Supervisors Weigh Second Amnesty for Homes Built Without Permits, Sea Level Rise Policies

UKIAH, Calif. — A parade of Mendocino County residents urged the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 20 to open a more forgiving path for homes built without permits across the rural county. But county planners told the board that the state law allowing such homes to be legalized is narrow, and much of what speakers asked for would reach beyond what it permits.

The county's main tool is Assembly Bill 2533, which took effect Jan. 1, 2025. It created a streamlined process to legalize unpermitted accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units — ADUs and JADUs — but only those built before Jan. 1, 2020, Gretchen McLaughlin, the acting assistant director of Planning and Building Services, told the board. The law bars local governments from denying those permits, or charging retroactive impact fees, solely because a unit breaks local zoning rules such as height, parking, lot size, or setbacks. It does not apply to other homes or to commercial buildings.

Even under that law, McLaughlin said, basic health and safety standards — structural, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, weather protection, fire exits, and sanitation — must still be met, and owners must finish the full permit process, including a final inspection. A separate state law, Senate Bill 1226, lets the county's building official issue a retroactive permit for a residential structure that never had one, applying the building code in effect the year it was built. The county adopted a local rule, Policy 18, to carry that out.

The county does not reject applications simply because a structure was built illegally, McLaughlin said. "We always give people the option to legalize something," she said, but owners "still have to meet the typical building code requirements ... as well as state ADU laws."

More than a dozen residents spoke, describing years of frustration with permitting, code enforcement, and the high cost of fees. Sojourna Lee of the Meadow Farm Community Land Trust, was one of the few who addressed AB 2533. She asked the county to make the provisions of AB 2533 "clear and accessible," to preserve the state's Class K code for rural housing, and to cut fees. She also asked for a five-year "compassionate compliance" period — a step the state law does not provide — and told the board she had lived in a yurt for 10 years before being told it was "illegal and uninhabitable."

Jenny Burnstad, co-founder and fiscal director of the Cloud Forest Institute and a founding member of the Forest Reciprocity Group — which works on forest restoration, fire resiliency, and small-diameter tree utilization — urged the board to authorize a "community-designed amnesty program study group." Residents were "not asking for a free ride or handouts," she said, but "a voice at the table to protect the housing that we already have." She argued the county should build with its own timber, including small-diameter wood thinned to cut fire danger, rather than importing most of its building material.

Supervisors acknowledged the distance between what residents want and what the county can legally offer. "Everyone has a different idea of what (amnesty) is," Supervisor Ted Williams said, noting a "gap between what we're hearing people want and what state law allows the county to do." The county's permitting operation is "essentially self-funded off of permit fees," he said, so cutting fees would mean it "can't pay our people to do the work."

The county ran its own amnesty from Nov. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024, waiving violation and penalty fees for unpermitted work not already under code enforcement. It drew 135 applications and issued 81 permits; of 38 housing-related applications, 19 permits were issued and 12 passed a final inspection. The board voted 5-0 to direct staff to study why those homes could not finish the process — compiling the single-family cases, inviting owners to meet with its housing ad hoc committee, and holding community meetings before reporting back.

In its other major action of the morning, the board voted unanimously to adopt the county's first baseline sea level rise policies and send them to the California Coastal Commission for approval. The policies, required under a 2024 Coastal Commission grant, amend the hazards-management section of the coastal element of the county's general plan and are meant as a foundation to be expanded in a broader overhaul of the Local Coastal Program. A state law requires the county to adopt a sea level rise plan by 2034.

The most debated piece was saltwater intrusion, which the board directed staff to add after public comment last month. Under the change, the seepage of seawater into coastal groundwater would become a hazard the county weighs when it reviews coastal development permits. Several new policies would require deed restrictions on vulnerable coastal development, with owners disclosing the hazards, assuming the risk, waiving claims against the county and the Coastal Commission, forgoing future seawalls, and acknowledging their property could someday need to be removed or relocated.

Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said the policies expose a gap between what the county is requiring and what it can pay for, noting that flood insurance generally will not pay out until a home has collapsed and that no program funds moving threatened homes. The county, she said, may need to steer housing "further away from the coastline."