Realtor-backed housing advocates are suing the San Diego Association of Governments over a state law meant to spur homebuilding.
The lawsuit, brought by Californians for Homeownership and the California Housing Defense Fund — both affiliated with the California Association of Realtors — comes a month after the same groups sued the city of San Diego over the same law, Senate Bill 79, which trumps local zoning restrictions to allow tall, dense housing to be built near transit stations.
But the new lawsuit centers on how SANDAG’s interpretation of the law protected the areas around train stations in Solana Beach and Oceanside from those effects.
The way SANDAG defined “commuter trains” and counted the number of trains that serve two North County stations meant the Oceanside Transit Center area did not receive the largest increase in development restrictions, and potential development around the Solana Beach station did not increase at all.
SANDAG’s planning decision followed concerted, public lobbying efforts by elected officials in both cities against SB 79 and the effects it would on housing development in their cities.
The law, signed last October and implemented this July, allows for buildings up to 95 feet tall — regardless of local zoning — within a half-mile of train stations with frequent train service.
For stations with less frequent service, that increase would apply only within a quarter-mile of the station.
Oceanside landed in the second tier, reserved for stations served by more than 48 but less than 71 commuter trains per day, based on the map SANDAG released earlier this year.
Train schedules for the four lines that operate out of the station — Amtrak’s Surfliner, the L.A.-based commuter line Metrolink, and the North County Transit District’s Coaster and Sprinter lines — show that more than 100 trains stop at the station on a given day.
SANDAG declined to comment due to pending litigation. The agency has published a page describing the methodology it used to build its map, but that methodology does not attempt to explain which trains its planners excluded from its analysis, or why they did so.
Likewise, the agency did not count the Solana Beach Station as a lower-tier development zone, even though the Surfliner and Coaster trains that pass through surpass the 48-train threshold.
SANDAG’s map “miscategorized certain transit stops and has not properly accounted for stations with multiple lines,” states the lawsuit from the housing groups.
Before Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 79, Solana Beach Mayor Lisa Heebner wrote a letter to lawmakers arguing that classifying the city’s Coaster station as a “high-frequency commuter stop” would strain city infrastructure and that there had been inadequate analysis on the types of riders that use the stop.
“This station more typically supports visitor-serving Amtrak access, specifically for those visiting the coastal areas on the weekends and holidays, as well as the Del Mar fairgrounds for seasonal events and programs,” she wrote in May 2025. “Further, this station is located within one block of the City’s beaches and is not in a centralized location as is typically found in large cities and urbanized, commuter communities.”
In June, Oceanside’s city council voted to exempt certain sites in the city from the law, as Streetsblog reported at the time.
The new lawsuit seeks to invalidate SANDAG’s current SB 79 map, alleging it leaves out some of the region’s busiest and most desirable transit locations for dense housing projects, the specific purpose of the state law.
Last month, the housing groups sued the city of San Diego over its implementation of SB 79. In that lawsuit, first reported by Times of San Diego, attorneys for the groups claimed the city prevented multiple new developments by placing restrictions on locations where there are no continuous sidewalks connecting the property to nearby transit.
