Del Mar responds to DOJ letter about Seaside Ridge proposal

The city of Del Mar responded in a Dec. 19 letter to the state Department of Justice, which had given the city a written warning that it may be violating state housing law by its decision that a 259-unit housing project application was “incomplete.”

The letter from the DOJ, sent on behalf of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, said the city’s handling of the application for the project, known as Seaside Ridge, “could be seen as a deliberate attempt to avoid an adjudication regarding the applicability of the Housing Accountability Act’s Builder’s Remedy provisions.”

The Builder’s Remedy allows certain housing projects to exceed local zoning requirements if the project application is submitted to a city that does not have a state-certified housing element, which is a planning document that maps out the zoning to accommodate new housing across all income levels.

The Seaside Ridge preliminary development application was submitted in October 2022, several months before Del Mar received certification for its housing element from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

The city’s letter says that it has made “many attempts to lawfully process the Seaside Ridge development application,” but property owner Carol Lazier has not submitted the necessary materials to change the zoning of the proposed site at the city’s north bluff.

“The developer believes that the Builder’s Remedy applies to their development proposal and that the California Coastal Act and the California Environmental Quality Act do not apply,” Assistant City Attorney Ralph Hicks said in the city’s reply. “However, according to state housing laws this is not the case. As demonstrated below, every action the City has taken regarding the Seaside Ridge application is undeniably consistent with state housing laws and more importantly with the California Coastal Act.”

In October, Lazier renewed a petition in San Diego County Superior Court that would allow Seaside Ridge to proceed, arguing that city officials “have affirmatively and repeatedly violated—in bad faith including through actions and inactions that are frivolous, pretextual, intended to cause unnecessary delay or entirely without merit—the most basic of legislative mandates adopted by the State to provide for the development of housing sufficient to meet its housing need for all income levels.”