Sidewalk gaps, train counts ignite California SB 79 zoning lawsuits

This summer, San Diego municipal leaders were forced to allow more dense housing along transit lines to comply with a new state law.Now a court may decide to rid even more barriers to housing density after pro-housing organizations sued, alleging that cities disqualified too many urban parcels in their maps, now subject to state law.Lawsuits are piling up. The organizations sued the city and the San Diego Association of Governments, which produced new maps this summer under California’s transit-density Senate Bill 79 law that took effect July 1. But San Diego and SANDAG aren’t the sole targets in testing how strictly cities statewide must apply SB 79. San Diego suburb Oceanside came under a litigation microscope in a Sept. 11 lawsuit. San Francisco and a Los Angeles suburb also have been sued. A central theme is that the cities aren’t following the law and could expand density opportunities even more to address the state’s need for more housing. Most of the lawsuits aren’t complicated. They hinge on how narrowly or broadly a walkway is defined under the law, and how you count train frequency at stations. Passing such ordinances is difficult enough in California and elsewhere in the...