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Multi-plaintiff lawsuit planned against San Luis Obispo developer

October 14, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

Owners in a community of new homes with alleged structural defects, including leaking windows, black mold, doors that don’t shut properly, huge holes in walls and flooding issues signed up to participate in a multi-plaintiff lawsuit against the builder of a large development in San Luis Obispo.

Several weeks ago, attorneys with the Los Angeles-based law firm of Engstrom, Lipscomb, & Lack met with homeowners in San Luis Ranch, a large mixed-use development. Several of the attorneys helped victims from Hinkley and Kettleman cities in a case made famous by the Erin Brockovich story.

More than a dozen homeowners have already retained the firm, which is working on a contingency basis.

Located across from Laguna lake, San Luis Ranch is advertised as a neighborhood that “embraces the natural relationship between farming and sustainable, healthy living.” The picturesque homes sit a few feet from neighbors with walking trails winding behind.

Despite the appearance, many of the homes have serious structural defects. Several new homeowners say issues with mold and rodents have created health hazards, issues they claim Coastal Community Builders and the City of San Luis Obispo appear to be ignoring.

The question is not how did the homes pass inspections, but were the homes inspected?

One of the plaintiffs, Gina Biegel, closed on and moved into her home in Dec. 2021. The home did not have a certificate of occupancy until Jan. 18, 2022. The certificate certifies that a newly constructed residential building has been inspected for compliance with the California Building Standards Code and local ordinances.

Even more concerning is the inspection dates city staff provided. For example, staff reports someone completed a sprinkler and a hydro test at Biegel’s home on Jan. 18, 2022, a day that no one from the city was at her home, Biegel said.

For decades, San Luis Obispo Councilwoman JanMarx appears to have had a love-hate relationship with the former Dalidio Ranch, now known as San Luis Ranch. In 2000, Marx helped launch a political campaign to stop Dalido’s proposed project, which included 60 residential units, arguing it should remain farmland.

And while Marx claimed she was part of a grassroots effort to protect farmland, state regulators later determined the campaign was funded by a pair of downtown developers working to stop competing development.

In Oct. 2010, the California Fair Political Practices Commission levied $80,000 in fines against developers Tom and Jim Copeland, and banker David Booker for committing 16 campaign violations in their secretive battle against Dalidio’s project.

The three-year FPPC investigation into the funneling of cash and gifts to the campaigns to stop Dalidio’s proposed development revealed Marx was part of the illicit effort.

In 2013, Dalidio abandoned his plans to develop his farm, which he sold to Gary Grossman of Coastal Community Builders.

Unlike Dalidio’s project, Grossman’s planned development consistently overcame regulatory hurdles. Previously, the San Luis Obispo County Airport Land Use Commission set limits restricting the plans of developers, like Grossman, who sought to build high-density housing on the city’s southern edge.

The SLO City Council voted unanimously in 2014 to instruct staff to begin working on development agreements with Grossman, with Mayor Marx saying she did not want to rehash the controversy.

On Jan. 13, 2022, Marx and her husband Steve purchased a home in the San Luis Ranch development for $707,000. Marx, who has not joined the proposed multi-plaintiff suit, said her “house is just wonderful.”

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Inflation eating Haitian dogs and cats. Hurricanes, tornadoes and Democrats. Can’t afford to live even with wages obscene.isreal, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah!

Sell my one of those stick boxes fo a dollar!

Ballot boxes make great shelters. Boo, eek, helter skelter.


-21

The Village Idiot posts uncannily like Adam Hill. Scary.


1

Maybe, just maybe, there were no shenanigans and this is what “affordable” housing looks like.


-36

maybe, just maybe, nunsense is suggesting San Luis Ranch looks like affordable housing development or a perceived notion of what affordable housing should look like. A sad prospect to consider affordable housing should be visually or functionally distinguishable from market rate housing.


San Luis Ranch may have been darn affordable and cheap to Grossman and Presidio to develop with meaningful assistance of the City but it doesn’t look like those savings and affordability were passed on to homebuyers in any meaningful way.


36

Litigation like this is why homes cost so much and quality homes are nonexistent….


-46

What an incredibly ignorant statement. Nobody sues because the building quality is too expensive, and no quality builders have left the industry because they are being sued out of business. If you didn’t have laws and lawyers protecting you, what do you think the quality of construction would be then? Is your solution that the people dealing with serious construction defects due to shoddy workmanship should just bear the costs themselves so that it doesn’t cause the builders’ insurance rates to increase and thereby cause additional expenses for their next victims? Housing is expensive because of greed in the building industry, and becuase corporations and private investors are buying up all of the housing and creating a shortage where one shouldn’t exist. Then they escalate the rent beyone what is justified. It’s called supply and demand. They covered it in basic high school economics, but maybe you missed it. I can back my assertions up with facts. Can you?

FYI, this was the same argument used to cap damages in medical malpractice claims. “The lawyers are making it too expensive for doctors to work here.” So they set a cap of $250,000 for pain and suffering. That was in 1975. It has not been raised once in the almost 50 years since. (Think about what type of home you could buy in 1975 for $250,000 vs. what you could get today.) And guess what happened to the cost of insurance for the doctors? They continued to go up. Your argument is the same flawed premise.


31

For the record, your statement that the cap on pain and suffering damages recoverable in medical malpractice cases has not been raised since 1975 is incorrect. While the MICRA law enacted in 1975 did in fact cap general (pain and suffering) damages in medical malpractice claims to a maximum of $250,000, the MICRA laws were amended in 2022 and the cap on general damages was modified to provide for incremental increases in general damages against health care providers found to have committed medical negligence. See Civil Code section 3333.2, effective January 1, 2023. The new law is much more favorable for medmal plaintiffs than it was previously.


-2

Litigation if any is a very small part, the bulk of the costs are government related, how else can you keep the trough full for the feeding.


17

Discouraging at best that a few stupid and mean neighbors muchness mothers have elected to cyberbully and gaslight @ SLO Ranch websites their neighbors that are victims of the SLO Ranch permitting, approval, inspection and defects debacle that is unfolding and being exposed.


Disgusting at best that the wrongs being exposed from start to finish at SLO Ranch have and continue to happen under Marx – did Marx forget the job of a mayor and counsel person is to protect the public health safety and welfare of SLO and the residents. Obviously she is not even willing to do that for her neighbors – she and Dawn Ortiz Legg got what they wanted in terms of new houses from Grossman and Presidio so what’s the problem?


City records support Marx representation of her track record of supporting a lot of affordable housing “plans” and “approvals”. A meaningless self aggrandizing statement. People in need can’t live in a ” planned” or “approved” affordable home. Compare these historically “approved” and planned” affordable housing projects to the actual affordable housing units built over the past couple decades. How many ultimately become market rate units post approval?


City records appear to support the notion Marx is historically very generous in supporting a handful of developers through significant loans grants, fee waivers and other means of financial support allocating public funds and resources to projects with absurdly high acquisition, development and soft (consultants) costs.


37

Can’t wait to see Jan Marx arrested.


56

Does the City Building Inspector have any skin in the game or was he paid off too?


54

We think a few of the city employees including in code enforcement are getting a some $ under the table. Getting the city to act on our behalf and have an owner stay on code is nonexistent. And then to have a code enforcement supervisor release your name to an owner so they can retaliate and try and blame you for their behavior. If you act it’s on you, no one is responsible for your actions but you. Stop the victim mentality.


24

Time to change the name of our little corrupt government to la cost nostra. The mayor should henceforth be referred to as the capo di tutti capi(boss of bosses), the city council the capo regime, the school board – the soldiers who protect child molestors and whack any parents or kids who step out of line. Adam Hill, the last whacked gangster. Probably an insult to the mafia.


31

Didn’t Jan Marx just represent on the Congleton show that she keeps her distance from developers?


45

What a politician lied?, say it ain’t so.


45

Bet Dawn Oritz-Legg’s and Jan Marx’s homes that were bought in this development doesn’t have these same issues


62

Both Ortiz-Legg and Marx are disgusting individuals. Pure filth…’nuff said.


65

kayaknut, Bingo!


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