Judge Halts Permits for Beverly Hills Home Renovations Over Lack of Affordable Housing

In December, a Los Angeles judge put a moratorium on building permit issuance in Beverly Hills except for new residential development, which would bring all home improvements in the neighborhood to a halt. “The ruling is a penalty for Beverly Hill’s failure to approve a sufficient blueprint for affordable housing,” reports to Los Angeles Times staff writer Liam Dillon.

The state has rejected five blueprints from Beverly Hills since summer 2021, the same year the California Association of Realtors, a housing advocacy group, filed the lawsuit. The city’s blueprint is required under state law to accommodate 3,104 new homes, three-quarters of which are affordable to low- and middle-income residents and subject to requirements to allow people of all incomes to live in every community and encourage more development near job centers and mass transit.

The problem? “The city’s strategy has been to try to continue to wall off its existing residential neighborhoods — those with the mega-mansions and apartments buildings alike — and instead concentrate growth in commercial areas through mixed-use development,” writes Dillon. State housing department officials say the city’s plans overestimate how many commercial properties like car dealerships and medical offices can (and realistically will) be converted into residential and don’t allow more affordable housing in the city’s whiter, more affluent neighborhoods. The judge agreed.

Housing advocates applauded the decision, which is considered among the most concrete consequences for wealthy communities resisting California’s push for cities to allow for housing to-date. Moratoriums have been issued in similar cases for some time, “[b]ut targeting a community as wealthy — and with as busy and expensive a home remodeling industry — as Beverly Hills is unprecedented,” Bill Fulton, a fellow at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation and an expert on California planning, told the Los Angeles Times.

Beverly Hills officials say they are appealing the decision and will continue to process permits normally in the interim. They also plan to submit additional information about the city’s housing blueprint to the state in the coming weeks in the hopes of getting it approved soon.