City of Fullerton Settles State Lawsuit Over Affordable Housing Requirements

The City of Fullerton has agreed to a settlement that requires it to comply with the state’s Housing Element Law no later than November 5, 2024.

Housing Elements submitted by California cities must include a housing needs assessment, an inventory relevant to meeting housing needs, and a program to implement the policies, goals, and objectives of the assessment.

Every eight years, cities and counties in California are required to update their Housing Element blueprint.

“We’ll all be monitoring Fullerton and watching as the city makes progress,” said Matthew Gelfand, attorney with Californians for Homeownership. “Any non-compliance with the settlement agreement would likely be of concern later this year, not immediately. There aren’t a lot of immediate requirements that the city has.”

Californians for Homeownership, a non-profit that enforces laws designed to address California’s housing crisis, was a plaintiff in legal action filed by California Attorney General Ron Bonta.

The settlement mandates that Fullerton allow for 13,209 housing units to be developed and nearly 40 percent must be low income.

“Cities are not required to build housing,” Gelfand told OrangeCountyLawyers.com. “These are just requirements to ensure the planning rules of the cities are set up to allow developers, whether traditional for-profit developers or non-profits, to come in and build housing if they have access to those properties.”

Bonta sued in Orange County Superior Court alleging that Fullerton city officials failed to adopt a housing element plan for the 2021-2029 time period, and took no action for more than a year after receiving a letter from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) finding that its Housing Element draft was non-compliant.
The compliant housing plan was due on October 15, 2021.

“I applaud the Fullerton City Council, and its planning and legal team, for recognizing that public resources should be directed at collaborating, rather than further litigating, our way out of California’s housing crisis,” Bonta said in a statement. “By working together, California can achieve our goal of ensuring that every city provides more affordable housing options to Californians in need.”

Related Content:

• FHFA Credit Score Policy Expected to Impact Orange County
• Orange County Supervisors Vote to End Power Authority Community Renewable Energy Program
• Ninth Circuit Rules Against Costa Mesa for Discriminating Against Sober Living Homes

Fullerton’s Planning Department partnered with Rincon Consultants and Dudek to complete the Housing Element.

“We added programs that would hold the city to update the development review process, support the development of a variety of housing types, support the production of regulated affordable housing for all income level levels, and add homeless prevention and housing tenant protection and support,” said Rincon Consultant’s Lily Rudolph at a Fullerton Housing Elements meeting on January 26. “We added language to strengthen each of those programs by adding objectives and timelines and clarification where it was needed.”

A similar settlement agreement was reached with the city of Laguna Hills and Californians for Homeownership is currently monitoring the city of Yorba Linda, which adopted a state-certified Housing Element that was subsequently rejected by voters.

“That city is trying to do a new Housing Element but the new Housing Element, as I understand it does not promise as much as the old Housing Element did,” Gelfand said in an interview. The City of Huntington Beach is choosing not to openly comply with litigation in federal and state court.

The Fullerton settlement is unlikely to impact Huntington Beach’s litigation, according to Gelfand.

“The City of Huntington Beach seems eager to litigate the case rather than to settle,” he added. “We’ve won three housing element cases on the merits so the actual litigation itself is likely to proceed in a similar fashion, which is that I think Huntington Beach will be held liable for not complying with its obligation to state Housing Element Law.”