Letter to the Editor: Senate Bill 9

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Letter to the Editor: The Malibu Times

Senate Bill 9

If you are not familiar with California Senate Bill 9, you might want to. This bill could well impact many of us, but how exactly remains to be seen. Designed to address the critical housing shortage in California, Senate Bill 9, also known as the “Duplex Statute,” for all practical purposes, does away with R1 residential zoning and allows homeowners and developers to build two homes on the same parcel that now only allows a single house.

The law seems to remove the Planning Commission, the City Council, and the Coastal Commission from the approval process and allows the Planning Department to be the sole determinative body.

With the median price of homes in Malibu exceeding $5,000,000, housing in Malibu is anything but affordable. The State has made it clear that cities like Malibu are not exempt from the new statute, and the attitude of “not in my back yard” will not be tolerated.

Despite frequent discord on our City Council, the five members surprisingly vote more often in unison than not. We are going to need them more than ever to work together to address how best to prepare for Senate Bill 9 so that its implementation will be in keeping as much as possible with Malibu’s mission statement.

Burt Ross, Malibu