To help the housing crisis, California allows developers to circumvent some rules

California’s housing crisis is acute, and the state is forcing cities to do something about it. One tool is called the “builder tool” which allows developers to bypass local regulations.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

California’s housing crisis is severe, and the state wants cities to do something about it. But when cities are idle, there is a tool that allows developers to get around local rules. From the KQED member station, Adhiti Bandlamudi reports, and I quote, “the builder’s medicine.”

ADHITI BANDLAMUDI, BYLINE: Sasha Zbrozhek and his wife Stella moved to Los Altos Hills near San Jose in 2019. They fell in love with their home. It’s a little funky. It has a steep, sloping appearance that mimics mountain slopes. There is a huge spiral staircase.

SASHA ZBROZEK: What I liked about this place is that it wasn’t formulaic and so the attraction was to be different.

BANDLAMOODY: He and his wife hoped to raise their children there someday. That is, until the first downpour, when wet spots appeared on the walls.

ZBROZEK: I made some holes in the drywall and then I could see part of the structure of the place. And it’s like, wow, you know, there’s very little wood left here. No wonder it smells weird. It’s all rotten.

BANDLAMOODY: He went to get a renovation permit, thinking the renovation would be completed in a few months, but he found himself in the middle of an arduous two-year process. Meanwhile…

ZBROZEK: I live in this house, right? Cold. Wet. You know, my net worth has gone down a lot. Construction costs have skyrocketed.

BANDAMUDY: Zbrožek needed some way to make up for the money he bled from this renovation. The back of his two-acre lot was empty, and he thought, why not build a house there? He was so frustrated with the process that he quit his job as a software developer and became a housing developer instead.

ZBROZEK: I presented a five-part project. These are three buildings – two duplexes and one separate block.

BANDLAMOODY: But city officials say Zbrozek is not allowed to build townhouses there because his area is designated for single-family homes. Enter the builder tool.

CHRIS ELMENDORF: Actually, the developer tool has been around for a long time, since 1990, but the developers were afraid to use it.

BANDLAMOODY: This is Chris Elmendorf, professor of land use law at UC Davis. Thanks to some recent state laws, the builder’s tool has more teeth. Every eight years, the state must sign the city’s housing plan or the city could face the consequences. These include loss of funding for transportation and affordable housing, lawsuits and, you guessed it, developer remedies. Elmendorf says this allows developers to bypass local building regulations.

ELMENDORF: The usual reason a city refuses a project is too high; It’s too big; it does not fit the nature of the community – all this is not discussed.

BANDLAMOODY: Developers are already trying this tactic across the state. In Santa Monica, they submitted 16 developer renovation projects while the city failed to meet requirements, which could result in nearly 5,000 new apartments, about 1,000 of which were considered affordable housing. But the builder’s facility terrifies some Los Altos Hills residents, such as Bob Meneely, who spoke at a recent city council meeting.

(SOUND FROM ARCHIVE RECORDING)

BOB CHANGED: The developers are going to buy up every old ranch that comes on the market and use the developer’s funds to build high-rise housing on our one-acre lots.

BANDLAMOODY: California is not alone in trying to get cities to build housing using builder funds. Both New Jersey and Massachusetts have similar laws.

AMY DANE: It worked out here – an important tool in our housing planning toolbox.

BANDLAMOODY: Amy Dane is a housing policy researcher from Massachusetts. She says developers have built more than 100,000 housing units there since their law went into effect in 1969. Almost half of them are affordable.

DANE: Actually, you’d rather cities plan for growth, and instead we’re over-limiting. And then we get the builder’s tool, when the builders come and build what the cities and towns didn’t plan.

BANDLAMOODY: Here in California, the state has yet to approve the Los Altos Hills plan to achieve its housing goals. If that doesn’t happen, homeowner-turned-builder Sasha Zbrozek says he’s ready.

ZBROZEK: Then I’ll go back to the city, well, go, tap, tap, you know, hey, I would like to get my right, please.

BANDLAMOODY: For him, that means building backyard townhouses and renovating his leaky house.

For NPR News, I’m Adhiti Bandlamudi from Los Altos Hills, California.

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Please visit the terms of use and permissions pages of our website at www.npr.org for more information.

NPR transcripts are produced on a tight schedule by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The official recording of NPR programs is an audio recording.