Courting Liberty

Harold Johnson interviews PLF Principal Attorney Brian Hodges about a case out of West Hollywood where the city demanded a roughly $540,000 fee to be used for “affordable housing” as a condition of a couple’s building permits. Shelah and Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer thought they could help meet the housing demand in West Hollywood when they purchased two adjacent homes in the early 2000s, with a dream of building 11 condos on the lots. The city even praised the “superior architectural design” of the project, and noted that it would provide “11 families with a high quality living environment” while “helping the city achieve its share of the regional housing need.” The city then slapped them with a fee that would be roughly one third of the project’s total income.