The Los Angeles City Council moved Tuesday to drastically increase the cost of appealing development and other land-use decisions, despite opposition from homeowner groups who said it will make it much harder for residents to challenge city actions.
The proposal raises the fee for appeals on city development decisions from a flat rate of $229 to $1,145 for residents living in the project’s vicinity.
For those who don’t live near the project, the fee nearly doubles to $2,289, an almost 900% increase from the previous rate. The system also tacks on a various surcharges that would take the non-neighbor rate for appeal applications to over $2,800, advocates said.
The City Council voted 13-0 without discussion to instruct the City Attorney to draft an ordinance for the fee hike, which will require council approval.
“To take away essentially the right of the community to have an opportunity to raise their voice about their concerns…is really an indication of how this is just a punitive measure on the part of the City Council to shut the people up,” Doug Haines, a representative for the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, said to The Times before the vote.
City Council members didn’t defend the planned fee hike at Tuesday’s meeting, but supporters have said previously that the higher fee would put Los Angeles on par with what other cities are charging and would discourage frivolous challenges that raise the cost of developing housing.
The Housing Action Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for building more housing in California, called the proposed increase is a small and meaningful step toward deterring unnecessary delays.
“We need to pull housing out of this doom loop,” said Victoria Gomez, the coalition’s political organizer for Southern California. “As long as appeals stay this cheap and heavily subsidized, they’ll keep being used to slow down homes Los Angeles can’t afford to wait for.”
The council did agree, on the motion of Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, to consider keeping the fee at $229 in the cases of tenants who would be displaced by a development. That proposal was referred to committee for study.
The L.A. City Planning Department manages the city’s land use and makes key decisions on development projects and zoning regulations. Residents who disagree with projects that are green lit by the department can go through an appeals process.
Residents can appeal a variety of city planning decisions, ranging from zoning exemptions granted by the department to fire safety violations and roadway or parking concerns regarding new project builds.
Residents were for years able to file appeals against these decisions for a minimal fee that represented 1% of what the city estimated it cost to process the appeal, while the rest is subsidized through the city’s general fund. That amounted to $229 since February, which has only increased slightly every year to adjust for inflation. The proposed change would bump the price to 5% of the expected cost for neighbors and 10% for anyone else choosing to file an appeal.
Appeal applications have steadily decreased from 217 in 2020 to 91 in 2025. The city department has received 90 applications this year so far, the department told The Times.
The Planning and Land Use Committee instructed the city Planning Department in October 2025 to explore alternative price points for appeals that would decrease the amount of money the city’s general fund would have to subsidize.
Neighboring residents would include people who live within the noticing radius of a development project, which can vary but is typically around a 500-feet radius. Only about 30% of appeals submitted in the past came from residents living within that radius, according to the city planning department.
The appeals process is only chance for city residents to challenge development decisions that impact their neighborhoods, and it’s a required step for an issue to reach the courtroom.
The proposed change was hidden in a procedural City Council item to deceive residents and lacked transparency, said Mark Kenyon, who lives in Mount Washington, in written opposition to fee hike.
“I see it as a way of blocking public participation,” Kenyon told The Times. “If they can’t come up with the money, the appeals aren’t going to happen.”
The proposed change could save the city about $254,086 in subsidies, according to the city planning department’s report, what Kenyon said amounts to pocket change for the city.
“People will simply not be able to appeal,” Kenyon said. “The process is already technically complicated.”
The city planning department estimated that processing an appeal application costs about $22,894.
“The Department brought on an independent consultant to evaluate the cost of all department processes,” a spokesperson for the department said. “It is important to note that determining the cost is separate from determining the fee. A number of planning functions have costs that are subsidized by the city, including appeals.”
Angelenos for Historic Preservation, an independent advocacy group, petitioned the California Department of Justice and the state’s deputy attorney general to defer Tuesday’s vote. The department didn’t immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
The fee change will bring L.A. in line with other cities across California, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said during a Planning and Land Use Commission meeting in August.
Appeals to Los Angeles County cost over $1,000. Santa Monica charges around $750 and San Diego charges $1,000, while appeal fees in Berkeley can cost up to $3,000, according to the city planning department’s report.
“I don’t think there’s a magic number, but our appeal fees, I think, are clearly far below our peer cities,” Blumenfield said. “They need to go up because…there’s no free money. All the money that we have does come at the expense of other critical programs.”
The city’s convoluted building and development process is unique to the city of L.A. and can’t be compared to other cities in the state, said Haines of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council. An affordable appeals process is necessary for residents to fight against dangerous builds in their neighborhoods, he said.
“It’s basically a corrupt process from beginning to end,” Haines said.
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