Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand drafts initiative to block SB single family zoning bill
by Ryan McDonald and Mark McDermott Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand visited the State Capitol building in Sacramento in early 2018 to meet with state legislators about the numerous efforts underway to address the state’s housing crisis. Two of those efforts were authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). Senate Bill 827 would have required cities to allow four- and five-story apartments and condominiums within a half-mile of transit centers and in jobs-rich areas. Senate Bill 828 used a part of the state’s housing law, called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), to require cities and counties to double the area available for condominium and apartment uses, and to increase overall residential zoning. SB 827 failed to gain traction, while a weakened version of SB 828 passed. At the time, however, over 60 other pieces of housing legislation were in various stages of development in Sacramento. Wiener was involved in many of them. For Brand, the implications were clear. Bills would keep coming, creating what he viewed as a fundamental reordering of the way land-use decisions would be made by shifting power away from local government to Sacramento. “At the time, I realized…
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