{"id":106454,"date":"2025-12-23T15:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T15:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/106454\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T15:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T15:03:14","slug":"del-mar-responds-to-doj-letter-about-seaside-ridge-proposal-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/106454\/","title":{"rendered":"Del Mar responds to DOJ letter about Seaside Ridge proposal \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The city of Del Mar responded in <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1Ww1YdDb7H_xknw9bqLUdvYsIdv8zLOB8\/view?usp=sharing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a Dec. 19 letter<\/a> 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 \u201cincomplete.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The letter from the DOJ, sent on behalf of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, said the city\u2019s handling of the application for the project, known as Seaside Ridge, \u201ccould be seen as a deliberate attempt to avoid an adjudication regarding the applicability of the Housing Accountability Act\u2019s Builder\u2019s Remedy provisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Builder\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s letter says that it has made \u201cmany attempts to lawfully process the Seaside Ridge development application,\u201d but property owner Carol Lazier has not submitted the necessary materials to change the zoning of the proposed site at the city\u2019s north bluff.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe developer believes that the Builder\u2019s Remedy applies to their development proposal and that the California Coastal Act and the California Environmental Quality Act do not apply,\u201d Assistant City Attorney Ralph Hicks said in the city\u2019s reply. \u201cHowever, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In October, Lazier renewed a petition in San Diego County Superior Court that would allow Seaside Ridge to proceed, arguing that city officials \u201chave affirmatively and repeatedly violated\u2014in bad faith including through actions and inactions that are frivolous, pretextual, intended to cause unnecessary delay or entirely without merit\u2014the 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Del Mar responded in a Dec. 19 letter to the state Department of Justice, which&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[310,57465,311,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-106454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-del-mar-times","tag-del-mar-times-business","tag-del-mar-times-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}