The meeting this last Tuesday was a difficult one for me personally to sit through. I bet it was worse on the dais, though.

I have many, many feelings and thoughts about the lengthy discussion over the 5-1 decision to deny Vista Meridian its conditional use permit, sustaining the denial at the Planning Commission level. But given that school policy is outside the ken of this blog, I’ll just say this: like Mayor John Stephens said during the meeting, I believe our land use rules should be interpreted narrowly and, to resist falling into banana-republic territory, the City should resist every urge to insert personal preferences and tastes (or the agendas of other government agencies) into the grant of discretion our General Plan appears to provide. Unfortunately, as any student of government or economics might expect, the incentive to do otherwise is overwhelming. It was dismaying to see our representatives give into that temptation. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

After that bruhaha, we came to the real meat of the meeting: the inclusionary housing ordinance. The discussion didn’t get going in earnest until after 10:00pm, and at that point it was clear many of the councilmembers were tired, bored or both. The chambers were also completely empty except for a few staff folks that were forced to be there, two large landowners, and me and a fellow housing advocate. It was deflating to see how little interest there was in debating a rule that may, singlehandedly, determine how much housing is built in Costa Mesa in the next several decades.

So with that depressing backdrop, the Council tried to dig into the proposed ordinance presentation, which outlined the marked and fairly radical differences between what the Staff proposed in the Fall and what the Planning Commission recommended. But what emerged was a discussion that made it clear that the Council, as a whole, does not have its arms around what its ultimate goals are or how the policy connects to those goals.

For example, Councilmembers Arlis Reynolds and Andrea Marr were deeply concerned that a 2-acre minimum lot size requirement, which would exempt all but 11% of the Measure K sites, would break promises they personally made during their last electoral campaign to fight for a comprehensive inclusionary housing oridnance. Several public commenters who called in via Zoom said that they shared those concerns. This led the two of them to propose that the minimum lot size and the exemption for developments with a proposed density of less than 60 dwelling units per acre (DUA), each reforms proposed by the Planning Commission, be removed, and the inclusionary requirements for developments greater than 60 DUA be increased to 11% and 7%, per the Staff’s original recommendation.

But what is frustrating about this approach is that it seems to mistake policy for production. “This Council has done more to create housing than certainly the last three councils, who did nothing but hamstring housing!” Councilperson Marr exclaimed during her comments, clearly exasperated with criticisms of the inclusionary housing ordinance (including criticisms lobbed by yours truly). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this Council has not created much housing at all — at least, not yet. As Mayor Pro Tem Jeff Harlan pointed out in the discussion, since Measure K was passed last year, we’ve seen only faint interest from developers in the affected sites despite the removal of Measure Y’s onerous requirements. The only large project to be approve, the Hive Live development, was in the pipeline long before Measure K and only happened to benefit from its reforms; it wasn’t inspired by those reforms. And I would further add: since Measure K passed, the development environment has only eroded further: inflation in labor and materials is still rampant, financing costs have skyrocketed, lending has tightened, and insurance is getting very difficult to obtain. If it seems like we housing advocates keep moving the ball, we aren’t: its that the field is literally moving under our feet as we speak.

In fact, you could certainly argue that prior councils did do a better job with housing, up to and including the point residents proposed Measure Y as a way to stop housing overproduction. In fact, not only was Measure Y pitched in 2016 as a moratorium on “overdevelopment” of the City by the City Council, led by then-Mayor Jim Righeimer, it was a campaign issue that Councilmember Marr ran on herself two years later. In the “Feet to the Fire” candidate forum in 2018, which doesn’t seem to have a video on YouTube but was helpfully liveblogged by OC Political, Councilmember Marr opposed new, denser housing development in her own district (that doesn’t seem very “pro-housing”) but was open to it above the 405 Freeway. So to some extent, when Councilmember Marr expresses frustration with prior councils’ insufficient zeal for housing production, she must be including herself in that critique.

Now, everyone is free to change their minds and I, personally, am thrilled to see members of this Council evolve on the housing issue as the stark realities of housing scarcity in Costa Mesa become manifest. But I hope Ms. Marr and Ms. Reynolds will reflect a bit on what their goals really are: do they want to meet their campaign promises to generate affordable housing on paper, or in reality? Because at the end of the day, no housing advocate — certainly not this one at least — stays at City Council until 12:30am to lobby for policies that she believes will undermine the production of housing and fail to serve the folks in the city that need more affordable housing the most. We’re just disagreeing that it is feasible to get there with the policies that are being proposed.

Otherwise, we’re going to be left with a very typical story in California: progressive policy in the (municipal code) sheets, regressive reality in the (city) streets. Booooo.

Another area where a councilmember appeared to backtrack, or perhaps not grasp the implications of the proposal that ultimately became the Council’s action for the evening, was Councilmember Loren Gameros’s commitment to ownership housing. As I recounted in the post about the December study session on housing, Councilmember Gameros made an impassioned plea to do everything we can to support the production and affordability of ownership housing. Did he understand, then, that the motion that he ultimately voted for included an in-lieu fee requirement on every for-ownership development in the Measure K sites, even developments of only one or two units? They might be labeled differently but an in-lieu fee is a tax. So I just want to make sure we’re crystal clear here: as written, the motion passed by Council last Tuesday will tax every ownership development in the Measure K sites and the funds raised may very well go to subsidize renters or create additional affordable rental units. Can someone explain to me why “Mr. Ownership” is now supporting a straight tax on ownership developments that will all but ensure our renter-owner ratio will erode?

Councilmember Don Harper was very missed last night. Being an ownership advocate himself and a quick study with respect to these kinds of ordinances, I’m fairly certain he would have grasped that issue on the dais and set Councilmember Gameros straight. And if that had happened, who knows what would have happened to Councilmember Marr’s substitute motion. I think it’s even money that Mayor Pro Tem Harlan’s original motion, which was to table the matter for another day, very well may have succeeded. I get that it’s not easy being the lone Republican on a Council otherwise manned by six Democrats. But on this issue I think his presence would have given this policy a chance to turn out very differently. Oh well.