A message from our friends at United Neighbors

3/24/26

Hi All,

Today’s City Council hearing had to be one of the most confusing we have ever heard. It took us a while to confirm what went on. Here is the low down.

They passed C1 with an amendment. The Council wants Planning to come up with a local alternative plan that basically allows 3-4 story apartments in single family neighborhoods (4 story if they add 3 or more bedroom unit apartments) in these SB 79 qualifying areas but to allow more height than 3 stories on the actual corridor. We already allow more height on corridors but they want to see what other incentives will make more development happen here since little development is happening on corridors. (ULA may be the problem)

All HPOZs, high fire zones, low resource, 1 foot sea rise areas are exempt for 4 years. At the end of four years, the city has to have a plan that allows the full SB 79 density to take effect. The city will use these four years to find ways of adding that density in the most appropriate areas through an alternate local plan.

We have a meeting with Planning to clarify this further on Thursday, so if you have any questions send them off to us so we can get back to you with answers.

Thank you all for all the letters that appeared on the council file supporting C1 and the hundreds of letters sent to our council members. We succeeded in getting C1 passed. Nazarian continued to ask for by mail notification for impacted residents and All HPOZs are deferred, not just ones established prior to 2015. So we got a lot. We are still concerned about respecting prevailing setbacks and we will let you know our “next steps” as we continue to try and make this the best outcome for residents.

Again, many thanks to all of you for making this the best outcome of a terrible bill.

Best,

Maria, Cindy, Jeff, Marc