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Friday, November 13 2020, The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) released Surplus Land Act (SLA) draft guidelines that threaten special districts’ authority to lease land. Developed in response to AB 1486 (Ting, 2019), which made several changes to the requirements in the Surplus Land Act (SLA), the draft guidelines are intended to help local agencies subject to the law understand the new procedures for disposing of surplus land and compliance mechanisms adopted to enforce the law.

CSDA encourages all special districts who lease land or may otherwise be impacted by these guidelines to submit comment. A template comment letter is provided here for your reference and use.

PUBLIC COMMENTS
Comments on the draft guidelines are due by December 7, 2020

Submit comments to: publiclands@hcd.ca.gov

WEBINAR
HCD is hosting a webinar to introduce the draft guidelines and clarify requirements
November 19, 2020 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Register here

The draft guidelines include several issues of concern that ignore, expand upon, or misstate current law as it pertains to special districts and the SLA, including:

1. The guidelines are silent to the special district “exemption” – During the legislative process, CSDA secured an important exemption for special district lands into AB 1486, and this provision is errantly missing from the list of “exempt surplus land” types. While the guidelines detail an expansive list of exemptions on pages 11-13, the only exemption unnamed is 54221(f)(1)(J), which pertains to a special district’s ability to classify land exempt from the SLA. The absence of this on the list of exemptions could confuse the public and needs to be added into the guidelines prior to its final form.
2. Notice of Exemption Determination - HCD states local agencies must notify the state every time a district declares land to be exempt surplus land and provide written findings, which is not specified in statute and has no basis under the SLA.
3. Misstates Current Law to Include Leases in the Definition of Disposal – Per the drafted guidelines, “disposition of surplus land” means the sale or lease of local agency-owned land formally declared surplus, despite the Legislature explicitly amending the term “lease” out of the definition within AB 1486 due to local government concerns. The new interpretation by HCD has no basis under current law.

CSDA was deeply involved in the development of AB 1486 as it went through the legislative process, with special districts throughout the state weighing in with significant concern pertaining to the potential negative implications for district lands prepared for future community needs.

Prior to the AB 1486 becoming law, CSDA was able to obtain amendments to protect special districts and their communities and thereby removed opposition. However, HCD’s draft guidelines subvert those necessary protections secured through the legislative process, and special districts are highly encouraged to submit specific feedback to the HCD draft guidelines.

For more information, visit the public lands for affordable housing development webpage or email publiclands@hcd.ca.gov. For questions specific to CSDA, please contact Alyssa Silhi who is the legislative representative for this issue at alyssas@csda.net.