What you can build, run, or change on a piece of California real estate is decided long before construction: by zoning, permits, easements, and environmental review. A land use attorney gets projects through that gauntlet and defends property rights when someone else’s project threatens them.
VK Law advises owners, developers, and neighbours across California on zoning, entitlements, easements, title clearance, and development planning. For a free consultation, call 877-780-4727.
What Does a Land Use Attorney Do?
A land use attorney works on the layer of law between owning property and actually using it: zoning and the general plan, which set permitted uses and densities; permits and entitlements, which decide what you can build; easements and access rights; title review; and environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, Public Resources Code section 21000 and following. The work runs from positioning an application before it is filed, through hearings and conditions of approval, to challenging or defending an approval on appeal.
Key Takeaways
- Zoning and the general plan decide what a property can be used for; permits and entitlements decide what you can build on it.
- Easements and boundary problems are title problems, and they surface at the worst possible time — during a sale or a build.
- Many California projects pass through environmental review under CEQA before approval.
- California’s ADU statutes were renumbered to Government Code sections 66310–66342, so most published material citing section 65852.2 is out of date.
- Deadlines to challenge an approval are unforgiving and often measured in weeks.
What Land Use Law Covers
- Zoning and the general plan: the permitted uses, densities, heights, and setbacks for each parcel.
- Permits and entitlements: conditional use permits, variances, design review, and subdivision approvals.
- Easements and access: recorded and unrecorded rights across land, driveway and utility disputes, prescriptive claims.
- Title review and clearance: finding and fixing the recorded surprises before they derail a project or a sale.
- Development planning: sequencing approvals, conditions, and agreements so a project actually pencils.
- Environmental review: the studies and findings that many approvals require.
Entitlements: How a Project Gets Approved
Most approvals run through a predictable path: application and staff review, public hearing before a planning commission or zoning administrator, conditions of approval, and, when someone objects, an appeal to the city council or board of supervisors.
The variables are local. Each city and county writes its own code, timelines, and politics. We help clients position an application before it is filed, respond to conditions that quietly change a project’s economics, and challenge or defend approvals on appeal.
Easements, Boundaries, and Title
Access and boundary rights decide what a parcel is worth. We draft and negotiate easements, resolve driveway, fence-line, and utility disputes, and clear title defects that block a sale or a loan. When a dispute cannot be settled — a blocked access route, a neighbour building over the line, a contested prescriptive claim — our California civil litigation practice takes it to court.
Easements come in four flavours
Not every access right is written down, which is why disputes get complicated. An express easement is created by a recorded document. An implied easement arises from how a property was historically used when parcels were split. An easement by necessity can exist where a landlocked parcel has no other access. And a prescriptive easement can ripen from years of open, continuous use without permission.
Which one applies changes both the fight and the fix, and long-running neighbour arrangements can quietly create or destroy rights.
CEQA and Environmental Review
The California Environmental Quality Act, at Public Resources Code section 21000 and following, requires public agencies to study the environmental effects of many discretionary approvals before granting them.
Depending on the project, that can mean an exemption, a negative declaration, or a full environmental impact report, each with its own cost, timeline, and litigation exposure. Knowing which track a project belongs on, early, is often the difference between a season and a year.
ADUs: The Rules Changed, and So Did the Section Numbers
California has spent the last decade systematically limiting local governments’ ability to say no to housing, and accessory dwelling units are the clearest example. Two things about the current framework are worth knowing.
The statutes were renumbered. The ADU and junior ADU provisions were moved out of Government Code sections 65852.2, 65852.22, 65852.23, and 65852.26 into Government Code sections 66310 through 66342. That is a housekeeping change in substance, but it means older articles, city handouts, and even some staff reports still cite repealed section numbers. If material you are relying on cites section 65852.2, it predates the reorganisation.
The constraints on cities are specific. Per the Department of Housing and Community Development’s ADU Handbook:
- Maximum standards. Section 66314 establishes the maximum standards a local agency may use to evaluate a proposed ADU on a lot with a proposed or existing single-family dwelling, and section 66315 provides that no additional standards may be imposed — including an owner-occupancy requirement — except that the agency may require rentals of terms 30 days or longer.
- A shot clock. A permitting agency must approve or deny an application to create an ADU or JADU within 60 days of receiving a completed application, where there is an existing single-family or multifamily dwelling on the lot.
- Older unpermitted units. A local agency is precluded from denying a permit for an unpermitted ADU constructed before January 1, 2020 on the basis that it violates building standards or does not comply with State ADU Law or a local ordinance.
- Fees. Development impact fees may not be imposed on an ADU with 750 or fewer square feet of interior livable space, or on a JADU with 500 or fewer square feet.
- Enforcement. HCD has authority to notify a local jurisdiction or the Attorney General where the jurisdiction fails to comply with State ADU Law.
For owners, that often converts a “the city says no” into a “the city is not allowed to say no,” if someone presses the point with the statutes in hand. Local agencies are also required to run preapproved ADU plan programs, which can be a faster route than a bespoke design.
Challenging a Project, or Defending One
Approvals can be attacked, and attacks can be beaten. The usual sequence: exhaust the administrative appeal, from planning commission to council or board, then, if needed, seek court review by writ — arguing the agency ignored its own code, the general plan, or CEQA.
Deadlines in this field are unforgiving and often measured in weeks, so the decision to challenge has to be made quickly. We stand on both sides: neighbours and competitors challenging a defective approval, and applicants defending one they earned.
Land Use in San Mateo and on the Peninsula
Our office at 15 North Ellsworth Avenue, Suite 105, San Mateo, CA 94401 works with owners, developers, and neighbours across the Peninsula.
Two local realities dominate this work. Every city here writes its own code, and the difference between two adjacent jurisdictions on setbacks, parking, and design review can decide whether a project pencils — which is why the general plan and the local ordinance get read before anything is designed. And Peninsula lot values make the ADU rules unusually consequential: on parcels where a second unit materially changes what a property is worth, the difference between a city’s stated policy and what state law actually permits is worth confirming rather than accepting.
Details about the office are on our San Mateo page.
How We Help
We review the zoning and title picture before you buy or design — buying with entitlement risk is a purchase and sale question as much as a land use one — then guide the approvals, papers, and disputes that follow. Land use work is part of our broader California real estate practice.
To talk with VK Law about zoning, easements, or a development project, call 877-780-4727. The consultation is free.
This page provides general information about California law and is not legal advice; reading it or contacting the firm does not create an attorney-client relationship. Land use statutes are amended frequently, and section numbers and standards should be confirmed against current text and the applicable local ordinance. Every situation is different, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Reviewed by Alan D. Khalfin, Partner and Managing Attorney, Vaksman Khalfin, PC (admitted in California). Last reviewed: 08/28/2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Advises on what a property can legally be used for and gets projects approved: zoning analysis, permits and variances, subdivision approvals, easements, title clearance, environmental review, and appeals. On the defensive side, a land use attorney protects owners from neighboring projects and enforcement actions.
A variance asks the agency to relax a physical standard (a setback, height, or lot rule) because the parcel itself is unusual. A conditional use permit allows a use the zone permits only with case-by-case approval and conditions. Which one a project needs depends on the local code.
The California Environmental Quality Act: the state law requiring public agencies to evaluate the environmental effects of many discretionary approvals before granting them. Projects may qualify for an exemption, a negative declaration, or require a full environmental impact report, and CEQA findings are a frequent target of project challenges.
Start with the recorded documents: the easement’s scope and location control. Many access disputes settle once the paperwork is on the table; those that do not may support a quiet title or injunction action. Acting promptly matters, because use patterns can affect rights over time.
That is the best time. A pre-purchase review of zoning, title exceptions, easements, and likely approval requirements tells you what the land can actually become, and what conditions or studies stand in the way, before the price is locked in.
A use right earned by using someone else’s land openly and continuously for years without permission: a driveway, a path, a utility line. Whether one has ripened depends on the history and the evidence, which is why documenting (or interrupting) long-running use patterns matters on both sides.
They can try: through the public-hearing process, administrative appeals, and sometimes a lawsuit challenging the approval. Most challenges fail when the record is built properly, which is why we prepare applications with the eventual challenge in mind rather than treating approval as the finish line.
