developers to build bigger projects if they include affordable housing and more.
When cities don’t comply, the consequences are swift.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and the state’s housing department have been known to take legal action against cities that try to evade state housing laws, like Huntington Beach and La Cañada Flintridge in Los Angeles County, for example.
State officials can also decertify, or revoke approval of a Housing Element, a state-required plan that outlines how a city will make way for housing at different income levels. If a city does not have an approved Housing Element, developers can bypass local zoning rules and build affordable housing projects with the Builder’s Remedy law. Last year, Portola Valley in San Francisco became the first California city to have its Housing Element decertified.
“The most brazen violators are the priority,” said Bonta during Voice of San Diego’s Politifest live podcast back in 2023.
In Encinitas, a new mayor and new councilmembers have promised to fight back against “overreaching” state housing laws and restore local control. Voice previously reported that Mayor Bruce Ehlers plans to follow housing laws to avoid harsh consequences from the state and will instead be working with other cities across California to change the laws that he says are impeding local control.
For decades, much of Encinitas’ leadership and a large part of the city’s population have been hostile to new development. In the past, city leaders have tried multiple times to get around the state’s density bonus law, which allows developers to increase the size of their developments if they include affordable housing units. Encinitas was also late in approving its previous state-required housing plan, also known as a Housing Element.
This earned the small coastal city a few lawsuits from developers and threats of legal action from state officials, though some have argued that the state’s density bonus law had some ambiguities that left aspects of it up to interpretation. Plus, the city’s efforts to get a Housing Element approved back then were made more difficult by the city’s Proposition A, a growth-control initiative that requires a vote by Encinitas residents for any major zoning and density changes.
Now, Ehlers says, the plan is to lobby state lawmakers to change some of these state mandates. He also says he’s working with other city leaders in the state to get an initiative called Our Neighborhood Voices qualified for the statewide ballot that aims to give local governments control over land-use planning and zoning decisions, allowing them to override conflicting state laws.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, who was the mayor of Encinitas before getting elected to the state Senate in 2022, told Voice she understands the allure of the idea that local control can be the solution to these housing issues, but it isn’t realistic.
“The reality of these large problems, and they are problems that are not just at the state level but at the federal level – like around homelessness and around housing affordability – they’re bigger than any one city, and they need solutions that are bigger than any one city,” Blakespear said.
She added that how the state implements these solutions can be frustrating to some cities, but the reality is that not all cities share that sentiment. A lot of communities want more housing, she said, especially lower income communities.
“It does appear to me like there’s not an appetite and also even a belief that there needs to be a change,” Blakespear said. “If anything, I think there’s a perspective that the laws need to get stricter on cities. There continues to be the perspective that some cities are not acting in the best interest of solving problems and are creating the barriers to housing.”
Some of these barriers come from the way cities are set up, she added. City governments are most responsive to the loudest voices who participate the most at City Councils, and those people tend to be more privileged with more time on their hands and more money, Blakespear said.
“I spent more time on housing than any other topic when I was the mayor and it was always extremely difficult and there is no silver bullet, but I don’t I don’t see the rhetoric that is being expressed in Encinitas reflected in Sacramento,” Blakespear said.
Assemblymember Chris Ward, who represents the 78th Assembly District, which includes small cities like Coronado, Del Mar and Solana Beach told Voice that housing problems are solved regionally, and cities have a responsibility to do their “fair share.”
When it comes to some cities’ efforts to get around that responsibility, Ward said, he doesn’t think it’s going to work.
“I say this with all due respect, try as you might, at some point you could even try to get something passed as a local policy that conflicts with state law, and courts are going to rule that the state law, which enabled cities to exist in the first place, overrides that policy,” Ward said.
He added that it would be more constructive for city leaders who have these concerns to work with the attorney general and their state legislators to find ways that are “workable for them moving forward.”
“You are rallying up the masses to try an approach that has been tested time and time again –whether you are Beverly Hills or Newport Beach or Coronado – and you have failed at the courts.” Ward said. “And so, I don’t know how reinventing this strategy, with a new set of characters and a new coalition that’s been coined, I don’t know how that results in a different outcome.”
But despite indications that state officials are unwilling to budge on housing laws any time soon, Ehlers says he’s not giving up.
He told Voice that residents and city leaders across the state have only recently started to recognize the negative impacts these laws are having on their communities.
“We are now at a point where things are getting built. I won because the concrete and bulldozing is occurring,” Ehlers said. “Where it wasn’t real and on the ground before, it is now, so that’s what’s changing. And that was also part of the reason the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative didn’t previously qualify for the ballot.”
Ehlers and the coalition of other city leaders are hoping to get their initiative qualified for the 2026 or 2028 election.
“I believe just the process of going through the qualification, will show the number of people opposed to what’s happening,” Ehlers said.
This article is rather hilarious if it wasn’t so sad, Blakespear’s statement, “how the state implements these solutions can be frustrating to some cities, but the reality is not all cities share that sentiment. A lot of cities want more housing, she said, especially lower income communities.” What a contradiction in one short sentence! “Low income cities don’t have a problem with increased density, zoning changes, etc., they want “affordable” multi-story low income housing, who wouldn’t? The real problem is the state wants to dictate to every city regardless of incomes where they want these developments, established single family communities do not want their zoning changed to accommodate more housing/multi-story “increased density”, at the expense of everyone in that community!🤪🤪🤪🤑🤑🤑The state and their talking heads are actually making the situation worse, not better, doing a development with just a few “affordable” units and the rest at market rate solves nothing, it benefits only the developer!🤑🤑🤑 And that is the REAL purpose of this fiasco, so certain politicians can get elected!
Hi Gary – I thought your comments were interested. I wanted to see if you’d be open to sharing a few of your thoughts around questions that came to me as I was reading your post:
1. When you say “at the expense of everyone in that community” – what expense are you talking about exactly? I live in Encinitas within walking distance from from a highly debated new development. I certainly don’t feel impacted in a negative way from that being there.
2. You mentioned that the state is making the situation worse – what do you think the state should be doing, and how do get out of this housing spiral we are in?
Appreciate the engagement
The state legislature has been over estimating by 2 million housing units. Toni Atkins, Wiener, Ward, all have ties to builders. Cities have been faced with a lie from these representatives we have elected. Time to throw them out.
The solution isn’t more housing. New York City has wall-to-wall towers of housing, but prices are still high. Ruining a city or town with overdevelopment so that everyone can live there isn’t the solution. Paternalistic bureaucrats in Sacramento destroying our cities’ character isn’t the solution. California has about 1.2 million vacant homes. Let’s start by reducing those vacant homes and having taxes on the ultra wealthy who have multiple empty homes in California. Let’s reduce the incentives to have airbnbs taking our housing supply. Housing has become a speculative investment, no matter how many you build if the rich hoard them, then the housing crisis will never be addressed. But our charming towns and cities will be ruined forever.
Did Senator Blakespeare really just say that local governments should not have local control because locals who speak at city council meetings are wealthy? She put together a “community event” to make people clean up her own property recently! She, herself, is very wealthy but unwilling to clean her own property that is creating an obvious fire hazard. I wonder if people who showed up to clean up her property got any special treatment for their time.