[URBAN NOTE] On suing suburbs of San Francisco for rental housing

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Robin Levinson King wrote earlier this month about an initiative by a San Francisco group to force suburbs to allow rental housing.

An advocacy group has a novel solution to the affordable housing crisis that’s gripped many cities across North America: sue the suburbs.

The SF Bay Area Renters’ Federation is using a little-known law to force the tony garden suburb of Lafayette, Calif., located about an hour east of San Francisco, to build rental housing. On Monday night, the city council downsized a 315-unit apartment complex proposal to just 44 single-family homes.

Sonja Trauss, the champion of the Sue the Suburbs campaign, called the decision “mean spirited” and said it limits access to affordable housing.

“One of the reasons we have such high prices is we don’t have enough housing,” she told the Star.

The suit, which has yet to be filed, argues that the city council decision violates the California’s Housing Accountability Act, which says cities are not allowed to reject housing development proposals that meet existing zoning requirements.

The law, enacted in 1982, was specifically designed to keep cities and suburbs from using zoning powers to stop housing projects.