STATUS: Second Amended Petition filed 10/15/2024 & Court Order RE: City Demurrer filing issued 9/19/2024

Bad Housing Element

Sausalito, CA

On March 8. 2023, we sued the city of Sausalito, California following the city’s adoption and self certification of a housing element we believe is noncompliant with state law.

The main issues are that Sausalito did not do an Environmental Impact Report for their Housing Element, which is a CEQA violation, and their site inventory contains too many unrealistic sites. 

The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) certified Sausalito’s Housing Element on April 28, 2023, despite our, and other members of the public’s, objections.

Since we filed our petition prior to HCD’s certification, we amended our complaint on May 30th, 2024 to include our allegations that HCD’s certification was also improper.

The city of Sausalito then filed a demurrer (essentially a request to dismiss the case) on July 2nd, 2024, alleging that our petition’s second and third causes of action did not constitute valid causes of action, and that for the second cause of action, we failed to allege facts sufficient to rebut the presumption that the 6th Cycle Housing Element is valid. For the third cause of action, they alleged our claim was unripe and therefore fails as a matter of law. Our second cause of action was essentially that the city violated housing element law for a number of reasons, including that their housing element’s site inventory included too many unrealistic sites. Our third cause of action was essentially that the city failed to implement their required housing element programs.

We went to court on September 11th, 2024, and successfully argued that the city was wrong about the third cause of action, and the court overruled the city’s demurrer. For the second cause of action, the court allowed us to amend our petition.