Seth I. Pickens
Features Editor
On Apr. 10 Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Robert A. Bonta announced a plan to amend their lawsuit against Huntington Beach for refusing to comply with California’s Housing Element Law.
Homelessness is a huge problem in the U.S. especially in California. According to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report, conducted by The Department of Housing and Urban Development, California had the most homeless people in the nation with over 170,000 recorded homeless people, more than double that of second place, New York.
In order to counteract the homelessness epidemic the Housing Element Law was passed to make sure that all local governments were doing their part, and the Department Housing and Community Development was founded to upkeep the standards of new housing projects.
The state of California originally filed the suit because of Huntington Beach;s refusal to approve a housing plan, as mandated by the HEL. After the city did not approve a plan that would supply 13,000+ housing units to the city, the state doubled down on their lawsuit against Huntington Beach.
The city denied any wrongdoing, reasoning that the state was overstepping its bounds and the environmental impact outweighed the benefits of building affordable housing. This is evidently untrue once you look at the raw data.
According to data on Zillow, the average prices of homes in Huntington Beach are more than $1.1 million, almost 160% higher than the average home in California and over 340% higher than the average home across the U.S..
The housing prices in Huntington Beach show that the city is leading the charge on unaffordable housing. Constructing affordable housing units will be an extreme increase in quality for many of the city’s impoverished residents.
Some leaders of Huntington Beach claim that California’s enforcement of the HEL is an abuse of power that doesn’t have the best intentions for its residents. In an interview Huntington Beach Councilman Casey MKeon said that he will never stop fighting against state overreach in order to protect the city he loves and the amazing residents who elected him.
The issue with Councilman McKeon’s statement is that his actions don’t seek to protect all of the residents. The houseless are still residents and voters who deserve to be protected as much as anyone else, if not more so. It is imperative that every city works together to lower housing prices to accommodate lower income people.
Huntington Beach’s constant inconsideration of the unhoused is extremely problematic. One can understand why Huntington Beach’s leadership would want more power over certain aspects of the legislature, but by refusing to build affordable housing, the city has committed a horrible deed and is putting hundreds of homeless and thousands of impoverished in danger.
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