Attention All California Residents

By Nancy C Arcuri, Editor and Publisher

The Monterey Park city staff advised the City Councilmembers during the July 3rd meeting on Item 5-A Consideration and Possible Action to Oppose or Support Various Pending Housing Legislation Bills Pending Before the California Legislation.

There are currently several housing legislation bills pending before the California Legislature. If adopted by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, these bills would severely restrict the City’s ability to regulate housing within its jurisdiction. The Legislature will be casting final votes on these bills in August; staff is requesting the City Council to consider these bills and provide directions as to supporting or opposing them.

Listed below are pending bills that can potentially affect local government to regulate design, parking, and conversion of developments. A number of these bills, if passed, will significantly change the character of all the residential areas in the City of Monterey Park.

SB 330 (Skinner) Housing Crisis Act of 2019

AB 1279 (Bloom) Planning and zoning: housing development: high-resource areas

AB 1763 (Chiu) – Planning and zoning: density bonuses: affordable housing

AB 68 (Ting)- Land use: accessory dwelling units

AB 881 (Bloom)- Accessory dwelling units

A summary of these bills, along with their potential effects upon the City’s ability to regulate land use, is attached for reference. Staff recommends that the City Council review these bills and provide directions as to supporting or opposing these bills.

To review these pending bills please use the City’s website for the July 3rd Council Meeting. The agenda is item 5-A www.montereypark.ca.gov.

If these bills are passed and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom then you, as a California property owner will surrender some of your property rights.

The California Property Rights Law to date: Owning real property means something, especially in California, where the state constitution establishes “acquiring, possessing and protecting property” as an inalienable right. The ownership of real estate conveys a set of rights. This bundle of rights encompasses everything that you can do with your property. Generally, they fall into four broad categories:

Possession

Possession is a fundamental right of property. What this means is that when you own a property, you have the right to physically be on it or to leave it. You also have the right to choose who else can be there and who you want to exclude. Section 671 of the California Civil Code extends the right of possession to every person, regardless of whether or not they are a resident of California.

Quiet Enjoyment

The right of quiet enjoyment is not exactly what it may seem. This refers to your ownership. If you own a property, you and the other owners have the right to own it to the exclusion of all others. In other words, if you hold the title to a property, no one else, other than those that you choose to place on the title, have the right to own it.

Control

If you buy a piece of property, you can build whatever the local zoning code allows, or not build anything. You can walk around your property, sit down on it, or leave it be. You control what happens with it. These rights extend beyond the building on the property to include what is beneath it and what is above it.

Disposition

If you own a piece of property, you also have the right to get rid of it. The most common way to dispose of property is to sell it, but the right to disposition also applies to leasing out the property and giving another party a personal property interest in your real property. You can also give it away to another party or dedicate it back to the government.

Your Rights and Your Property

You may not actually have all of these rights on your property. The reason for this is that, as a part of their control and disposition rights, previous owners may have given up some of these rights. For instance, if another owner of the property previously sold the mineral rights that went with the property, you would end up buying the property without those rights. At the same time, a previous owner could record restrictions, like the requirement to join a homeowner’s association, against the property. Others could grant rights of access, called easements that would limit your rights in the property.

The Monterey Park City Council all agreed that we did not want to lose our current property rights to these Elected Officials in Sacramento.  They will send out letters to our State Senator Susan Rubio, Assemblymember Ed Chau, our Board of Supervisors, Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Nancy Skinner (A Democrat, she represents the 9th Senate District, encompassing the East Bay.), Assemblymember Richard Bloom (He is a Democrat representing the 50th Assembly District, which encompasses West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Agoura Hills, Malibu, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Bel Air, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hancock Park and Hollywood.), Assemblymember David Chiu (He is a Democrat representing the 17th Assembly District, which encompasses the eastern half of San Francisco.) and Assemblymember Phil Ting (He is a Democrat representing the 19th Assembly District, which encompasses western San Francisco and northern San Mateo County).

You may also express your displeasure with these Elected Officials by sending them Emails to both their Sacramento offices and their local offices.

You can locate their Email addresses on your search engine.

Please request that your Elected Officials vote NO on these socialist bills that will forever damage your California Constitution’s Rights as a property owner.

Their progressive ideas are damaging our personal freedoms in California and in our United States of America.