Facing at least $170,000 in court-approved fines for violating state mandates, Huntington Beach city leaders adopted a required housing element to accommodate the construction of more than 13,000 units — which will need to be updated again in three years.
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The City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to update the city’s general plan as required by court order, which also imposed the penalties of $50,000 a month for noncompliance. Councilmembers Chad Williams and Andrew Gruel voted against approving the plan.
The councilmembers who voted for the updated housing element said they did so only to avoid saddling taxpayers with more fines. Mayor Casey McKeon said the vote is “not the final step” and that he’ll continue looking for other ways to restore local control over housing construction.
“Just understand that we fight every single day with whatever we can to protect our local control, to zone our city the way our residents elected us to zone it,” McKeon said. “Every city is unique; we all have environmental elements, typography, finite resources.”
In December, Huntington Beach lost a years-long court battle against the state’s housing element law, as both the highest state and federal courts declined to reconsider a lower court’s decision that ordered the city to zone for more housing as required by California mandate.
In May, San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal ordered Huntington Beach to pay $10,000 a month, with the potential for increases after May if a compliant housing element was not approved.
The fines paid by Huntington Beach will go into a state trust that funds affordable housing and boosts homeownership opportunities across California.
Huntington Beach is far from meeting the state’s affordable housing requirements. About 45% of the homes the city is mandated to zone for — 5,845 units — are targeted for very low-income to low-income households, but only about 20% have been permitted through the end of last year, according to a staff report.
In the updated element, the city says the remaining housing needs would be met through a boost in the construction of accessory dwelling units, hotel and motel conversions and site rezoning.
Williams questioned whether the city even has the authority to update its housing plan, given that Measure U, a charter amendment passed in 2024, requires voter approval for zoning changes with a “significant and unavoidable” environmental impact.
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“It’s my view that compliance with state law requires honoring Measure U, not ignoring it,” Williams said. “We’re on an apparent collision course between the court mandate and our city charter.”
He suggested the city file an emergency petition to the court seeking clarification on whether Measure U applies to the element update. The proposal failed by a 5-2 vote.
Councilmember Don Kennedy said he agreed with Williams’ thinking, but isn’t willing to put more financial burden on taxpayers, given that the courts have continually sided with the state in its legal battles against the city.
“Sitting in this chair at this point, I believe the probability of taking the path of noncompliance will lead to much more financial pain than I’m willing to put on the citizens,” Kennedy said.
The housing element will need to be deemed by state housing officials as compliant and meeting requirements.
Daniel Sasse, an attorney for the Kennedy Commission, which has challenged the city on its planning for housing, argued at Tuesday’s meeting that the updated document is still “not substantially compliant with state law.”
McKeon said Huntington Beach will likely end up having to plan for much more housing than officially required.
Of the more than 13,000 units the city has to zone for, he said, more than 8,000 are “affordable”—reserved for very low-income, low-income and moderate-income households. Developers typically cap the affordable units in each project at 20%, McKeon said, so the city has to plan for 40,000 market-rate units to subsidize those 8,000 affordable units.
“We have 80,000 units in Huntington Beach right now,” McKeon said, “so we’d have to increase our housing stock by 50% in a city that’s 95% built out.”
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