It’s well past time to update the building codes for Cayucos and have them aligned with what Cayucos is today.
The growing desire of property owners in Cayucos to maximize occupancy as well as have buildings constructed that maximize the loss of open space demands a response from our Board of Supervisors and Planning Department.
The current codes allow for overdevelopment, which is causing hazards to our citizenry, including parking congestion and inaccessibility for ambulances, fire trucks, and waste removal trucks as well as water, sewer, and runoff issues.
Let me provide one illustration/example, it being the situation that has developed on the cul-de-sac block at 6th Street and St. Mary Avenue. This very short five-home block ends at the foot of a steep hill. A home built this year on a double lot took advantage of the old long-standing property line, respected by citizens in the past, and placed their house at maximum legal point toward the street. This reduced the road from 25 feet across to 17 feet.
The two homes built within the last two years have separate apartment rentals on their lots (ADUs). If all residents on this cul-de-sac were present, there would be at least 17 vehicles! This does not include guests’ vehicles. The result is extreme congestion, with vehicles having difficulty turning around and getting out. Additionally, garbage trucks sometimes cannot do their job—they have to back up or even walk a distance to get to the cans. Also, ambulances, fire trucks, and post office vehicles have very difficult access. When one neighbor called the county with her concerns about garbage and mail delivery, she was informed people would have to take their garbage cans down to St. Mary Avenue and pick up their mail at the post office. That is not a reasonable system!
It’s clear that development will continue on three of the five lots (the houses were built in 1942, ’49, and ’58) in the near or not too distant future. The Planning Department and the Board of Supervisors must act now, get back to the drawing board, and design codes that reflect the needs of the Cayucos of 2025.
Barbara Karush
Cayucos
This article appears in May 15-25, 2025.
I would recommend learning what building codes are and what they do. All new construction in Cayucos follows the latest published Title 24 document which is updated on a 3 year cycle, the most recent being 2022 with an effective date of 1/1/23. Before that it was the 2019 document, before that 2016, and so on. This cycle has been occurring every 3 years for the past 35 years, so it is unclear what is meant by “well past time.” Building codes don’t really have much impact on unit density and generally have made it more difficult to build at higher density over the years. Should have an understanding of what allows the things you have issues with instead of making an assumption that the frequently updated building code is outdated.
Barbara got burned.