California sues city of Norwalk over ban on homeless housing

LOS ANGELES (CN) — California sued the small city of Norwalk, in the southeast part of Los Angeles County, on Monday over its refusal to build new homeless housing.

“California is facing an existential housing crisis,” state Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference. “I tell our local jurisdictions all the time: none of you need to do everything, but all of you need to do something.”

He added: “If local governments attempt to skirt state housing laws, we will hold them accountable. They saw this coming. And they chose this path.”

Governor Gavin Newsom, in a statement, called Norwalk’s ban “inexcusable,” adding: “No community should turn its back on its residents in need.”

Norwalk is a heavily Latino city with a population of just over 100,000, at the far southeast end of the county — closer to Disneyland than Downtown LA. In August, its five-member City Council passed one of the toughest anti-homeless housing measures in the state, placing a temporary, 45-day construction moratorium on not just homeless shelters and long-term supportive housing, but also on new laundromats, liquor stores and payday lenders — that is, businesses that dominate low-income neighborhoods.

Newsom blasted the moratorium, calling it “beyond cruel,” and revoked the city’s compliance with the housing element law, which makes Norwalk ineligible to receive certain funding for state housing and homelessness. It also means the city can’t legally deny certain affordable housing projects. Instead of backing down, the Norwalk City Council doubled down, extending the ban for a full year.

The moratorium was passed as an emergency zoning ordinance, which cities are allowed to do but only after written legislative findings show that an imminent threat to public health, safety and welfare that can be ameliorated by a zoning change. Bonta said that the city had failed to do that, calling it a “cynical… attempt to circumvent our state housing laws.”

Despite threats of a lawsuit by Bonta’s office, Norwalk refused to budge.

“The City Council imposed the moratorium despite having no factual or evidentiary support its ‘findings’ that the presence of shelter and supportive housing posses an immediate harm,” Bonta says in the complaint, filed in LA Superior Court. “In doing so, the City Council determined that leaving hundreds of Californians unhoused, living on its streets and in its public places, was less a threat to the public health, safety and welfare than permitting the development of shelter and supportive housing.”

“California’s housing laws,” he added in the complaint, “are not optional.”

City officials had justified the ban by saying it had already done enough for the region’s still-massive homeless population, but had not received its share of state funding. Residents have complained that hotels converted into temporary homeless housing have become focal points for loitering. One such project, with 210 rooms, led to numerous reports of panhandling. The site closed after 16 months and wasn’t renewed, which meant that hundreds of people returned to the streets. Some of the city’s concerns were echoed by a Superior Court judge in 2021, who called the large converted motel a “public nuisance,” and criticized the county for concentrating hotel conversions “in working class, minority communities like Norwalk.”

Bonta has made housing a top priority, suing a number of cities like Beverly Hills, Huntington Beach, La Cañada Flintridge, Elk Grove and Coronado over their refusal to plan for and allow the construction of more homes.

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