Eight-story condo buildings rising above the billionaire bedroom community of Los Altos Hills? Hundreds of apartments flanking the sprawling single-family subdivisions of Brentwood? A hundred and fifty homes perched high on a bucolic hillside in rural Marin County?
These aren’t part of some fictional “Supersize the Suburbs” version of Monopoly.
They’re among a growing number of jumbo housing projects developers are scoping out in the Bay Area’s most exclusive neighborhoods. And to the horror of some longtime residents, local officials could be helpless to halt construction.
It’s all thanks to an until-recently forgotten provision in state housing law meant as a penalty for cities that fail to do their part to alleviate a deepening housing crisis. Developers have begun invoking the rule — dubbed the “builder’s remedy” — in hopes of pushing…
