LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California judge on Thursday rejected a petition by the nonprofit organization AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Southern California city of Redondo Beach to block a new state law that makes it easier for cities to upzone certain neighborhoods.
Signed into law in September, Senate Bill 10 gives cities the power to rezone certain areas, allowing up to 10 housing units per property. That action must be taken by a two-thirds majority vote of a city council, and is exempted from any lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and can supersede any local ballot initiative.
It was this last point that the plaintiffs seized upon in their lawsuit, which called SB 10 "an unprecedented assault against the power of citizens to enact effective local initiatives," and said the bill "allows local governments to disregard the provisions of duly-enacted initiative measures that affect planning and land use in local jurisdictions."
LA County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant said during Thursday's hearing that the Legislature had the authority to preempt local governments on matters of statewide concern.
"It’s undisputed that SB 10 addresses a matter of statewide concern," he said. The concern, he said, wasn't "housing in general, " but that "local governments comply" with their legal obligation to build enough housing. "SB 10 is intended to provide local governments with another tool to meet that obligation," he said.
Beverly Palmer, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said that preemption power doesn't extend to overriding local ballot initiatives. "It would be a real sea change to take that power away," she said.
But Chalfant disagreed. "No matter how important a local intuitive is, it can be preempted by the state legislature. With that statement he said "I think we’re done," and ended the hearing.
After the hearing, Palmer told Courthouse News, "I think ultimately this is a matter that is going to need to be resolved by a higher court." The decision, she said, was "an unprecedented incursion onto the people’s right to initiatives."
SB 10 was inspired in part by the fight over an effort to upzone Hollywood, which was delayed for years by onerous legal challenges, which cost the city millions of dollars to defend against. No city has yet employed the tactics made legal by the new law.
In a written statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta praised the judge's decision.
"Everywhere you look, we are in a housing crisis," he wrote. "Laws like SB 10 are essential to address California's housing shortage and affordability crisis, providing local governments with an important tool to increase housing supply in their communities."
AIDS Healthcare Foundation founder and CEO Michael Weinstein said in a written statement that he was "disappointed, but not surprised" by the ruling.
"To be clear, we are NOT against building more and much-needed housing in California and elsewhere across the country," the statement added. "However, AHF IS strongly against stripping out local control over something as important as housing development and believe SB 10, California’s one-size-fits-all state law, overrides local control and is profoundly antidemocratic."
The foundation claims to be the largest provider of HIV/AIDS medication in the world, serving more than a million patients in 43 countries. Through its chain of pharmacies and thrift stores, it takes in more than a billion dollars in revenue each year. And through its Healthy Housing Foundation, it has either created or preserved more than 1,400 units of affordable housing for homeless and low income residents.
It is also a political advocacy group, pushing a number of pet causes over the years including lowering the cost of prescription drugs and forcing adult film actors to wear condoms. Perhaps somewhat incongruously, it has become one of the most prominent opponents of housing density in California, through lobbying, campaign donations and ballot measures. It has also filed numerous lawsuits to stop individual apartment construction projects, and it recently sued the city of Los Angeles over its "housing element," a plan to upzone certain areas that was later declared inadequate by the state.
The organization has long been engaged in a bitter feud with the author of SB 10, state Senator Scott Wiener, for years. In 2019, Wiener authored an ambitious bill, SB 50, that would have upzoned large swaths of California cities. AHF responded with an expensive ad campaign, including glossy mailers and television ads, attacking the bill as "a handout to greedy developers by Senator Scott Weiner [sic] that would make our housing affordability crisis even worse," and invoking the writer James Baldwin, who equated "urban renewal" with "negro removal."
"AHF & its bully CEO Michael Weinstein are obsessed with abusing HIV health care funds to attack me," Wiener tweeted in 2019. "AHF/Weinstein have now branched out to become California’s NIMBY-In-Chief, funding campaigns & groups whose purpose is to stop new housing."
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