One of the more surprising things to come out of Thursday night’s West Hollywood Planning Commission meeting was commissioners admitting they don’t actually have any meaningful power to stop projects anymore.
This is part two of a three part series. Part one is here. Part three will publish tomorrow: “The Real Housing Problem? Approved Projects That Never Get Built.”
Vice Chair Stacey Jones said it pretty plainly. “I hate sitting up here, and having to tell people, that I don’t have any real discretion when it comes to the projects that are before this commission,” she said.
Over the course of a nearly four hour meeting on a zone text amendment for housing streamlining, commissioner after commissioner acknowledged that state housing laws have stripped away most of their ability to deny projects that meet “objective standards.” While their candor was greatly appreciated, at least by me, what was surprising was hearing them say it so directly.
The facade
Commissioner Andrew Solomon went further. He said the Planning Commission process has become a sort of theater, and in many ways misleads the public about what power they actually have.
“The real question, to me, is what power do we have as planning commissioners when a project comes to us that fully complies with our zoning ordinance and state housing law,” Solomon said. “And honestly, the answer is, we really don’t have very much discretion to deny them. But we still engage in this sort of facade that riles everyone up.”
The problem, he argued, isn’t public input itself. It’s that the current system creates false expectations. Residents show up to Planning Commission meetings thinking they can influence a project. Commissioners ask questions and residents voice concerns. But if the project complies with code and state law, the outcome is almost always the same – approval.
Solomon wasn’t advocating for eliminating public engagement. “I don’t want to erase or move on from public input,” he said. “We should encourage as much as many meetings as possible with the neighbors. But that doesn’t mean that we try and create a facade of a veto power that doesn’t exist.”
His frustration ran deeper than process efficiency. He said he joined the Planning Commission thinking commissioners would actually plan for the city’s future.
“When I got on this commission, the planning commission, I thought that we would be thinking about this zoning code, this ordinance, and determining what types of things we want to see,” Solomon said. “But in the year and a half that I’ve been on, this is just kind of a quasi judicial rubber stamp thing, where we don’t plan anything. We just react to the permits that come in.”
Commissioner Rogerio Carvalheiro said Design Review has the same problem. Projects come in. Commissioners give feedback. Projects come back unchanged. Developers know the Housing Accountability Act protects them.
“We have two projects that we reviewed. One of them was very questionable. As a professor, I don’t know if I would even approve it if a student, you know, presented it,” Carvalheiro said. “However, these two projects are gonna be coming to us on February 5th, and I almost 150% guarantee they haven’t changed.”
He asked the same question Solomon was raising: “Why are we doing this? Why are we wasting time? Why are we creating this facade, that something can be different in projects where the Housing Accountability Act trumps anything that we say?”
What stripped their power
State housing laws did it. Several of them passed over the past decade.
The Housing Accountability Act is the big one. Cities have to approve housing projects that meet objective zoning standards unless there is a specific adverse impact on public health or safety. Deny a project and face a lawsuit. Cities can be forced to approve projects anyway and pay the developer’s legal fees.
The State Density Bonus Law lets developers go over local height and density limits if they include affordable units. Projects can ask for waivers from almost any development standard.
SB 1123 will soon streamline small lot subdivisions of up to 10 units with ministerial approvals. No public hearing. Senate Bill 79, signed in October, sets state minimum standards for height and density around major transit stops.
West Hollywood isn’t alone. Santa Monica voted in December 2024 to skip Planning Commission review entirely for code-compliant housing projects in non-residential zones. Beverly Hills got hit with roughly two dozen Builder’s Remedy applications while its housing element was out of compliance, forcing the city to approve projects it didn’t want. Pasadena faces the same constraints. Cities across California are losing discretionary control over housing projects that meet objective standards. None have found a workaround.
What Solomon proposed
Solomon’s motion asked Staff to come back with a framework that would skip Planning Commission review for any housing project that follows zoning code and state law. No size limit. No unit cap. Code compliant means it goes to the Community Development Director for approval.
Everything else – projects that need exceptions, that break height limits, that require zoning changes – would still come to Planning Commission with full public hearings where commissioners and residents actually have the power to shape or stop projects.
“To me, the role of the planning commission is whenever a project breaks the rules,” Solomon said, citing projects that want to go higher than the Sunset Specific Plan allows. “Those are the types of projects that are deliberately submitted to be above and beyond what we allow. So that’s when discretionary approval is certain, it’s when we’re needed.”
One way to restore some power
Commissioners identified one potential remedy: move design review much earlier in the development process, before projects are deemed complete.
Commissioner Lynn Hoopingarner raised the idea. She acknowledged that design review has become “increasingly superfluous” because “developers really have no intention of listening to anything we say.” But what if it happened earlier, before the state law shot clocks start ticking?
Right now, design review happens after a project application is deemed complete, when developers have locked in most design decisions. But before that date, projects are still being refined. That’s when design feedback might actually influence the final product.
Solomon agreed to amend his motion to combine community meetings with design review early in the process. The combination would require projects to have actual plans ready and would happen before the deemed complete date, when there’s still flexibility to incorporate feedback.
Whether this actually restores meaningful review remains to be seen. But commissioners saw it as one way to salvage some public input in a process where they’re losing most of their power.
The two no votes
Commissioner Lynn Hoopingarner and Chair David Gregoire voted no.
Hoopingarner said she doesn’t buy the argument that public process is the problem. She pointed to West Hollywood’s 15 major commercial construction projects that remain stalled despite receiving City approvals years ago. “The problem is not exclusively the public process,” she said.
Chair Gregoire agreed that Staff’s recommendation reflected what City Council asked for and the commission shouldn’t get ahead of the council.
But he acknowledged the tension. “Month after month, housing related projects come before this planning commission, and we are advised by staff and legal counsel that we have, essentially, no discretion to deny the project,” Gregoire said. He said he’s wondered the same thing: “Why do we even bother bringing these projects to the planning commission? If we don’t have any discretion, there’s no reason to waste everyone’s time.”
In the end, he voted no, supporting Staff’s more measured approach with a 100-unit threshold.
What this means for residents
Vice Chair Jones had sleepless nights over this decision. She values public process but knows the reality.
“Sometimes you have community meetings, neighborhood meetings, applicants do, and nobody comes to them,” Jones said. “What difference does it make? Like, maybe we should just eliminate the public process because it kind of doesn’t matter anyway.”
She voted yes on Solomon’s motion.
The Planning Commission voted 5-2 to continue the item and asked Staff to come back with language that would eliminate Planning Commission review for code-compliant housing projects. That will come back for another public hearing, then go to City Council for a final vote.
Residents show up to Planning Commission meetings thinking they have a voice to stop or slow projects in their neighborhoods. Hearing commissioners admit they can’t was a rough reality check for some.
When a majority of planning commissioners say their own job has become a “facade,” that tells you how much control California cities have left over what gets built.
Not much.
Good. The laws were passed to stop NIMBY meddling in project they don’t like just because they hate change Neighborhoods change it’s normal deal with it.
These state laws were enacted years ago. Seems like West Hollywood leadership then needed to be keeping an eye out for any legislation that would impact our relatively small community and take action accordingly. Who in the current City Council or the Commissions is doing that now?
As a West Hollywood home and business owner for over 30 years, I have witnessed first-hand the dismissal of solid and informed participation by members of the community at city meetings. These are at the Planning Commission and City Council levels, plus email exchanges with staff in various areas of city government. Community members know their immediate neighborhoods far more intimately than staffers, so why is our feedback about development’s impact apparently meaningless and unnecessary according to the current effort to lessen public input? There are exceptions in the city’s governance such as my interactions with Nick Maricich who was… Read more »
If Solomon believes that his position is just a ‘facade,’ then he really should consider stepping down instead of just acting like a spokesperson for developers. It’s frustrating to see a disbarred attorney from Texas trying to lecture us on urban planning while he’s working to silence the residents who deserve to be heard in this city.
The crazy thing about adding affordable units is that the tax payers subsidies the difference in cost. So the developers don’t lose out on anything. They still collect top dollar for all units. It’s just the cost of the lower income unites gets passed onto the tax payer.
This is not true at all over the past 4 decades of living here, I have seen firsthand the thoughtful input from residents and business owners who wanted to make sure the project went well and fit into a street or neighborhood. To say it doesn’t matter and the project will still happen is completely false. Residents also stopped projects that were a bad fit and would destroy the traffic, the area, and the neighborhood.
Nothing new. This has been the CA way since the 1980s. Remarkable that some seem surprised by it.
Solomon in Planning Commission is using State Laws as excuse but we can see through it. Weho’s proposed “streamlining” of approval process to skip residents’ input IS NOT A MANDATE OF STATE LAW. It’s been created by John Erickson and his cronies to give developers the keys to the city so developers fund their political campaigns. Solomon’s “our hands are tied” ruse is laughable. He should be recused from the Planning Commission.
Speaking of state law…excerpt from the last artcle…”every Planning Commissioner and City Council member had received an email from the City Clerk just weeks ago reminding them of their obligations under the Brown Act, a California law that requires public agencies to conduct their business openly. “Why is the Brown Act so important?” Because without it, bribery and corruption were running rampant throughout the state. Some of my colleagues may not have lived in California a number of years ago, when this hit the city of Los Angeles, hard. People went to jail. She pointed to Los Angeles’ history of… Read more »
It’s only obvious: The planning commissioners and community input,played a significant role in the development entitlement process..Which directly affected the validity of entitlements,that’s why these projects got stalled out..!
Solomon’s gripe sounds to me like he’s passing the bucket with the excuse of “our hands are tied” For instance, how will Planning Commission know if a project has an adverse impact on public health or safety which violates the Housing Accountability Act if there’s no proper space and time for residents to bring up these issues?
It’s all a charade to avoid residents’ input/
Wow. This article was an eye opener. Here I am pontificating about saving and securing the public voice process like it’s West Hollywood’s choice to include one or not and yet there really is no choices or discretion in the California housing code/bureaucracy.
Boy!! that sure was a depressing read!!