San Mateo County Governments Skirt Council-Supported Housing Law

In 2015 the Bay Area Council sponsored SB 1069 (Wieckowski) recognizing that Accessory Dwelling Units were an under-utilized source of housing in California.  That year less than 200 ADUs were permitted statewide, this year there will be more than 20,000.  Safe to say the law is working.  In 2018, recognizing that the State of California and local governments were consistently under projecting our future housing needs, the Bay Area Council sponsored SB 828 (Wiener) and today jurisdictions across California are required to zone 4 four to five times as many parcels for housing to meet their housing allocations as they did a decade ago. Safe to say that law is working as intended too.
 
This week the county civil grand jury found that several affluent San Mateo local governments are trying to use accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to satisfy their SB 828 mandated housing allocations.   Don’t get us wrong; ADUs are a great and innovative solution to our housing shortage, but they were only ever meant to complement our existing supply of housing, not supplant it.  Communities must continue to plan for and permit multi-family affordable housing, for sale housing, single family homes and ADUs, the full suite of choices, otherwise our region and our state will continue to be less and less affordable, and we will continue to lose our best and brightest young people to other states.