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A Los Angeles judge has ruled that the addition of a hotel (as well as three additional stories) and the subtraction of some affordable housing units doesn’t cause a Beverly Hills developer’s vested rights under the builder’s remedy law to expire. Rather, he wrote, the two changes fall – just barely – within the law’s provision that a developer can change both affordable housing and square footage by 20% without surrendering the vested rights. This marks the second time in recent months that an L.A. judge has relied heavily on interpretations from the Department of Housing & Community Development on the vested rights question. Judge James Chalfant recently ruled a 90-day window to respond to incompleteness letters resets each time a new letter is received, based in part on HCD’s interpretation. (This issue was explored more fully in CP&DR ’s coverage of related cases here .) “This is the first opinion I've seen in which the principle of deference to HCD has been extended beyond the Housing Element Law, the administration of which has long been delegated to HCD,” UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf, an expert on California land use and housing law, wrote on X . The ruling is at least the second setback that L.A. Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin has dealt to the City of Beverly Hills on builder’s remedy projects. In early 2024, Kin temporarily suspended all of Beverly Hills’ permitting power because the city did not have a compliant housing element according to HCD. ( CP&DR ’s coverage of that ruling can be found here .) The current case involves a proposed projct by developer Leo Pustilnikov, who has proposed several builder’s remedy projects in Beverly Hills and has tangled extensively in court with both Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach. Under the Housing Accountability Act, Pustilnikow filed a preliminary application for a 16-story builder’s remedy project on Linden Drive in Beverly Hills that called for 200 residential units including 40 deed-restricted affordable units. Under the Housing Accountability Act, a preliminary application vests the developer’s right to build under the rules in effect at the time. A builder’s remedy project, which is permitted if the jurisdiction does not have a compliant housing element at the time the application is filed, does not have to follow a city’s general plan and zoning limitations. Pustilnikov subsequently changed his project to be 19 stories with fewer housing units, including only 33 deed-restricted affordable units, and a hotel. The city claimed that the change rendered the preliminary application invalid, thus making the project subject to discretionary approval. The city and the developer then went back and forth repeatedly over the city’s contention that the project was incomplete. In July, the city council rejected the project. (Previous CP&DR coverage of the council’s action can be found here .) Kin’s ruling came a month later in a case that had been filed by Californians For Homeownership, a group sponsored by the California Association of Realtors. In the ruling, Kin sided with the plaintiffs and rejected all of the city’s arguments. Kin noted that the Housing Accountability Act permits a 20% change in affordable housing and square footage without endangering a project’s vested rights. He noted in the ruling that the revised project including the hotel increased square footage by 19.9 and decreased the affordable housing by 17.5%, thus falling within the 20% threshold on both counties. Beverly Hills also argued that the addition of the hotel created a change of use in the project that triggered discretionary review and eliminated the vested rights. But Kin disagreed. Mixed-use projects are permitted if two-thirds of the square footage of the project is residential. “Allowing the City to disregard a Preliminary Application based on its view of whether there has been a “substantial” change in the project exposes Applicant to the subjective whims and caprice of the City,” Kin wrote. He relied in part on HCD communications to the city, which stated that the hotel was a “modification” that do not void the vesting created by the preliminary application submittal.” The Case: Californians for Homeownershp v. City of Beverly Hills , Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 24STCP02082 (filed August 12, 2025) The Lawyers: For Californians for Home Ownership: Matt Gelfand,

In an unpublished appellate ruling, a unanimous three-judge panel has ruled that the San Diego’s ordinance reducing parking standards for multifamily developments near transit stops is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. The city was sued by CREED-21, a group typically represented by frequent CEQA litigator Cory Briggs.

It’s clear that under the Housing Accountability Act a city must approve a housing project if the project is consistent with the general plan – but the zoning is inconsistent with the general plan.

Culver City’s “anti-mansionization” ordinance violates the Housing Accountability Act by reducing the amount of floor-area ratio permitted in single-family zones, an appellate court has ruled.

An overlay zone designed to protect wildlife migration corridors is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, an appellate court has ruled. The court also ruled that the overlay zone is not covered by the Surface Mining And Reclamation Act, even though the overlay zone covers some 10,000 acres of land that contains mineral resources.

A federal judge has dismissed Huntington Beach’s lawsuit challenging California’s housing laws, saying that a political subdivision of the state cannot sue the state claiming violations of the 14 th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city had claimed among other things that the elimination of judicial review of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment process violated its 14 th Amendment due process rights.

Does a beachfront mobilehome owner have to spend $2 million to tear down and reconstruct a two-story addition if owner built the addition without a coastal permit?

In a case with a bunch of unusual twists and turns, a judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Redondo Beach’s housing element is subject to a vote based on an existing growth-management voter requirement. But the judge also ruled that state law pre-empts the local voter requirement.

A Los Angeles judge has suspended the City of Beverly Hills’ permitting authority because he found the city had not adopted a housing element compliant with state law. However, the Beverly Hills city attorney says the city has appealed the ruling and therefore it will not go into effect while on appeal.

Based on oral argument last week in a case from El Dorado County, the U.S. Supreme Court seems ready to strike down California’s Ehrlich/San Remo exception to the Nollan/Dolan rule on exactions – an exception that allows California cities and counties to impose exactions that do not have a “direct connection” to the project in question and that are not “roughly proportional” to the project’s impact if they are part of a General Plan or broader legislative effort. But the Supreme Court seems less clear about how to apply the ruling in situations where exactions are imposed by a legislation. “Despite Petitioner’s urging, Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Kagan all expressed doubts about the workability of requiring local governments to undertake in the legislative context the same type of project-specific analysis that  Nollan  and  Dolan  call for in the context of case-by-case administration,” wrote Texas A&M law professor Tim Mulvaney in a blog . “Against that backdrop,” he added, “will the Court create a new standard for examining the relationship between a legislative condition and the types of impacts generated by a specific class of developers that is something short of, or distinct from, the type of individualized reviewed required by  Nollan  and  Dolan ?” In  Sheetz v. County of El Dorado , decided a year ago, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that under California’s Mitigation Fee Act, no individual analysis of the connection between the fee and the impact is required. “The  Nollan/Dolan  test does not apply to the legislatively prescribed generally applicable development impact fee at issue here, and California law does not require an individualized or site-specific determination of reasonableness for each particular project subject to the fee,” the court wrote. ( CP&DR ’s coverage of  Sheetz  can be found  here .) The court upheld El Dorado County’s imposition of a $23,000 fee on as part of the approval for an 1,800-square foot manufactured home. The  Nollan/Dolan  doctrine states that development exactions – including impact fees – must have a “rational nexus” to the development project in question and also must be imposed in a manner that is “roughly proportional” to the impact of the new development on existing conditions. Exactions that do not meet this test are considered a taking of property under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In  Nollan v. California Coastal Commission , decided in 1987, the Supreme Court imposed the “rational nexus” rule, concluding ruled that a lateral easement in front of a Ventura beach house did not have a “nexus” to the impact of the house being expanded from one to two stories. Subsequently, in the 1994 case of  Dolan v. City of Tigard , a case from Oregon, the court laid down the “rough proportionality” rule, saying that the size of the fee or exaction must be “roughly proportional” to the impact of the project. However, in 1996, the California Supreme Court ruled, in  Ehrlich v. City of Culver City , ruled that while the  Nollan/Dolan  test should be used when exactions are imposed on a single developer as a result of the expect impact of a single development project, a “reasonable relationship” test – such as the one El Dorado County used – is sufficient for exactions that are imposed on all developers as part of a broad policy scheme. That’s been the rule in California ever since – and now the Supreme Court seems like to overturn it. Some has speculated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito might go beyond the Nollan/Dolan v. Ehrlich question and issue a broader ruling limiting exactions in all cases. But Thomas’s questioning at the oral argument seemed to argue the opposite. He specifically asked Sheetz’s lawyer, Paul Beard of the Pacific Legal Foundation, whether the justices should limit their ruling only to that issue. Beard responded that even El Dorado County seemed to concede the point. In a blog on the PLF web site after the oral argument, Beard’s colleague Brian Hodges said: “What surprised us was how focused the Court was just on the question presented, which was whether legislative exactions are subject to  Nollan  and  Dolan . The government briefs really didn’t address that issue. That’s the issue that the Court granted cert on, but they (El Dorado County) didn’t really address it. They tried to change the topic. And the fact that the Justices didn’t really take the bait was a bit surprising.” According to blogger Amy Howe , El Dorado County’s lawyer, Aileen McGrath, did not dispute that there has to be a connection between the impact of a project and the exactions impose on it. However, according to Howe, McGrath said the legislature should not have to ‘justify how it imposed those fees’ on a case-by-case basis. Instead, she told (Justice Brett) Kavanaugh, ‘if any sort of heightened review is necessary here, it needs to be performed at a programmatic basis that looks at the categories that the legislature itself has drawn.’” Chief Justice Roberts and some other justices questioned whether requiring a fee is the same as seeking a donation of property as an exaction. Indeed, Justice Ketanji Jackson said she found nothing unconstitutional “about a county saying, if you want to build in this way, because of the impacts on the traffic or environment or whatever, you have to pay a fee.” She suggested fees might be treated differently. This prompted a strong reaction from Justice Samuel Alito, who asked Beard whether Jackson’s solution could be construed as nothing more than what he called a “no-build easement”. “It certainly could be characterized that way because if … he doesn't pay the ransom, he can't build,” Beard replied. Alito’s question echoed his ruling 11 years ago in  Koontz v. St. Johns Water Management District , a case from Florida, when he wrote for a 5-4 majority that  Nollan/Dolan  had to be followed even when a permit is denied because the developer refused to accept the exaction. and when the exaction involves money as well as property. In some ways, that case called  Ehrlich  into question. ( CP&DR ’s original coverage of  Koontz  can be found  here .) The transcript of the oral argument is attached to this article. If you are interested in learning more about how the Sheetz ruling is likely to affect planning practice in California, take Bill Fulton’s one-hour course on exactions and Sheetz, which is available here . The course is eligible for AICP CM credit.

In a potentially important case, an appellate court has ruled that an accessory dwelling unit in Malibu does not require coastal development permit, citing the city’s own development code excempting attached ADUs from the permit process.

Short-term rentals have become a big issue in California in the last few years – but a new, unpublished appellate court involving Lake Arrowhead suggest that there might be a big difference between short-term rentals regulated by cities and counties and short-term rental restrictions imposed by a private non-profit entity. In the unpublished ruling, the Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld a preliminary injunction against the Arrowhead Lake Association’s new rules preventing short-term renters – and homeowners who are not members of the association – from accessing the privately owned Lake Arrowhead beach. The case still must be tried on the merits, but the appellate court said the homeowners challenging the new rules are likely to win – and, in the process, the justices shot down comparisons between the Lake Arrowhead Association and formal local government bodies – at least as far as the definition of a short-term rental is concerned. Located in the San Bernardino mountains 80 miles from Los Angeles, Lake Arrowhead is owned and operated by the Arrowhead Lake Association , a nonprofit organization which provides users with a wide variety of membership opportunities. In 1964, the previous owner of the lake entered into an agreement with homeownersin the surrounding Arrowhead Woods community, as well as their “lessees” and “houseguests,” the right to access the lake and enjoy its recreational facilities. As the short-term rental boom ramped up in 2020, the Arrowhead Lake Association changed its bylaws to bar all access to short-term renters – defined as a person who rents a home for less than 30 days – as well as Arrowhead Woods property owners who are not members of the association (as most are not). The association also put up fences and restricted access with RFID cards. (Ochoa’s preliminary injunction did not extend to the fences and the cards.) A group of Arrowhead Woods property owners sued and won a preliminary injunction from San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Gilbert G. Ochoa. The association appealed the issuance of the preliminary injunction and the appellate court ruled in favor of the property owners who sued, saying they are likely to win the case on its merits. The ruling kept the preliminary injunction in place while the case proceeds. The court’s ruling turned in large part on the question of whether county and state definitions of lodgers and short-term renters should be applied to the association’s bylaws, which do not define lessees or lodgers. The association argued that, according to San Bernardino County regulations, a short-term renter is a transient occupant similar to a hotel guest. But in granting the preliminary injunction, Judge Ochoa wrote: “he issue is not how the County defines short-term renters for purposes of regulating and licensing owners whose homes are used for short-term rentals. The issue is the construction and meaning of lessee within the 64 Agreement at the time of the contract.” He concluded that, in the absence of a stricter definition in the agreement with the association, a short-term renter is a lessee. The appellate court agreed, noting that the relevant section in the association’s bylaws “does not distinguish between short-term renters who are given exclusive legal possession of premises and are responsible for their care and condition from those who have only the right to use the premises, subject to the landlord’s retention of control over them.” The association also argued that the court have recently created a sharp distinction between a lessee and a lodger for the purposes of eviction and transient occupancy taxes. But the appellate court applied similar reasoning, saying: “How California statutes define tenants, lodgers, and transient occupants, without reference to the state of the law in 1964 , is irrelevant to interpreting the contracting parties’ intent as to the scope of those they intended to protect as ‘lessees’ in the 1964 Agreement.” The Case: Vertical Web Ventures v. Arrowhead Lake Association, No. G062727 (filed February 7, 2024) The Lawyers: For Vertical Web Ventures and other property owners: John P. Zaimes, ArentFox Schiff, John.Zaimes@afslaw.com For Arrowhead Lake Association: Scott W. Ditfurth, Best Best & Krieger, scott.ditfurth@bbklaw.com