City Council — March 16, 2026

Hello all and welcome to the special joint City Council Planning Commission and Architectural Review Board meeting. Today is Monday, March 16th 536. Roll call please.

And from the Architectural Review Board, Board Member Wolff? Here. And the record will show as of now, Board Member Johnson, Board Member Little, Vice Chair O'Connor and Chair Blakemore are absent.

We will now move on to our only item on our agenda today which is an update on new 2025 state housing laws.

Thank you, Mayor Alarcon. Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. Each year we do a version of this presentation to share with the Council, the Planning Commission and the Architecture Review Board and their greater community A summary of some of the applicable housing laws passed by the state legislature in the past cycle that took effect on January 1 of this year.

We don't expect this briefing to make you all experts in all these housing laws, but it's really just meant to give you an introduction to them, give you a little bit of background in them so that when or if these laws are invoked on future projects that come before your various decision-making bodies, you hopefully have some passing familiarity with them. Of course, you know as projects come before you and invoke some of these laws it's staffs job to help provide finer-grain level detail answer questions give you some background and some parameters to work within. But again this is really just supposed to be kind of an educational first impression first exposure to these laws I want to also mention that In terms of helping to educate the community and decision-makers about some of these housing laws, we are working to create a series of frequently asked questions that relate to housing laws.

And we'll be posting those to our website. They'll be high level but they will link to other places where you can find more information and we also intend to link to both this year's report of housing law updates as well as previous years updates to provide a resource that, again, your decision-making bodies or the general public can go to as kind of a quick index to find information about some of these different laws.

With that I'm going to hand it off to Matt Carlson and Cody Sargent from our city attorney's office and they're gonna be doing the heavy lifting tonight and walking you through the recent updates

Good evening City Council, Planning Commission, Architectural Board of Review and thank you Mr. Bobroff for that introduction before we get started on our update on new housing legislation want to walk through a couple quick housekeeping items So we're planning on walking through this in, on a bill-by-bill basis. They're arranged around some themes which we'll get into shortly.

We'll plan on reviewing the entire slide and then we'll pause for some to allow staff input or questions from your council and decision makers Second, we want to highlight and note that this is a high level presentation. And we are not discussing any currently pending or anticipated housing development projects within the city at this time. So with that I will move on to our outline here.

So as I mentioned, we've kind of organized these around some central themes or issue areas. First we'll discuss the intersection of CEQA and housing laws. These are primarily based on two major budget bill trailer bills that passed on June 30th 2025 and took effect immediately Second, we'll discuss various bills that increase enforcement over various California housing laws. And then third, we'll talk about various bills designed to incentivize or facilitate housing production through permit streamlining, small-scale development, or other more niche specialty housing bills So first, we're going to talk about Assembly Bill 130. This is one of two budget trailer bills that passed in June 2025. The biggest ticket item which I'm going to spend a few slides talking about is a new statutory CEQA infill exemption for qualifying infill projects.

This package has various site eligibility criteria and project eligibility criteria, but otherwise establishes specific deadlines for local agencies to make a determination about whether this exemption applies and then process the project if it does apply. So first I want to talk through the site eligibility criteria at a high level and then we'll get into some more detail here.

In order to qualify for this exemption, your site must be smaller than 20 acres or smaller than 4 acres if it's a builder's remedy project. The project must be located within a census designated urban area or an incorporated city It must be surrounded by at least 75% by urban uses or on previously developed land. And it must meet 11 SB35 criteria, which I will get into in a following slide.

In terms of what the project must contain or be about, it must be consistent with all local plans and must align with the general plan and zoning regulations. It has to meet a certain minimum housing, minimum density which is 50% of the local density standards for low-income housing within the jurisdiction. For the city that means greater than 10 units per acre.

It must not involve the demolition of a historic structure and it must not involve any hotel uses. So I'll pause there for any comments from staff or questions?

I have a question. So given the criteria that you had just mentioned, are there – without mentioning any specific projects – are there areas in CARP that would be affected by that particular change?

Yes, there are potential project locations and we'll talk a little bit about more when we dig into these SB 35 criteria on the following slide but the general consensus is that I think it's much more narrow subset of sites than we might otherwise anticipate given our location on the Central Coast.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so it says you have to conform to the plan but then you have builders remedy that doesn't. So which one do we pick?

So if it is a builder's remedy project that would otherwise qualify, the project is deemed consistent with the applicable plans and policies. So you need to still move forward with the exemption provided it met the four acre size limit and met all the other site criteria so the site criteria would still control but you'd have to find the project consistent with a plan even if there was an inconsistency. Now, there's a wrinkle here in the coastal zone with respect to policies that are embodied in our certified local coastal program.

In which case that mostly untested but there's you know a position that the city would try to harmonize Coastal Act policies and apply those policies to projects to ensure consistency with the Coastal Act so

okay thank you

I have a quick question on this one. I read, pretty sure it's SB1, the one we're talking about right? Was this did this have to do also are there is there a building code freeze

Yes, I have a slide on some of the other components. Okay. Yeah, I didn't

want it wasn't sure if you're gonna move forward or I had a question about that

yes

We will get there

All right, hearing no more questions we'll dive in since I think we're already starting to talk about some of these SB35 site eligibility criteria. So SB 35 was an older housing law that establishes a list of 11 criteria and while this AB 130 exemption was sort of characterized broadly as applying generally in almost every urban area. I think that may be true in areas of larger cities, but in areas like the City of Carpinteria and a lot of the Central Coast you'll see that many of our sites contain one or more of these site eligibility criteria So, for example the development project in order to use AB 130 it needs to not be within a specified portion of the coastal zone. These are generally referred to as kind of the Coastal Appeals Jurisdiction but include things like within the Coastal Appeals Jurisdiction the site must not be potentially subject to five feet of sea level rise.

It can't be on a location that's not zoned for multifamily housing and it can't be within 100 feet of a wetland or on prime Prime agricultural land. The site cannot contain prime farmland or farmland of statewide importance, can't contain wetlands, can't be within a very high fire severity zone unless it can meet certain criteria. It can't be on a hazardous waste site unless it can demonstrate cleanup compliance It can't be within a delineated earthquake fault zone or in a special flood hazard area, regulatory floodway, identified in a conservation plan or habitat for protected species or subject to a conservation easement. So there are quite a few environmental site constraints that apply to these types of projects and eliminate them from being able to use this CEQA infill exemption.

I'll pause here for questions.

How do we define prime farmland?

It's mapped by the USDA and the state, so it has a very specific definition as well as farmland of statewide importance Yes, we have another slide on natural and protected lands coming up. We have not received a sites map however there are some common tools that are helpful in doing preliminary assessment one is site check by sorry they have a new name for it the governor's office of Land use and climate innovation has a map that helps you evaluate whether the criteria may apply to a specific site.

All right, but then the report, you call out that the state was putting this together? The map, right? Yes. And then it would be submitted to the city and the city would have ability to comment?

Yes, that submission hasn't occurred yet. That's what

we're talking

about.

All right, thank you.

Well, so I think there's a existing tool and then there is a formal mapping requirement that needs to take place.

Maybe before we leave the CEQA exemption part of AB 130 it's helpful, I think just to put this in some context for the city. So right now most of our smaller housing projects you know even up to 24 unit mixed-use development project Typically qualify for a CEQA exemption already. We're already using some of the other exemptions that are allowed for under state law and so in terms of you know, just a kind of Broad applicability across the most common types of projects we see I don't think this is going to change anything for us drastically there may be some limited applicability of these exemptions to larger projects that previously would not have qualified for an exemption, but I think given all the different site criteria that Mac ran through it's going to be somewhat limited in you know the numbers of larger potential projects so we could see that might be able to take advantage of this exemption.

Thank You Next I want to hit on a couple other related but ancillary components of AB 130. It amends the Permit Streamlining Act, including removal of a public notice requirement. The Permit Streamlining Act sets forth specific deadlines that the City must meet to determine whether an application is complete and approve a project after environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act is complete.

And the Permit Streamlining Act previously had a requirement that a public meeting needed to have occurred before a permit could be deemed approved as a matter of law. So, the order of operations here would be applicant submits an application, city has a deadline to respond and determine whether that application is complete or incomplete Once that application is found complete, the city processes that application through environmental review. In some jurisdictions they approve either typically an exemption or occasionally an environmental document And then an agency has a certain deadline to act from that approval of the environmental document deadline.

So what the legislator felt is that this bill didn't have enough teeth because it previously had a requirement that a public meeting had to have occurred before a project could be deemed approved, so in a scenario where local agency approved a CEQA exemption at a staff level or had had a prior hearing on a project to approve an environmental document And someone sought to use the deemed approved language, an applicant sought to use the deemed approved language.

They couldn't do so because of this... they would basically have to schedule another public hearing to hear whether the project had been deemed approved or not. So the legislature removed that requirement. Generally this is probably not going to have a major impact in the city because we closely monitor all these deadlines and ensure that we have public hearings and the decision makers consider the projects within the applicable time frames We also bring determinations on the project at the same time we bring determinations on the environmental review. And so there's no, there's not any scenarios in which we have an environmental review approved and we don't have a project approved because usually those decisions happen at the same meeting or within a short period of time.

So that's a change for some jurisdictions. There is a freeze as mentioned, as one of the commissioners mentioned earlier that there is a freeze on state and local building code updates until June 1, 2031 subject to certain limitations that are generally around avoiding emergencies and home hardening for fire protection. And then finally, this bill also limited the Coastal Commission appeals jurisdiction somewhat by exempting multifamily housing projects of four or more units that are exclusively residential from appeal to the commission. If the project is located within sensitive coastal resource areas as defined in the specific public resources code section or where a project was approved by a coastal county A couple items to note is that appeals still exist near shoreline tidelands or wetlands.

And I would add the City of Carpinteria doesn't have a sensitive coastal resource area that's been identified, so there was kind of a limited range of projects that this might apply to especially we're also not a coastal county, so the changes aren't significant really for the city in that respect. Happy to answer any questions

A question about the permit streamlining portion of it. So then that just because the public notice requirement is no longer necessary, it doesn't preclude the city from still going through those steps right? Because it seems the public noticing is that part of transparency in terms of residents being aware of various steps in these processes

So in some jurisdictions, well yes it would prevent the city. So basically in the jurisdictions where they've missed these deadlines for example they made a determination on the environmental document and then they never approved a project This particular, this change to the law would allow or require the agency if they miss that deadline to approve their land use entitlement without a subsequent public hearing.

So yeah pretty hefty penalty and highlights the importance of deadlines.

Thank you

With that, I'll turn it over to my colleague Cody Sargent to talk through SB 131.

So like AB 130, SB 131 was passed as a trailer to the budget bill and also makes some pretty significant amendments to California Environmental Quality Act predominantly by providing new exemptions The first exemption that we're going to talk about from SB 131 is the most significant from the bill, colloquially referred to as the near-miss exemption or near miss streamlining.

And what this provision does is it provides streamlined environmental review process for housing projects that almost qualify for a CEQA exemption but for a single missing condition so it almost meets the exemption but doesn't because of one item And in that case, if it qualified in that way, environmental review would be limited to impacts caused solely by that single disqualifying condition.

And the environmental review wouldn't need to include analysis of alternatives or growth-inducing impacts, things that are typically required as part of the CEQA process. So just thought it'd be helpful. It's a hypothetical if an apartment project, infill apartment project was proposed on a vacant parcel in an urbanized area that would otherwise for example qualify for a CEQA infill housing exemption but it's disqualified because it's adjacent to designated historic resource Under SB 131's near-miss provision, environmental review could potentially be limited only to potential impacts on that historic resource rather than requiring the full CEQA analysis.

The idea from the bill just being that it would allow the project to move forward through approval more quickly while still addressing the specific environmental concern. There are, of course, quite significant limitations and exclusions on this near-miss. It only applies to housing projects. It excludes projects that are dissimilar to those in the missed exemptions list and the housing projects that include distribution centers or oil and gas facilities It also doesn't apply to projects on natural and protected lands, which the next slide will lay out what that is defined as.

And as you can imagine there's still quite a bit of ambiguity in this bill what constitutes a single condition and what's the scope of the environmental review on that single condition. We anticipate that there'll be further guidance from the agency or judicial interpretation through the courts to scope out what this actually looks like in practice. I'll pause there for any questions.

When you kind of have, if you're going to pick how would you decide which is the single item? Or it's something that just pops out at you or?

Councilmember Clark in practice I think the applicant would Would raise that they fall under this, this near miss exemption so they would be or the city and looking at the project would see that in its environmental review would see that the project would qualify for an exemption except for one condition. There wouldn't be choosing between different conditions because if the project didn't qualify for multiple conditions, then it would not fall under this near miss. So the near miss streamlining only applies if they missed the exemption by one condition.

And just maybe to clarify, right? Most of these exemptions list out kind of specific qualifying criteria. You have to be X, Y and Z. So if you meet X and Y but you don't meet Z that might be a scenario where you could apply for the single issue environmental review allowed under SB 131. But if you don't meet two or more of the criteria for that exemption then this isn't going to be a tool that you can avail yourself of.

Have we had projects that fall under this near-miss category in the past?

Perhaps. You know, there's a couple that have come to mind that dealt with archaeological resources where they were maybe in an area that otherwise could have been fully exempt but given that one particular sensitivity we couldn't use the exemption and had to do a more expansive environmental review so there might be scenarios like that it could apply to. Got

it. Thank you.

Great, and so as I mentioned it's while the SP 131 near miss exemption potentially could have some broad implications. It's also still fairly restricted. The development project can't be located on a site that's a natural and protected land defined as including environmentally sensitive areas within the coastal zone within 300 feet of a wetlands. State and national park system or national recreation area or monument, wilderness or marine protected area.

National wild and scenic river systems any ecological reserve or wildlife management area hazardous waste site subject to some exceptions if cleanup has been complied with. within a regulatory floodway, lands under conservation easement or protected as preserve areas within a high fire severity zone or on prime farmland of statewide importance.

One one point of clarification here some of these like for example though within a regulatory floodway and within certain high fire zones Are still permits can still be issued if you agree to abide by certain Standards like finished floor heights and can demonstrate that the project would be would be safe or otherwise Implement certain home hardening aspects of it That said it It still triggers a lot of these exemptions or kicks you out of some of these exemptions.

Are there any other questions on this slide? Moving on, SB 131 also creates several statutory CEQA exemptions for projects that the legislature deemed to be socially beneficial projects. Notably child care centers, rural health clinics, food banks, farm worker housing, parks and clean water infrastructure projects. Each of these is defined further in the bill and has Some restrictions and limitations, but generally these are statutory exemptions from CEQA.

SB 131 also narrows what documents must be included in the administrative record for CEQAs lawsuits, the goal being to streamline CEQL litigation. And finally, the bill provides further direction to the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation which as Mack Carlson mentioned was formally called the Office of Planning Research as the designated rulemaking entity to effectuate infill housing streamlining. Are there any questions?

Other than farm worker housing, this CEQA exemption is there a link to housing in the socially beneficial projects portion of the exemption?

Commissioner Allen, I know these statutory exemptions are each one of them is a specific statutory exemption. So I believe aside from farmworker housing none of those specific statutory exemptions are housing focused whereas the streamlining and the one included in AB 130 is more targeted at housing.

High-level point of clarification, Commissioner Allen. Many of these exemptions for some of the projects are related to statewide grant funded or bond funded projects and so I think the The intent there is to, for example, for clean water projects. If your clean water project was granted state funding by the State Water Resources Control Board, for example, the thinking is that by the state board's process of granting you that funding they did the necessary environmental review to confirm that you're a beneficial project and so I think that is the intent of why these were sort of included in this otherwise We're targeted to CEQA and related to housing bill.

All right, if there are no further questions we'll start into our next theme which is increasing enforcement authority over California's housing laws. Unfortunately I think you're going to notice that most of this theme involves additional state enforcement against local agencies however Cody Sargent will get to share at least one bill that gives the city more authority.

We'll start with SB or AB 712. This bill make some changes to create sort of new causes of action, to allow a housing development project applicant to seek reasonable attorney's fees and costs if a local agency violates a specific housing reform law. And it imposes more severe penalties if an agency was previously warned by the Attorney General, the California Attorney General or the Department of Housing and Community Development or if the agency previously violated the same state housing reform law.

Housing reform laws are broadly defined in the statute to include any law that protects housing development applicants or limits a local agency's actions affecting a housing development project It sets forth that the applicant must bring their lawsuit within 60 days of providing a specific written notice to the agency to either cease the challenge conduct or they're planning on filing notice. In instances where an individual sues and is successful, the fines and penalties that the statute authorizes must be paid to either the local housing trust fund or a statewide building homes and jobs trust fund And it also prevents public agencies from requiring developers to indemnify, defend or hold harmless the agency if the developer or the applicant sues the agency for violating housing reform law.

So happy to pause there for any questions. Hearing none I'll move on.

The next bill regarding enforcement over California housing laws is AB-1308. Unlike most of the state laws that focus on the entitlements and permitting, AB-1308 targets delays that occur after construction such as waiting for final inspections so the bill requires now that building departments must inspect residential construction projects within 10 business days of receiving notice of completion of the permitted work This applies only to new residential construction of no more than 10 units and residential additions to existing residential buildings if the total number of units doesn't exceed 10 units.

It also clarifies that any failure to complete this inspection in that time would constitute a violation of the Housing Accountability Act. Also, just worth noting that the bill also provides if a local agency doesn't meet this deadline an applicant can go hire their own qualified private professional providers such as a licensed engineer or architect to complete the inspection and the local jurisdiction must review the report prepared by their professional within 14 days of receipt and either approve the report or issue a correction notice.

I'll pause here for any questions.

I think for me, for most of these, I'm trying to understand which ones would be the most applicable for the city. So I'll direct this one to city staff but are we in a situation where our normal timeline of the 10 business days for building inspection is that something that would potentially pose a challenge in the future or is this one that maybe we wouldn't have to worry about as much?

through the Mayor, Vice-Mayor Slarcino. This is one I'm not particularly worried about in general. We're very responsive to requests for inspections and can get those scheduled and completed within a couple days of receiving a request. I think this is likely to be an issue for much larger municipalities that maybe have a greater backlog than we do.

Got it thank you very much that's helpful

All right, I'm going to take the next one. This one is maybe a little bit out of order but it's related to building permits so we slotted it in here. But AB 253 is the California Residential Private Permitting Review Act. It requires local agencies to provide an estimated time frame within which a completed housing permit application of 10 units or fewer will be reviewed for building permits If the estimated time frame exceeds 30 days, or if within 30 days of an application being deemed complete and the local agency fails to complete the permit review, a licensed and certified third-party reviewer may provide plan checks at the expense of the applicant.

And then the public agency must approve or deny the permit and with that information from the third party within 10 days of receiving that report. So this bill is designed for these smaller, ten unit or fewer projects to allow the applicant to go out and hire a third party building department effectively to review the plans and submit that review to the city in instances where a city has a significant backlog.

And again

just to beat you to the punch, I don't anticipate this one being a significant issue for the city either. We strive to get our first building permit plan check completed in about two weeks time and while we may not always meet that that still gives us sufficient buffer I think from this 30-day deadline imposed under AB 253 that I'm not anticipating this will be too much trouble for us.

Thank you for reading my mind

The next enforcement bill that I'll talk about is Senate Bill 786. This bill makes a number of changes to enforcement regarding housing elements, at first the bill clarifies that the most recently adopted element in the general plan controls if there's any conflicting development standards included in the different general plan elements So in other words, it establishes that if there are conflicts between for example the land use element and the most recently adopted element which often will be the housing element. The most recently adopted element controls aimed at removing ambiguity that could potentially delay housing projects.

The bill also establishes additional consequences for local governments when they commit to but fail to meet the deadlines for removing constraints on housing development and implementing their housing element, including authorizing the California Department of Housing Community Development, HCD, to review and potentially decertify housing elements adopted by those agencies.

And finally, the bill amends judicial procedure for housing element cases when a housing element is challenged in litigation including expediting temporary relief in certain scenarios and specifying that a court order to adopt a housing element is not stayed pending appeal of a case. I'll pause here for any questions.

All right, hearing none we'll move on to Senate Bill 808, Civil Actions. Ritz housing development projects. This bill expedites enforcement actions brought by project applicants or the California Attorney General challenging improper denial of a housing project application under state housing laws, including the Housing Accountability Act and any ministerial approval laws like SB 35 or 423 as well as state accessory dwelling unit laws or ADU laws.

So the bill sets forth very specific notice requirements that the petitioner must include in their petition and provide to the city before filing their lawsuit. If they include those and serve the position within 90 days of the local agency's denial, disapproval or conditioning of a project or permit then much tighter litigation deadlines apply So within 15 days of service of the writ, the local agency must prepare and certify the administrative record.

That's a very short timeline. A hearing must be set no later than 45 days after the filing of a writ and the court decision must be issued within 30 days of the matter being submitted or 75 days after the writ is filed whichever is earlier so this is a pretty dramatic change to an imposition on the courts in particular, um, in terms of the timeline that typical cases take and the priority for housing cases over other cases that might be on the court's docket.

Any questions?

I have one for you Mac. I was just curious if we've seen these new timelines invoked yet to your knowledge and just, you know, if it's realistic that the courts can actually keep up with these sorts of timelines that have been put on them.

I'm not aware of a case in which these timelines have been invoked and met yet. And part of that is because we're kind of in a narrow window of when the applicant would have been able to provide the notice, right? And when their approval of the project would have had to occur. But we will almost certainly see some of these this year and have a better understanding of whether or not courts are actually able to hit these deadlines.

Great. Moving on to what I hope will be a breath of fresh air, the only bill we're summarizing on enforcement that provides the city with assistance in their enforcement Senate Bill 346 was passed with the intent to assist local agencies ability to enforce their restrictions on short term rentals Specifically, the bill authorizes a local agency to enact an ordinance requiring short-term rental facilitators such as Airbnb, VRBO to report physical address of each short-term rental.

It also authorizes them to request additional information if the physical address isn't sufficient for the local agency to identify the specific short-term rental And authorizes the city to impose an administrative fine or penalty for failure to file this report and allows the local agency to initiate an audit of a short term rental facilitator as needed. And then finally, the bill requires short-term rental facilitators in a jurisdictions that has adopted this ordinance to include in the listing of a short term rental any applicable local license numbers associated with the rental and any TOT tax certification issued by the local agency.

I have a question about that one. I know that the city contracts with HDL for a lot of our short-term rental needs, is that information like getting the physical address of those short term rentals and other information, is that included in what we contract with them for already or would that be something that would be updated?

Through the mayor, Vice Mayor Solorzano. So HDL is standing by and is ready to assist us with this effort They too like us are still getting up to speed with this and trying to understand how this all actually Is implemented and plays out I will say that Having attended a League of California Cities webinar about this law back in December before it took effect on January 1, there was some signs that some of the online short-term rental platforms may try to challenge this law or may try to challenge whichever jurisdictions adopt this ordinance first or make the first attempt at requesting the address information.

And so given that uncertainty, I think our position as staff was to take a little bit of a wait-and-see approach and see how that shakes out with the intention of folding this required update to our ordinance and with some of the other short term rental ordinance update work that we already have on our work plan. Once we have kind of a clearer picture of whether this survives in full or in part through legal challenge.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you

Can I ask a question about short-term rentals? Have we ever cited anybody?

Through the Mayor, Commissioner Benfield. We have on a few occasions. We are getting more aggressive in it here in kind of recent last year I'd say in part at the direction of the City Council and one of the updates in fact that we hope to bring back to the council Through an ordinance update to the short term rentals regulations is to increase the fine amounts for penalties. So right now, penalties are assessed on the same schedule as any other citation in the city. So $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second, $500 every time thereafter within a calendar year or 12 month period.

Under, I couldn't tell you what the assembly bill or senate bill was but under a state law passed several years ago. Those fine amounts were increased substantially to where the first violation was maybe more like $1,000 and then it went up from there quite a bit with belief that those much larger fine amounts would be much more persuasive in eliminating illicit short term rental behavior.

Yeah, it might be a good way to make money for the city to cite these people and make housing for real people. Sorry opinion.

Any other questions? Hearing none, we'll move on to a couple bills that either streamline or clarify certain aspects of the permit process. The first one I want to touch on is some changes to state density bonus law. As a reminder, State Density Bonus Law grants qualifying projects certain benefits including bonus density, incentives or concessions, waivers or reduction of development standards and specified parking ratios when the project agrees to deed restrict a certain percentage of the units as affordable to their very low, low- or moderate income households.

Two bills were passed this year seeking to address some specific density bonus law issues where an applicant was leveraging density bonus law generally for a hotel use. And so those two bills specified that certain provisions of density bonus law, for example incentives or concessions or waivers or reductions of development standards do not apply to standards related to transient lodging.

that are part of a housing development project, unless it's a residential hotel. And then in order for residential portions of a mixed-use project to qualify for density bonus law incentives at least two thirds of the square footage of the project must be residential. So these are very beneficial changes to make sure that density bonus law isn't abused to promote hotel type uses.

Any questions?

I have a question on that one or maybe clarification. Can we can a builder apply for density bonus and builders remedy at the same time? Or can there be a requirement like up front that we know, are they going for both? If they're only going for one and then maybe there's a wait-and-see or I guess I'm concerned about leverage that this gives Developers over the city to use it that way

Through the mayor Commissioner van answer let me try to answer and if I didn't capture your Answer your question. Feel free to follow up So yes, an applicant for a housing development project can use multiple housing laws to promote in their project. So that could include some of the laws we've talked about this evening, Permit Streamlining Act for example that generally applies to all development projects both housing projects and non-housing projects. You would also look at using the Housing Accountability Act so the Housing Accountability Act would apply to a certain subset of projects Smaller subset of projects may qualify for the so-called builder's remedy within the Housing Accountability Act. Those projects could also, to the extent they need to or want to rely on density bonus law, could argue that density bonus law also applies to their project.

So in short, yes an applicant can leverage multiple state housing laws for one specific project. The findings and decision about whether those laws are applicable typically comes at When the law is before either your planning commission or your or the City Council on appeal and so Staff evaluates whether or not a project meets the qualifying criteria for for example density bonus law throughout the entitlement process and makes a recommendation to Your Commission, and then the council and appeal on whether the project complies or does not comply with the applicable requirements

Okay, so you so we The city can't require the developer to elect one pathway before the hearing. Is that correct? Correct. Thank you.

Moving on.

The next bill is AB 1007. This bill amends the Permit Streamlining Act, just as a reminder, Permit Streamlining Act is existing law that requires public agencies to approve or disapprove a development project within specified time periods. The Permit Streamlining Act currently requires that a public agency that serves as a responsible agency for development project under CEQA must approve or disapprove the project within 90 days of the date that the lead agency approved the project.

This bill reduces that time amount from 90 to 45 days for the responsible agency. Just as a reminder, CEQA Responsible Agency is a public agency other than the lead agency that still has jurisdiction over projects. So for the city, while city typically sits as a lead agency they could be a responsible agency if for instance the city was required to approve a permit for a county-led project.

I'll pause for any questions.

All right, hearing none we'll move on to Assembly Bill 1050 which is deals with unlawfully restricted covenants for housing developments. AB1050 extends a prior bill assembly bill 721 which created a covenant modification pathway for 100% affordable projects and so this AB1050 Expands that to any qualifying or any housing development project on a commercial property where the commercial property is generally an allowed use, or could move forward.

But there's a private covenant restrict or covenant or deed restriction or reciprocal easement that would limit residential use density or unit counts. And so, often where you see these is for large-scale mall redevelopment projects. So it's very common in the 50s through the 70s for every major mall when they to have kind of major tenant anchors and reciprocal easements with all of the businesses in the mall that parking was a mandatory use for basically their entire parking lot. And so where we see changes...and then I guess often those parking lots were then either dedicated to a local agency or held within an HOA And so where we're seeing the legislature try to tackle here is preventing those covenants that restrict redevelopment of parking lots, for example into housing from a commercial use.

And so this removes or creates a process where a property owner can invalidate those restrictive covenants and move forward with the residential conversion project. Any questions?

I have a quick question. Are there any, well would that also, is that also like sorry business parks that aren't being used?

Sure, if a business park for example had a covenant that said no there's no allowable residential use within this business park then this may be an avenue to remove those covenants.

Thank you

Moving along, SB 358 amends the Mitigation Fee Act and mandates that there be reduced traffic impact fees for housing development projects that adhere to specific criteria. That they're located in a transit priority area which in City of Carpinteria is within one half mile of a major transit stop which is Amtrak station That they provide no more than one parking space for a zero to two bedroom unit projects or two spaces for three or more bedroom units.

And they'd be within a half mile of three or more specified amenities such as a grocery store, pharmacy, or public library. So if the project meets those criteria, the bill mandates that there be reduced traffic impact fees for the project. It also requires that local agencies make certain findings supported by substantial evidence to adjust increase that traffic impact fee.

Any questions?