Victory in Laguna Beach! Family can finally build ADU, City (reluctantly) says
On the evening of July 8, as the last item in a grueling seven-hour meeting, the Laguna Beach City Council voted to grant a coastal development permit (CDP) to Pacific Legal Foundation clients Steve and Karen Reinecke—a hard-won victory that allows the Reineckes to finally build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on their property.
ADUs are secondary structures built alongside existing homes. The California Legislature has called ADUs an “essential component” in addressing the state’s “severe housing crisis,” and the Department of Housing and Community called the Reineckes’ proposed ADU a “badly needed housing unit.” Steve and Karen want to build one as part of their retirement plan: The couple plans to rent out the ADU in the short term, then have family or caretakers move in as they age.
Building an ADU should have been no problem in Laguna Beach. The City had a practice of processing ADUs without CDP requirements, pursuant to a California Coastal Commission-issued Categorical Exclusion Order that covered single-family residential development. But when the Reineckes’ neighbors raised a fuss about this ADU, the City worked with the Coastal Commission to reverse course and find (bizarrely) that the Exclusion Order did not apply to ADUs.
PLF helped the Reineckes file a lawsuit challenging the City’s about-face. But we put the lawsuit under a stay to seek a CDP anyway, hoping we could get the ADU built and help our clients move on with their lives.
Although the City’s staff and its director of Community Development found the project was entitled to a CDP because it fully complied with all local coastal policies, the City Council on review initially punted, finding that the project might have an adverse impact on coastal scenic resources, i.e., public views of protected coastal vistas. The issue? Viewed from one spot within a cul-de-sac abutting the Reineckes’ property, a small portion of inland ridgeline would be obscured by the ADU. But the entirety of the ridgeline remains completely visible within the same cul-de-sac, just five yards away from the complained-of obstructed vantage-point. Besides, the proposed ADU was lower than the maximum height allowed by the City’s own codes; the Reineckes intentionally designed their project to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Adding to the absurdity, under the Exclusionary Order, all single-family residential development in this neighborhood is automatically exempt from coastal permitting requirements because it poses “no risk of significant impacts on coastal resources.” In other words, the City’s position was that if the Reineckes built a two-story residence, there would be no risk of coastal view impact, but because they are instead adding a second-story ADU to their one-story residence, the view impact was potentially disastrous.
At the first City Council hearing last month, Mayor Alex Rounaghi asked whether a public view impact had to be significant in order to deny a CDP. When told by his own attorneys that “ logically speaking,” there has to be some limiting principle on what constitutes a protectable public view (because otherwise “it would be difficult in many ways to allow development in this City” at all), he replied that “there’s a lot of illogical things with how we do things in the coastal zone, but those are the rules of the game. The rules of the game are that it is very subjective.” The City Council ultimately continued the hearing until the next meeting, seeking more advice on whether they could exercise unlimited discretion and the extent of their potential legal liability if they unlawfully denied the project.
At last night’s hearing, the City finally gave up. The mayor said:
We have looked at every single possible way [to block this ADU]. . . but when you have a lawsuit that’s based on grounds that really would be hard for us to win . . . I mean if we’re paying [out] a bunch of these lawsuits and the ADU will still get built, then no one’s a winner. We’ve been spending more time [than usual] on this project to try to find a way… but it feels like we’ve gotten to the end of the road here where it’s like, what other options are there besides setting ourselves up for a lawsuit that we will, you know, I just don’t see the argument for how we would win that lawsuit.
In other words, PLF’s lawsuit ensured the City played by the rules and stemmed the waste of time and resources that the City was committed to in its quest to find some way, any way, to block the ADU. Now that the Reineckes have their permit, they should finally be free to build.
