Would Be Imposed in Emergency : Panel OKs Standby Limit on Housing

A San Diego City Council committee Thursday approved plans for a standby housing cap that could be imposed on a community or the entire city if home construction outstrips an area’s ability to handle increased population.

The “interim development standby ordinance” would allow the City Council to declare an emergency and temporarily limit home building in any part of the city based on a finding that the public health and welfare would be endangered.

The 3-0 vote of the council’s Transportation and Land Use committee sends the ordinance to the full council, which must approve it before the plan can become city law.

8,000-Home Cap

Residential construction in San Diego has been capped at 8,000 homes annually since August, 1987, under the city’s interim development ordinance. Parts of the city and specific kinds of housing, such as housing for the poor, are exempt.

The council in January approved a new growth-management plan that contains no housing cap and agreed to gradually lift the interim cap by May 21. Two long-term growth management plans that contained housing caps were defeated by voters Nov. 8.

The new plan would offer the city protection against the kind of runaway construction that prompted the imposition of the existing housing cap in 1987. It would allow the council to declare that the rate of new home building was outstripping the capacity of roads, sewers, parks or schools to handle population increases.

The ordinance does not specify how severe conditions must become before the council could declare an emergency, nor who must initiate the proceedings to declare one. The council is scheduled to discuss a plan for monitoring development and its impact on public facilities next month.

Majority Vote

Imposition of the ordinance would require a majority vote of the nine council members based on “what, in their legislative discretion, they find is a need to act to preserve the health, safety and welfare of the community,” said Janis Sammartino, a deputy city attorney who helped write the plan.

Once a cap is imposed, the city’s Planning Department would dole out building permits to developers based on a priority list contained in the ordinance. Housing for the poor, senior citizens, students and home building in redevelopment areas would be exempt from the cap. Other builders could apply to be released from the cap’s provisions.

The ordinance could limit homes scheduled to be built under “development agreements” and other arrangements that give builders a “vested” right to construct homes. The agreements are contracts under which the city trades a guaranteed right to build a specific number of homes in return for early construction of roads, schools, parks, fire stations or other facilities needed by residents of the area.

But James Milch, an attorney who has negotiated development agreements on behalf of large developers, said the contracts would give builders a strong argument for exemption from any temporary cap.

Sammartino declined to comment on that issue.