Opinion: Tide Is Turning for Affordable Housing in California’s NIBMY Coastal Cities

In California, most cities are working diligently to produce much-needed housing, especially affordable housing for those with low to moderate incomes.

San Diego, for example, built more housing last year than it did in any of the past 17 years — up 21% from 2022.

However, many affluent cities along California’s coast have done little if anything. They’ve slow-pedaled complying with a state requirement to provide for affordable housing, and some have outright ignored the mandate.

Del Mar, for example, which doesn’t have a single unit of affordable housing, was late in submitting a compliant housing plan and has unjustly denied ready-to-go projects like a 259-unit affordable housing proposal on the city’s north bluff that would open new public access to the bluff and its sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean.

Coronado flat-out ignored the state and its requirement that the wealthy enclave provide for 900 new housing units — 70% of which would be for those with low and moderate incomes. However, under pressure from the state Attorney General’s Office, the city finally acquiesced last fall and agreed to comply.

Leaders of these and other coastal cities have often been aided by resident NIMBYs who — to disguise their contempt for low-income housing anywhere near them — have tried to claim that, despite their coastlines being jammed with single-family homes, building in coastal areas would do great environmental harm and even cause bluffs to fall into the ocean.

But now it appears the tide may be turning against these stubborn cities — and their abettors — from San Diego to San Francisco.

For one, a bill by Assemblymember David Alvarez would limit the ability of a coastal city to use its local coastal program as a way to block housing proposals from advancing. Local coastal programs are planning documents that lay out a framework for development and coastal resource protection within a city’s coastal zone area.

Assembly Bill 2560, as amended by the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee last month, would mandate that an applicant for an apartment or condominium project in the coastal zone be entitled to density bonuses, concessions and waivers from development standards subject to a coastal development permit so long as the project does not result in significant impacts to coastal resources or public coastal access.

It also requires that by July 2026, cities in the coastal zone must amend their local coastal programs to ensure that the state’s Housing Density Bonus Law is harmonized with the Coastal Act, if they haven’t already done so. The bill aims to enable areas in the coastal zone already zoned for housing to construct additional units in exchange for reserving a percentage for moderate, low and very low income households.

And some have started taking aim at the California Coastal Commission for not doing enough to alleviate the housing crisis. Last month, San Diego-based Circulate San Diego issued a highly-critical report — “A Better Coastal Commission” — which includes several examples where the commission has “resisted, opposed and delayed” the construction of deed-restricted affordable homes. It also outlined key recommendations to reform the commission.

And a new report by the California Ocean Protection Council, which was created by the California Oceans Protection Act and is chaired by the state Secretary for Natural Resources, finds that sea-level rise will be not be as dire as previously estimated. In fact, the rise will be one-third less by the year 2100. This, of course, isn’t to say that we shouldn’t continue to proceed thoughtfully on the issue.

Affluent or middle class, coastal or inland, every city has an obligation to provide affordable housing for the people of California.

For beach cities that have tried to sidestep this responsibility, the sands of time appear to be running out.

Ricardo Flores is executive director of the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation in San Diego.