Newport Beach City Council skips ballot initiative, approves steps required to implement housing element

After taking into consideration possible ramifications, the Newport Beach City Council this week approved amendments to the general plan and other steps necessary to implement its housing element rather than take those issues to the voters in the Nov. 5 election.

The raft of ordinances and resolutions approved by the City Council clear some of the final hurdles before the city’s efforts to plan for more housing, primarily near John Wayne Airport, Dover/Westcliff, West Newport Mesa, Newport Center, Banning Ranch and Coyote Canyon.

The council members could have opted to let voters decide whether Newport Beach’s general plan would be amended to allow for additional housing density. But, ultimately, they found that doing so and potentially seeing the item fail at the polls would result in the city violating state law.

“‘Keeping Newport Newport’ has been a guiding principal and a promise I made to you, the general public,” Mayor Pro Tem Joe Stapleton said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “Tonight that’s being put to the test. Because of this commitment of ‘keeping Newport Newport,’ I find clarity amidst the technicalities and legal nuance.”

Newport Beach is mandated to zone for an additional 4,845 residential units by the 2029 end of the current Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) Cycle. The plan worked out by planning officials would zone for the addition of 8,174 units. That number could be even higher if projects qualify for density bonuses, which are exceptions that allow developers to exceed unit density and height limits in exchange for offering more affordable housing or some other benefit to the community.

Defender’s of the city’s housing plan note that a certain portion of new development must be accessible to low and very-low income households, something especially difficult to accomplish in Newport Beach’s coastal property market. As a result, they say significantly more homes than the number required by the RHNA must be built to make up for a lack of potential affordable housing.

Members of the community who came out Tuesday night to speak against the general plan amendments and housing element said few if any other cities in Orange County are maintaining as high a buffer over RHNA requirements as is Newport Beach. Some claimed they city’s housing plan could allow for around 30,000 new residents, resulting in a population boom that could leave schools, infrastructure and city services stretched thin.

“The city’s proposed housing plan is nothing more than a developer giveaway that allows large developers to flood Newport Beach with overcrowded high density like the kind we see in Irvine and Anaheim,” resident and former Councilman Jeff Herdman said during public comments.

A majority of the people who addressed the council were opposed to the housing plan. They called on the panel to give residents an opportunity to decide whether or not to move forward with it.

If the issue was placed on the ballot and voters wound up rejecting the amendments, that would leave little time for Newport Beach officials to come up with an alternative road map to add more homes. And if a housing plan isn’t implemented by February 2025, the California Department of Housing and Community Development may find the city to be out of compliance with state law.

That could open the city up to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly fines and use of the “builder’s remedy,” a provision of the state Housing Accountability Act that allows developers to ignore local zoning codes in cities that aren’t in line with state housing laws. It was the basis of a court decision in March overriding the authority of the La Cañada Flintridge City Council after it denied the development of a five-story building.

The conservative majority on Huntington Beach’s City Council has aggressively pushed back against state mandates to increase the availability of homes amid a reported housing crisis. That has led to a protracted legal battle between their city attorney and the state, resulting in rulings against Huntington Beach. Earlier this month, the city’s conservative council members voted to put a charter amendment on the November general election ballot related to zoning changes or general plan updates.

“I do not want Newport to turn into something else. Sometimes you have to stand back, look at it from a different perspective and decide the way you have to fight is through threading the needle,” said Councilman Noah Blom.

“We’ve seen what our neighbors to the north do,” Blom continued, referring to Huntington Beach. “They go full frontal, and how’s that work? Builder’s remedy, huge issues with the state, lawsuits coming forth. That is not our style.”