San Luis Obispo Zoning Attorney

Find the right Zoning Planning & Land Use attorney in San Luis Obispo, CA

Zoning Planning & Land Use Law in California

The laws controlling how land can and cannot be used in San Luis Obispo, California are fairly complicated, and can be confusing to laypersons. This should provide a basic overview.

Local governments will typically divide the city or town into sections, called "zones," each of which is designated for a specific use, such as residential homes, commercial businesses, agriculture, manufacturing, etc. This process is known as "zoning."

Zoning serves various different purposes - but it its general one is to increase or preserve property values by ensuring that conflicting uses don't result in legal disputes. Obviously, if you bought a house in a residential neighborhood, and your neighbor could just convert his property into a steel mill, your property's value as a residential lot would decrease considerably.

Zoning also serves the interests of industry, as well as residents. By ensuring that there are places where heavy industry can take place, well-planned zoning regulations will ensure that industrialists are free to practice their trade, and that residents will not be disturbed by those activities, which makes industry more useful by helping it prevent costly nuisance lawsuits.

Possible Outcomes of Boundary and Title Disputes in San Luis Obispo, California

If a condition on your property breaks the local zoning laws of San Luis Obispo, California, there are a few different solutions.

The most evident solution is to correct the problem, so your property is no longer in violation of local zoning laws. If the violation is minor, and correcting it would not be extremely costly, this is likely the ideal way to go.

But what happens if you've invested a large amount of effort and money into improving your land, and you later discover that you've committed some relatively minor zoning violation? You are generally entitled to seek what is known as a "variance" in these cases. A variance is simply when your local government makes a small exception to the zoning rules to accommodate a small violation that would be difficult to fix. A variance will typically be granted if the violation doesn't harm anyone, and enforcing San Luis Obispo, California's zoning laws to the letter would not, in this case, advance their purposes.

You are also protected if your land is currently in complete compliance with local zoning regulations, but the area where your land sits is re-zoned, and your property is suddenly not in compliance with the new zoning regulations. Usually, these new regulations cannot be utilized to force you to change existing conditions on your property. No laws can be applied retroactively, under the U.S. Constitution. Of course, if you make any improvements on your land after the law changes, you'll have to comply with the new law.

What Can A San Luis Obispo, California Attorney Do?

If you are in the early stages of a major construction or remodeling project on your property, particularly if it is in a residential area (where zoning laws tend to be most restrictive), you are likely to confront one zoning law issue or another. Of course, having read this article, you should now be aware that you have rights when it comes to contesting a zoning law as applied to you. While such contests do not always come out on the side of the landowner, the guidance of a reliable San Luis Obispo, California real estate attorney will greatly improve one's chances.

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Life in San Luis Obispo

San Luis Obispo, California is a city in San Luis Obispo County. It is the county seat of, and largest city in, San Luis Obispo County. It has a population of about 42,000, as of a 2006 estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau. It is located on California's central coast, almost exactly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

San Luis Obispo is home to the California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo, which iscommonly referred to as "Cal Poly" or "Cal Poly SLO." Many of its degree programs, particularly argiculture, engineering, and architecture, are consistently ranked among the best in the United States.

Thanks to the presence of a large, nationally-renowned university, San Luis Obispo definitely has a "college town" feel to it. And its proximity to the ocean, and the mountains further inland, provide a wealth of outdoor recreational activities. The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is located on the outskirts of San Luis Obispo provides most of the electric power for the area, and is also a major employer for professionals in a wide range of fields, particularly engineers. This power plant creates several thousand well-paying jobs, and is crucial to the local economy.

If you live in San Luis Obispo, California and need an attorney, you should be able to find one. There's almost certainly a San Luis Obispo, California lawyer who can help you with whatever legal issue you might have.

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