This month’s local land use ballot measures addressed some common issues – tenant protections, open space, and broad notions of local control included – and emerged with little by way of discernible patterns.

Most significantly, a measure to give Huntington Beach voters broad control over housing prevailed whereas a similar measure – in similarly iconoclastic Redondo Beach – failed. The Huntington Beach measure will certainly

Tenant protections, including rent control, passed in traditionally liberal cities and failed in more conservative and residential cities. countywide sales tax measure for transportation in San Diego County failed, by a slim margin. San Francisco’s high-profile attempt to shut the Great Highway to cars prevailed, as did several measures to strengthen urban growth boundaries. Finally, one of the most dramatic conflicts this year took place in Eureka, where voters thwarted the will of a local multimillionaire who wanted to prevent downtown parking lots from being redeveloped into housing.

It was, in short, a mixed bag – and also a poignant microcosm of land use debates in California.

Local Control

Several measures asked voters to impose broad-scale land use restrictions or give city councils expanded powers to disapprove projects.

The most aggressive of these measures was Huntington Beach’s Measure U, which declares land use to be a city affair and requires voter approval for plan amendments or zoning changes that could have negative environmental impacts. The measure implicitly rejects state intervention via programs like Regional Housing Needs Allocation and attempts to absolve the city council from potentially tough decisions about up zoning – positions that have already lost in court.

The measure prevailed 57%-43%. Its passage is likely to set up yet another legal battle between the state and Huntington Beach, which has repeatedly asserted its independence from many state land use regulations.

In South Pasadena, which has a notoriously slow-growth ethos, voters affirmed the city’s height limit of 45 feet in residential areas and allowed for the possibility of higher limits for multifamily residential development in certain commercial and mixed-use corridors by 19 percentage points. The measure is intended to accommodate the city's RHNA requirements with minimal impacts to single-unit residential districts; the city's analysis reads, "in essence, if housing units aren’t built taller in the identified corridors, they’ll expand horizontally, dispersing throughout neighborhoods citywide."

Voters Yorba Linda voted overwhelmingly—90%-10%— for Measure JJ, which restricts the amount of housing that can be built on certain parcels in the city. In San Benito County, Measure A is something of a meta-measure. It asked voters whether voter approval would be required for changing open space and agricultural parcels to other uses and removing a commercial designation from a stretch of Highway 101. It passed by 10 percentage points.

Voters in Redondo Beach agreed, in accordance with an earlier Superior Court ruling, to relinquish voter control over housing elements. Measure RB passed, 63%-37%.

St. Helena voters decided, 47%-53%, against becoming a charter city.

Projects
Only two measures asked voters to weigh in on specific projects. Both failed.

In Poway, 68% of voters rejected a jumbo version of a previously approved fitness club in the master-planned community of The Farm. By only a two-percent margin, voters in St. Helena rejected a proposed hotel on a winery.

A much more complex measure asked voters in Morro Bay to decide whether changes to zoning of about 170 acres along the city's waterfront could require a popular vote. The properties are being considered for a commercial battery factory. The measure passed by 18 percentage points, but new state laws regarding clean energy may yet enable the factory to bypass a popular vote. 

Open Space

A half-dozen ballot measures concerned open space, including urban growth boundaries and other protections. 

The measures, and results, were a mixed bag. Buellton voters approved an extension of the UGB through 2036 and the addition of 123 acres for potential development. In Cloverdale, voters approved Measure CC to do roughly the opposite: bring 114 acres into the city’s growth boundary so the city could preserve the acres as open space rather than allow them to be developed by the county. In Petaluma, voters approved Measure Y, 70%-30%, to extend the city’s urban growth boundary to 2050. Goleta voted to maintain strict voter approval for development on parcels that are currently zoned for farmland.

A different sort of open space measure, Prop. K, asked San Francisco voters whether to permanently close part of the Great Highway, which runs along the beach on the city’s western flank, to vehicles and open it to public recreation. The contentious measure was seen as a referendum on the primacy of automobiles. As of press time, Prop. K led with 54% of the vote.

Local Bonds

What might have been the most monumental local measure this year turned out to be, for lack of a better description, a nothingburger. San Diego County’s Measure G would have raised $350 million annually through a half-cent sales tax to fund road and rail upgrades, congestion reduction, safety improvements, environmental protections. But, San Diegans seemed to have little appetite for higher taxes. The measure fell, 48.3% - 51.7%.

Tenant Protections & Rent Control

Seven local ballots included six measures to protect tenants’ rights or expand rent control. Only two of them prevailed.

San Anselmo’s rent control measure, Measure N, was pummeled 65%-35%, and its measure to give benefits to tenants whose leases are not renewed, Measure O, failed by an even wider margin. In Larkspur, Measure K would have capped rent increases; it failed by 25 percentage points. Finally, Fairfax’s Measure I would have expanded rent control protections; it failed by 33 percentage points.

South Lake Tahoe voters addressed an increasingly popular strategy for promoting tenancy: a vacancy tax. Measure N proved to be woefully, but predictably, unpopular in a city with a significant number of vacation homes, failing by 50 percentage points.

Eureka’s Measure F asked voters to preserve three downtown parking lots rather than make them available for development into affordable housing. Backed by a wealthy Eureka-based businessman, Rob Arkley, 68% of the city’s voters opted in favor of housing. (See related CP&DR coverage.)

Berkeley’s Measure BB, which includes a hodgepodge of tenant protections, passed with a five-percent margin. Though it’s in historically conservative Orange County, Santa Ana is the largest and one of the most diverse cities in the county, with a poverty rate of 10%. It emphatically adopted rent control, 55%-45%, with Measure CC.

Complete Results

LOCAL CONTROL 

Huntington Beach Measure U, Charter Amendment Measure - Environmental Protection

Yes 43,601 57.41%
No 32,344 42.59%

Redondo Beach Measure RB, Land Use Approval and Sample Ballots Amendment

Yes 15,586 62.91%
No 9,190 37.09%

St. Helena Measure A1, Adoption of City Charter Measure

Yes 623 47.02%
No 702 52.98%

San Benito County Measure A, Land and Highway Designation Initiative

Yes 8,000 54.08%
No 6,793 45.92%

South Pasadena Measure SP, Building Height Limits Measure

Yes 5,579 59.20%
No 3,845 40.80%

Yorba Linda Measure JJ, Land Use Regulations Measure

Yes 26,728 90.47%
No 2,815 9.53%

PROJECTS

Morro Bay Measure A-24: Amend Plan Morro Bay 

Yes 2,638 59.00%
No  1,833 41.00%

Poway Measure H, Poway Specific Plan Amendment Measure

Yes 5,497 31.15%
No 12,149 68.85%

St. Helena Measure B, General Plan and Zoning Code Amendment Initiative

Yes 656 48.85%
No 687 51.15%

OPEN SPACE 

Buellton Measure C2024, Expand Urban Growth Boundary Measure

Yes 1,126 59.99%
No 751 40.01%

Cloverdale Measure CC, Urban Growth Boundary Measure

Yes 1,524 70.98%
No 623 29.02%

Dublin Measure II, Open Space Initiative Amendment

Yes 5,090 57.89%
No 3,703 42.11%

Fresno Measure BB, Ashlan-Hayes Annexation Measure

Yes 9 18.00%
No 41 82.00%

Goleta Measure G2024, Heritage Farmlands Program Initiative

Yes 7,819 72.95%
No 2,899 27.05%

Lompoc Measure R2024, Discontinue Public Park Use at Ken Adam Park Initiative

Yes 4,654 53.47%
No 4,050 46.53%

Petaluma Measure Y, Urban Growth Boundary Measure

Yes 13,389 69.38%
No 5,910 30.62%

San Francisco Proposition K, Close Upper Great Highway to Private Vehicles and Establish Public Open Recreation Space Measure

Yes 127,558 53.28%
No 111,839 46.72%

LOCAL BONDS 

San Diego County Measure G, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Safety Projects Sales Tax Measure

Yes 467,514 48.29%
No 500,652 51.71%

HOUSING & RENT CONTROL

Berkeley Measure BB, Housing and Tenants' Rights Measure

Yes 9,411 52.68%
No 8,453 47.32%

Berkeley Measure CC, Rent Payment Fund Measure

Yes 6,541 37.57%
No 10,871 62.43%

Eureka Measure F, General Plan Amendment Initiative

Yes 1,797 31.75%
No 3,863 68.25%

Fairfax Measure I, Rent Ordinances Town Code Amendment

Yes 1,588 66.50%
No 800 33.50%

Larkspur Measure K, Rent Increase Limitations Measure

Yes 1,544 37.15%
No 2,612 62.85%

San Anselmo Measure N, Rent Control Ordinance Measure

Yes 1,424 34.24%
No 2,735 65.76%

San Anselmo Measure O, Rental Property Owners Measure

Yes 1,301 30.94%
No 2,904 69.06%

Santa Ana Measure CC, Rent Stabilization and Just Cause Eviction Ordinance Measure

Yes 26,659 55.45%
No 21,418 44.55%

South Lake Tahoe Measure N, Vacancy Tax Measure

Yes 1,623 26.17%
No 4,578 73.83%