The City of San Bernardino has update its housing element and density bonus ordinances as part of a settlement of a lawsuit with the Public Interest Law Project. The California Attorney General’s Office is also participating in the settlement.

A city doesn’t have to engage in additional analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act just because school districts don’t think they’ll ever raise the money necessary to build new schools.

In a battle between rival developers over the California Environmental Quality Act, the prominent Sacramento developer Tsakopoulos Investments has lost an appellate court ruling challenging the environment analysis on a nearby developer’s project. In the published portion of the case, the Third District Court of Appeal concluded that Sacramento County properly conducted its climate change analysis on the neighboring project and did not use methodologies recently discredited by both the California Supreme Court and the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Short-term rentals are not by definition development projects that require a coastal development permit in the coastal zone.

Environmentalists have lost the latest skirmish in the seemingly interminable battle over development of Fanita Ranch in the San Diego County community of Santee – and in the process an appellate court may have plowed important new ground about what’s acceptable mitigation for lost California gnatcatcher habitat. The latest Fanita Ranch proposal would disrupt 400 acres of gnatcatcher habitat but preserve 1,000 acres. An environmental group called Preserve Wild Santee appealed a judge’s ruling that adequately protected gnatcatcher habitat, saying that the mitigation plan simply “preserves what’s left”. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego affirmed the judge’s ruling, saying that there is the California Environmental Quality Act contains no requirement that lost habitat be actually replaced on a one-to-one basis. “CEQA does not required a complete offset for lost habitat, and .. conservation easements can mitigate such loses by substantially lessening the impacts to a particular species’ habitat,” wrote Justice Julia C. Kelety for a three-judge panel of the appellate court.

A developer has sued the City of Davis over a proposed housing project, claiming that the city has dragged its feet in such a way that the project has been effectively denied. The developer has also filed a builder’s remedy application for the project. In response, the city claims it has not denied the project and is processing the application.

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?