The wave of builder’s remedy projects forecast in Bay Area cities without compliant housing plans began in Los Altos Hills and has now spread to Mountain View.
Forrest Linebarger has filed plans under an untested provision in a 33-year-old state housing law for automatic approval of two 44-unit condominium developments in Los Altos Hills and an 85-unit apartment building in Mountain View, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
The five-to-seven story senior condos would be built at 10728 and 10758 Mora Drive, in the affluent Silicon Valley town of Los Altos Hills, west of Mountain View.
The apartments would be built at 294-296 Tyrella Avenue, with another application for an unknown project at 1920 Gamel Way in Mountain View.
Lineberger, CEO of Inhabiture, filed plans under the builder’s remedy provision after hitting the wall in years of project applications, according to the Business Times.
The deadline has passed for Bay Area cities to have their housing elements certified by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
In theory, the missed deadline subjects cities and counties to the so-called builder’s remedy, with few options for denying a housing development where at least 20 percent of the units are affordable to low-income households.
Lineberger said he has submitted two dozen building proposals since 2006 for the Mora Drive properties, including some for single-family homes, and found himself stymied each time by Los Altos Hills, which requires an acre minimum for single-family development.
He said he hit the same roadblocks in Mountain View, where he has tried to develop the Tyrella Avenue half-acre property since the early 1990s. The 85-unit project would replace a current application for a 33-unit project he submitted last year.
“Every time you go in, it’d be, ‘Only eight units allowed.’ Then, ‘Only six units allowed and you have to have a driveway.’ Just constantly changing what they do, and in the end, never really allowing me to move forward,” Linebarger said of cities like Mountain View. “These properties have been owned for decades, and have been stymied until these new housing laws.
“Now we’re taking a much more aggressive approach.”
In emails obtained by the Business Times, the city of Mountain View told Linebarger it would not accept his builder’s remedy application unless he withdrew his application for the existing 33-unit project. The city asked Linebarger for a $50,000 deposit for both applications.
Plans for thousands of homes were initially filed under the builder’s remedy in noncompliant cities such as Santa Monica in Southern California, which had an earlier deadline for plan approvals.
Now property owners and builders in the Bay Area prepare for what some said could be a builder’s remedy mania migration up north.
This month, several pro-building groups sued a dozen cities across the region that had missed the Jan. 31 housing deadline, saying each were subject to the remedy provision that gives local governments little input on housing projects.
At the same time, Sasha Zbrozek filed what may be the first builder’s remedy application in the Bay Area, when he proposed replacing a single-family house in Los Altos Hills with 15 apartments and five townhomes at 11511 Summit Wood Road. Alternate plans, also filed under the remedy, call for five townhomes and leaving his home intact.
Use of the builder’s remedy remains untested, and land lawyers say getting these first builder’s remedy projects approved will likely require lawsuits between developers and local governments.
As of Feb. 14, just four of 109 cities and counties across the Bay Area were in compliance with their housing elements. The compliant cities are Alameda, Emeryville, San Francisco and San Leandro.
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