Efforts to encourage more housing projects on California coast stall

A movement to encourage more housing projects along the California coast has stalled out in the California legislature.

Earlier this year, lawmakers, with the backing of some housing activists, introduced a series of bills aimed at making it easier to build apartments and accessory dwelling units along California’s highly regulated coast. The legislation would make it more difficult for the independent California Coastal Commission to slow or block housing projects.

The 15-member commission oversees most of the state’s 840 miles of coastline, a stretch of land where close to one million Californians live. Since the 1970s, the California Coastal Commission has closely regulated construction or demolition within the coastal zone —a band of land that ranges from 1,000 feet to 5-miles inland from high tide.

Housing advocates say the coastal commission has tended to favor the wishes of wealthy single-family homeowners and has effectively excluded higher density housing projects within the coastal zone.