Fall colors drape over Sonora Drive in San Mateo, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, where a historic designation proposal has created controversy. To demonstrate it is serious about building new housing, the city of San Mateo must show state regulators a list of places where new development could be built in the next eight years.
The Housing Action Coalition, a pro-housing advocacy group, claims that in its housing element — a state-mandated plan all cities must produce to show where they’ll accommodate new residential growth — San Mateo overestimated how much housing it could reasonably produce with its existing zoning. Mayor Liza Diaz Nash, contacted Tuesday, said that she was not aware of the lawsuit, but that the “city attorney will take a look at it and will respond accordingly.”In its lawsuit, the Housing Action Coalition alleged that housing could not be built on several sites San Mateo included in its site inventory:The city says that 8.5 acres of the 12-acre parking lot could be used to accommodate an estimated 383 units in the next eight years.