Holding Los Angeles Accountable: Why We're Challenging the City's Housing Law Compliance (And Their Math Tricks)

Earlier this year, YIMBY Law and Californians for Homeownership filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles because we believe the City has failed to comply with critical state laws intended to address California's housing shortage. The City recently filed a demurrer, asking the court to dismiss our case. We have a hearing coming up in a few weeks where we’ll get a chance to argue some of the points outlined in this post. Follow the link above to read the full legal brief filings from the case; that’s also where we post updates about the status of our case when we have them. Read on for a deeper dive about why our upcoming hearing is important!

The filing of a demurrer is typically a delay tactic, but what it means is that the City believes that, even if the court takes the facts we’re alleging as true, they haven’t broken any laws. Our filing opposing that demurrer lays out in detail why the City's arguments are baseless and why our claims must proceed to ensure LA fulfills its promises to create much-needed housing.

At the heart of our lawsuit are two main issues:
1) the City's failure to properly rezone enough land for housing by the state deadline, and
2) the City's failure to complete numerous specific actions it promised to undertake in its state-approved Housing Element.

Here’s how we believe the City is trying to avoid accountability:

Issue 1: The City Has NOT Adequately Rezoned – They Used Math Tricks Instead

State law requires every city and county in the state, including Los Angeles, to plan for their share of regional housing needs (known as the RHNA, or Regional Housing Needs Allocation) and, if they don't have enough appropriately zoned land, they must rezone to accommodate that need by a specific deadline. 

Because Los Angeles is a city that doesn’t have much vacant land where it’s obvious new housing can be built, they instead need to plan for more housing by redeveloping land in the city that already has development on it: church parking lots, strip malls, old houses and apartments, offices, warehouses, you name it…any land could be potentially redeveloped for housing so long as these sites are likely to be redeveloped. In other words, the City needs to show that they’ve identified enough sites with enough “realistic capacity” on them that they, and the public, can be confident that enough housing development will occur on them over the next few years that the city will be able to achieve at least it’s minimum fair share of their regional housing need.

When LA put together their housing element in 2021, they used what we thought was a very thoughtful approach to figuring out what their existing realistic capacity was. They created, with the help of academics at the University of California, a probabilistic model to figure out the realistic capacity of their potential housing sites. Using this approach in 2021, the City determined it needed to rezone sites for at least 255,432 additional homes to meet its goals.

Los Angeles had a deadline of February 12, 2025, to rezone land sufficient to accommodate this capacity shortfall, which, again, they themselves had calculated, and, as part of the total of 255k homes, they needed to rezone for at least 130,553 homes affordable to lower-income households.

In its state-certified Housing Element, the City outlined a specific plan, called Program 121, to achieve this rezoning through actions like updating sixteen community plans, adopting specific plans, and creating a citywide incentive program.

Our Claim: The City failed to complete most of these specific, promised actions by the deadline. Instead, they’ve acted as if they’ve met their obligation primarily through a new Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and updates to only two community plans.

The City's Argument (and why we disagree): The City claims that by adopting CHIP and a few plans, it has already completed its RHNA rezoning obligation and even "far exceed[ed]" the required capacity. They argue the law only requires them to rezone for the total shortfall amount, not necessarily complete every specific action listed in their program. They say our interpretation would lead to "absurd consequences" by requiring them to rezone for double their need. They rely on their own City Council findings from a Council hearing in February 2025 as proof of compliance that they’ve adequately rezoned.

Our Response: Their Claim of Compliance is Baseless and Relies on "Math Tricks."

We argue the City's assertion that it has adequately rezoned is based on baseless and unreliable city council findings made just before the deadline. We allege the City abandoned the sophisticated method it used in its Housing Element to calculate the realistic capacity of sites for housing development and when it came time to actually rezone, made up a new way of determining its rezoned sites’ realistic capacity that vastly overestimated the city’s ability to meet its RHNA goals compared to when they had calculated how many homes they needed to rezone for in the first place .

• The Original Method: When the City adopted its Housing Element, it used an advanced probabilistic model to determine the realistic capacity of potential housing sites. This model was important because state law recognizes that just because a site is zoned for housing doesn't mean housing can realistically be built there, especially on non-vacant sites where existing uses are presumed to impede new development unless there's evidence otherwise.  This model looked at things like how old buildings are, what they're used for, and economic trends to estimate how likely a site was to actually be redeveloped for housing during the housing element period (by October 2029), and used this to adjust the potential housing capacity.

• The Abandoned Method and the "Math Trick": We allege that when it came time to demonstrate it had met its rezoning obligations, the City abandoned this careful probabilistic model. Instead, its February 2025 findings and the accompanying table (the "Rezoning Table") used an alternative analysis that drastically overestimates realistic capacity. This new method uses a simplistic realistic capacity adjustment that does not meaningfully adjust for likelihood of development in the way the probabilistic model did.

Here’s how the city’s math trick doesn’t make sense. Below are examples from the City's original table of sites that they planned to rezone (the columns labeled Appendix 4.1), and their 2025 Rezoning Table (the two rightmost columns) that show this flawed analysis in action:

• On one site (PIN 126B145-848), the City's new zoning supposedly increased the maximum zoned capacity (with pre-existing state density bonuses) by about 15% (from 20 to 22.96 units). Yet, the City claims the realistic capacity on that site somehow skyrocketed by around 14,500% (from 0.0688 units to 10 units).

• On another site (PIN 114B185-1207), the City's new program actually provides less capacity than what was allowed under previous density bonuses, yet the City claims the realistic capacity has increased by over 2,000% (from 0.0949 units to 2 units).

We argue these aren't isolated incidents; these anomalies pervade the City's capacity calculations. This isn't genuine rezoning creating realistic housing opportunities; it's a change in arithmetic used to inflate the city’s numbers to avoid their rezoning responsibilities.

Furthermore, the City's list of "rezoned" sites with realistic capacity includes locations that are plainly baseless for housing development by 2029. We're talking about sites like County courthouses, City Hall East (where the City's own lawyers work!), and one of the most expensive high schools ever constructed in the United States, the Central No. 9 Visual and Performing Arts High School, that cost $232 million to complete and opened in 2009. It would have been one thing if the city had said that one of these sites represented a hundredth of a unit of realistic capacity or something as they did in 2021, but the city now claims that these sites have significant multifamily housing redevelopment potential by 2029, which is clearly unrealistic.

Our Legal Argument to Force LA to do the Rezoning They Committed to: We maintain that the phrase "the rezoning required" in Government Code section 65587(d)(1) does refer to the specific program outlined in the City's adopted Housing Element (Program 121) because that program is how the City chose to meet its state law obligation. To say otherwise would render the detailed rezoning program in the Housing Element a mere paper exercise, which the Legislature could not have intended. We also argue that even if the City's interpretation were correct, its realistic capacity analysis is fundamentally flawed and fails to comply with the law. 

Issue 2: The City's Housing Element Programs ARE Enforceable Mandates

Beyond just rezoning, our lawsuit challenges the City's failure to complete numerous other specific program actions outlined in its Housing Element. These programs are intended to identify sites, remove constraints, and assist with housing development.

Our Claim: The City has missed deadlines and failed to complete many of these specific program actions it committed to, such as creating a Citywide Housing Needs Allocation plan by 2024, establishing public assistance counters by 2024, creating new incentives for senior housing by 2024, reducing permit times for affordable projects, and adopting zoning to facilitate shelter siting by 2025.

The City's Argument (and why we disagree): The City claims that the commitments in its Housing Element programs are not legally enforceable "ministerial duties." They argue these are discretionary actions, subject to available resources and future policy decisions. They point to introductory language in the Housing Element stating that the listing of programs "does not obligate the City to accomplish them" and that timelines are only "anticipated".

Our Response: State Law Specifically Makes These Programs Enforceable.

The City's argument completely ignores Government Code section 65583(h), which specifically authorizes litigation to enforce Housing Element program actions and directs that such lawsuits "shall be brought pursuant to Section 1085 of the Code of Civil Procedure". This means that these program commitments are enforceable under Section 1085, even if they might not fit a general definition of a "ministerial duty" in other legal contexts.

Section 1085 describes the legal procedure for what is what is known as a “writ of mandate.” In other words it's the procedure lawyers and courts follow if the goal is for a court to issue an order compelling a city to do something it is required to do (like, in this case, rezone for more housing). 

We are seeking to enforce specific commitments with specific deadlines that the City included in its certified Housing Element. For example, the City promised to create a Citywide Housing Needs Allocation plan by 2024 to help inform its rezoning, but it claimed to have completed the rezoning process without ever producing this promised plan. Allowing the City to use vague introductory language to escape these concrete, deadline-driven obligations would make the entire state Housing Element scheme meaningless.

The Bottom Line:

The City of Los Angeles made specific commitments in its Housing Element regarding both rezoning and program implementation. It failed to meet these commitments and deadlines. The City's attempt to dismiss our lawsuit relies on flawed interpretations of state law and attempts to present nothing but the City Council’s word, based on math tricks – as proof of compliance. State law provides clear avenues to challenge these failures. We are confident that the court will see through the City's arguments and allow our case to proceed, holding the City accountable for its legal obligations to plan for and facilitate the housing desperately needed by its residents.