After more than two years of resistance, the city of Coronado, a wealthy island city in San Diego County, has agreed to follow a state affordable housing law by setting aside more land for development, the governor said. Gavin Newsom and Atty. General Rob Bonta announced this on Friday.

In a new legal arrangement with the state, the city will allow the construction of more than 900 homes, more than 70% of which must be accessible to low- and middle-income families.

“There is no doubt that this moment is long overdue. I want to thank the current Coronado City Council for finally doing the right thing,” Bonta said in a news release. “The housing crisis we face in California is enormous, and the only way we can address it is if every local government follows the law and builds its fair share of housing.”

State law requires all California communities to plan for a certain number of new homes through a complex formula that resets every eight years based on projected population growth and

Residents’

proximity to jobs and public transportation. The law does not require cities to build or approve new housing, but it does require them to designate it.

Few, if any, communities in California are more resistant to the law than Coronado, a resort destination where

the

The average home value is $2.4 million, according to real estate website Zillow. The city

‘S

began fighting the allocation of 912 units four years ago, including filing an unsuccessful lawsuit against the process.

City leaders had openly flouted the law, complaining that the requirements did not take into account the island’s geography and that military installations cover large swaths of the community, leaving little vacant land. Residents have also argued that more affordable housing would lead to crime and lower property values.

The legal settlement requires Coronado to adopt a state-approved housing plan in mid-April and complete its rezoning by early May. If this doesn’t happen, the city could lose some local control over development decisions and ultimately face fines. According to the local newspaper Coronado Times, the city took the first steps to approve the plan earlier this week.

“With a shared goal of developing a meaningful and achievable plan to achieve compliance, we have found a solution to a long-standing challenge,” Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, who had opposed the state mandates, said in the statement of Friday.

Coronado’s plan what

originally first

scheduled for April 2021. At the time, according to

as noted in

a Los Angeles Times report this spring, a city council member

assuredly told

residents don’t have to worry

about the observance that the city flooded

the law because

the city would “probably have a few more years” before the state cracked down.

Bonta cited The Times’ reporting in his statement Friday and said the settlement shows housing regulators

eventually eventually

wants to act.

Statewide, 78Seventy-eight

communities

statewide

Roughly a quarter of those with plans due in the current eight-year period are currently out of compliance, according to data from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.