The City of Coronado is being tasked with coming up with 912 new units to meet state requirements, more than half of those should be for low-income residents, up from the 50 the city was mandated to have back in 2010. The city has already received a notice of violation of the mandate from the Department of Housing and Community Development.
Megan Kirkeby, Deputy Director for Housing Policy with the department says there are consequences for municipalities and counties that are non-compliant with their eight-year development plan. The plan mandates a specific number of new affordable housing units that must be developed based on a formula that factors in projected population growth and proximity to mass transit and jobs.
Kirkeby says they want to help communities become compliant but consequences can range from expediting rezoning to finding an area to build more affordable housing, to losing out on funding opportunities from the state for development.
"Then the most serious and long-term consequences are legal ramifications. So the state, but also third parties, can sue local governments that are not in compliance with the law," Kirkeby said. "So those can be financial penalties, all the way up to putting a jurisdiction in receivership and saying that someone else needs to go and complete their housing planning for them."
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According to the real estate website Zillow, the median home price in Coronado is $2.2 million.
Luis De La Cruz, who works at a coffee shop in downtown Coronado, says most of his coworkers live very far away and commute great distances because they can't afford to live close to where they work.
"Actually, I couldn’t do it by myself. My boss is a cosigner with me, that was the only way I could, I could get a house," he said.
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In a statement to NBC 7, the Mayor of Coronado, Richard Bailey said:
"The city of Coronado continues to work in good faith to comply with the state's housing goals while maintaining the quality of life that our residents and visitors enjoy. Our unique geography, proximity to an airfield, and coastal zone considerations, in addition to having one of the highest population densities in the country currently make achieving compliance challenging."
In September, the California Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit brought by the city of Coronado, challenging the mandated zoning requirements for low-income housing.
