What Advocates and Critics Are Saying About California’s 2022 Law Allowing More Duplexes

As of January 1, 2022, SB 9, known as the California HOME Act, is valid throughout the state of California. The law allows homeowners to build two 800-square-meter areas on their lot or divide it in two, for a total of four houses before a single-family lot. Prosecutors say it will address the state’s severe shortage of affordable housing, create generational wealth and bring more rental opportunities and property rights to people in preferred neighborhoods.

“This is the first small step to righting 50 years of mistakes in California cities where they distributed all of their properties and all of their urban areas into one house and started a historic housing crisis that is getting worse every year,” he said. . . Matthew Lewis, Director of Communications for YIMBY California (which means “Yes, in my backyard”).

Although the bill faced strong opposition, 71% of Californians opposed it, according to a poll this year. Brian Salem, a realtor at a partner real estate agency, believes the project is not just government hype but bad policy. “If the state wanted to develop more housing, it should encourage local communities that are more familiar with their communities to get higher-income areas,” he said.

According to Adrian Scott Fain of the LA Conservancy, SB 9 (which excludes designated historic neighborhoods) and other laws passed by the California Legislature in recent years can tarnish the character of certain neighborhoods. “They are just very blunt tools. “And I think that’s the biggest concern: that even if its use is well-intentioned and how it unfolds on the ground, it could be disastrous for some neighborhoods,” he said.

There is also concern that the value of the property could be adversely affected. “When you have four buildings, a house next door is going to be less desirable to someone, right? They won’t want that. “Especially when this building doesn’t have effective parking restrictions,” explains Selem.

Opponents believe developers, not individual homeowners, will be the ultimate beneficiaries of SB 9. “Investors will simply buy homes and split a family home into four,” Kenny Stevens of the Kenny Stevens team told Compass Real. Realtor. “They will not rent with low or middle income; “They will try to maximize their income.”

Maria Paul Calbani of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and co-founder of United Neighbors agrees, noting that SB 9 will continue the trend of developers buying vacant land and raising prices. “They just buy houses and use them to rent or sell because they own the land and that’s what they’re looking for,” he said. “So now my daughter is competing with someone who has a lot of money, and you are fighting wars whose pay you will never allow you to resist.”

That concern prompted some local government leaders, including the mayor of Solana Beach, to write to the governor. Newsom and protested the bill. Now that SB 9 has been adopted and enacted, local towns including Torrance, Carson and Redondo Beach have filed suit to appeal the bill.

Cities are also struggling with local laws. Pasadena recently implemented an “emergency ordinance” to exempt about 20% of the city from SB 9 regulations, which the state government has declared null and void and must be revoked within 30 days.

For SB 9 supporters, the opposition’s concern for nothing is a big fuss. “The sounds are very loud, but not too loud,” says Lewis. “There will be people in one of the houses in the building who oppose SB 9 because they say the duplex will destroy the neighbor. He says, “Man, three doors down from you is a duplex.”

According to recent reports, only about 500,000 properties in the entire state of California qualify under SB 9 and there are no significant subsidies to encourage homeowners to take advantage of it. “When you spread it out across the state, what you see is one or two districts,” Lewis said.

“There won’t be as many people taking advantage of this to change the face of the neighborhood,” agrees Stevens. “People overreact to everything.”