Costa Mesa is being sued by the state of California over its stalled housing plan, even as a public agency next door has stepped forward with acreage that could help close the gap. The Coast Community College District has offered up two vacant lots at Adams Avenue and Pinecreek Drive for possible rezoning to multifamily housing, though the district says it has no immediate plans to build anything there itself.
The offer surfaced as Costa Mesa scrambles to answer a lawsuit filed July 16 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom, who are seeking court orders compelling the city to adopt a compliant housing plan within 120 days, according to the Office of the Attorney General of California. Costa Mesa was named alongside four other cities — Calexico, Half Moon Bay, Ridgecrest and Turlock — in writ petitions filed in state superior courts, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
A Certification the City Already Had — and Lost
Costa Mesa isn't a stranger to compliance. The city's 6th Cycle Housing Element earned a completion letter from the state on May 9, 2023, confirming it met its share of the region's housing targets, according to the City of Costa Mesa. That changed in March, when property owners pulled their parcels from the city's plan, creating a deficit that erased its certified status.
South Coast Plaza was among the sites counted toward the city's housing capacity before what the Los Angeles Times described as a mass exodus of landowners that same month. Costa Mesa submitted a draft housing plan to the state in March, and by April the city said it had rezoned land for an additional 11,760 housing units — the same number Costa Mesa must zone for by the end of the current Regional Housing Needs Allocation cycle in 2029, according to Tony Dodero, as quoted in the report. City officials are now working with the state Department of Housing and Community Development to get that latest draft certified.
Despite that effort, the city still landed in court. John Stephens said he had no idea why Costa Mesa would be named in the lawsuit under the circumstances, according to the same report. The state's own accounting puts Costa Mesa in rare company — the California Department of Housing and Community Development found that roughly 95% of the state's cities and counties had adopted compliant 6th Cycle housing elements as of July, according to LAist.
Why a Court Ruling Squeezed Costa Mesa's Options
Part of what pushed the city into a corner was an October 2025 appellate ruling. In New Commune DTLA LLC v. City of Redondo Beach, the California Second District Court of Appeal found that cities can't satisfy their state housing obligations by placing residential overlay zones on commercial or industrial parcels if the underlying base zoning still permits zero residential development, according to Holland & Knight. The court determined the practice could effectively negate the preexisting zoning designation, and required any new construction relying on it to include at least 50% residential units at a density of 20 units per acre.
Costa Mesa had relied on those kinds of uncommitted residential overlays to pad its housing numbers, the Los Angeles Times reported — a strategy the ruling largely closed off. That left city planners searching for firm commitments rather than paper capacity, which is part of why the Coast Community College District's offer landed on their desks at a useful moment.
College District's Vacant Lots Draw a Second Look
The two sites in question comprise 4.37 acres at Adams Avenue and Pinecreek Drive, just north of Orange Coast College and currently zoned for institutional use. An apartment complex already sits north of the parcels, and the sites are reachable by public transit and bike lanes — infrastructure the city bolstered in 2021 when the Costa Mesa City Council approved Active Transportation Plan safety projects along that stretch of Adams Avenue, according to the Costa Mesa Alliance for Better Streets.
Elizabeth Dorn Parker told the Costa Mesa Planning Commission on July 27 that the sites are in a perfect location for high-density housing and recommended rezoning the land to allow more homes to be built there. She also said the district has no plans to build on the two sites itself, and pointed to the pandemic as part of why the land sits available at all — more instruction went remote and fewer students were physically on campus, prompting the district to reevaluate how its property is used over the past few years, the same report noted.
A District With Practice Building Student Housing
The Coast Community College District, headquartered at 1370 Adams Avenue and established in 1947, oversees Orange Coast College, Golden West College and Coastline Community College, enrolling more than 60,000 students across Orange County, according to a Wikipedia entry on the district. The district already has a track record with residential development on campus land: Orange Coast College completed The Harbour in fall 2020, a $123 million public-private partnership that delivered 814 student beds across 323 apartment units in seven four-story buildings, per Servitas, the firm that helped finance it.
The district has also retained real estate advisory firm Rivercrest Partners to study site assessments and highest-and-best-use options for its Costa Mesa property, including the possibility of a ground lease or joint venture with a private developer. Whether the district ultimately builds housing itself or leases the land out remains an open question, and one that hasn't been settled even though the district and the city say they communicate frequently — formal discussions specifically about the unused Adams Avenue land haven't happened yet, per the Los Angeles Times.
State Law Already Favors This Kind of Deal
Any eventual project on the site would fit neatly into a statewide push. California's Senate Bill 4, the Affordable Housing on Faith and Higher Education Lands Act, took effect in October 2023 and allows independent colleges and religious institutions to build 100% affordable housing by right on their own property — bypassing local zoning restrictions and CEQA review altogether, according to California Legislative Information. Rezoning the Adams Avenue parcels could benefit both the city and the district if the land is folded into Costa Mesa's updated housing element, since it would count toward the city's state-mandated targets rather than sit as an unused institutional lot.
Locally, the path to rezoning got easier once Measure K passed in November 2022. That measure let the Costa Mesa City Council recategorize specific commercial and industrial parcels for housing without triggering the citywide voter referendum otherwise required for major land-use changes under 2016's Measure Y, according to the City of Costa Mesa. Tony Dodero said the city remains open to meeting with any property owners who want to discuss development on their land, the paper reported.
A Regional Pattern of Schools and Colleges Eyeing Housing
Costa Mesa isn't the only place where an education agency's land is being eyed for homes. In neighboring Newport Beach, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District is negotiating with a developer bidding to lease an 11-acre plot adjacent to the Randall Preserve for construction of nearly 200 housing units, the Los Angeles Times reported. Supporters of that plan say it would bring needed workforce housing to Newport Beach, while opponents want the land folded into a future nature-preserve conservation effort instead.
For now, Costa Mesa's more immediate task is squaring its books with the state. Whether the Adams Avenue parcels end up in a certified housing element, and whether the city can meet the 120-day deadline the state is seeking in court, remain open questions as the case moves forward.
