West Hollywood, California (December 14, 2009) - A lawsuit brought by developers in the wake of the West Hollywood’s 2007 “urgency” residential building moratorium prevailed in a State Court of Appeals earlier this month.
Petitioners Hoffman Street LLC and Harper Project LLC appealed a lower court’s adverse decision to the Second Appellate Court claiming WeHo violated state law when the City Council delayed a decision on Hoffman Street's development application on the same day it adopted an "urgency" moratorium on all multi-family housing development, citing "... a current and immediate threat to the public health, safety and welfare."
Land use lawyer Benjamin M. Reznik said of his client’s victory, "We have seen the projects of numerous property owners stopped in their tracks by last-minute ordinances against multi-family development.”
West Hollywood is now liable for damages in the case.
The West Hollywood Urgency Interim Ordinance held sway in the city for two years, until this past July when it elapsed as required by state law.
The appellate court decided that the West Hollywood moratorium against multi-family housing development violated the state law that regulates such urgency ordinances by failing to adopt findings specified in the code.
In the judgment the Court wrote: "We believe that to satisfy the requirements of [Government Code section 65858 (c)(1)] a written finding by the legislative body must identify both (i) a specific, 'significant, quantifiable, direct, and unavoidable impact' upon the public health or safety that would result from continued development approvals, and (ii) objective, 'written public health or safety standards, policies, or conditions' on which that impact is based."
Mr. Jenkins said that “case was decided on very narrow grounds… and section 65858 (c) requires certain findings, but section 65858 (g) says you don’t have to make certain findings regarding affordable housing,” which stood at the basis of the moratorium.
The purpose of the urgency ordinance was to stop exactly the zero-growth in affordable housing the Hoffman Street project offered.
Hoffman Street submitted an application to the City of West Hollywood in January 2006 to demolish its existing 16-unit apartment building and build a 17-unit condominium complex in an area zoned for multi-family residential uses.
The application ran into delays that ran into the moratorium; it was not deemed “complete,” and therefore subject to the eventually re-named “Interim Urgency Ordinance.”
Mr. Jenkins said that the court ‘just didn’t get” that the ordinance was designed to increase the number of affordable units the city could net from redevelopment, making the judgment disheartening.
He questioned just how the plaintiff would prove damages in a market where luxury condo sales have ground to a halt.
“How will they prove they lost, say, $250,000 a unit because of the moratorium and not because of the lousy housing market? We’ve got developers all over town losing their shirts in this market. It’s unquantifiable.”
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