From Cupertino to Pleasanton, small cities around the Bay Area are challenging a massive regional plan to fix the housing crisis, worried they will lose control over what gets built within their borders and be forced to pay for solutions they don’t want.

Officials are gearing up for what promises to be a long and contentious battle over the “CASA Compact” — a set of 10 emergency housing policies that could force Bay Area cities to impose rent control, allow taller buildings, welcome in-law units and pay into a regional pot to fund those changes. The plan was penned by a group of power brokers known as “The Committee to House the Bay Area,” which includes elected officials from the region’s largest cities, transportation agencies, housing developers, local tech companies and others. The group was pulled together by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

So far, Bay Area legislators have introduced 13 bills to implement the CASA policies. But officials in many smaller Bay Area cities say they weren’t invited to the table, and their interests weren’t taken into account.

“There are some in some areas that just want to say, ‘no, this is off the table. We’re not doing this,'” said Campbell City Councilmember and former mayor Paul Resnikoff.

As the Bay Area grapples with a housing shortage that has driven the cost of buying and renting to astronomical heights, the looming CASA battle highlights an ongoing power struggle. Local officials are fighting to keep control of development within their borders, while legislators try to force them to do what many of the smaller cities have not: build more homes.

“The status quo isn’t working,” said Leslye Corsiglia, a CASA co-chair and executive director of affordable housing advocacy organization SV@Home. “We’ve been managing our housing problem on a city-by-city basis, and we’ve got some cities that are doing everything that they can given the resources available, and we’ve got some cities that aren’t.”

The CASA compact proposes a 15-year rent cap throughout the Bay Area, which would prevent landlords from raising prices more than 5 percent a year, on top of increases for inflation. The compact also calls for a Bay Area-wide just cause eviction policy, which would prevent landlords from evicting tenants except for certain approved reasons. And it calls for new zoning policies that would allow for taller buildings near transit stops.

The MTC endorsed the plan in December, and ABAG gave it a thumbs-up in January. The mayors of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco took part in the CASA discussions and signed off on the final document. But almost as soon as the plan was unveiled, many smaller cities started gearing up for a fight.

Corsiglia acknowledged the CASA committee should have done more to reach out to the smaller Bay Area cities. To bridge that gap, the MTC and ABAG are holding dozens of meetings with city leaders around the Bay Area, and the CASA team has tapped the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California to lead a ramped-up communication effort. The association plans to reach out to residents through the media, online and in community meetings.

“We want to have those conversations, and build that momentum and support and dispel the fears people have,” said Non-Profit Housing Association executive director Amie Fishman.

City leaders aren’t the only ones disappointed with the plan. It’s sparked criticism from tenant advocates, who say it doesn’t go far enough to protect renters, and landlords, who say it goes too far.

“The nature of a compromise is that people are going to like certain parts and not like others,” Corsiglia said.

Many of the cities speaking out against the CASA Compact have been criticized in the past for failing to build enough housing.

In Cupertino, which approved 19 new multi-family units last year, Mayor Steven Scharf recently bashed the proposal in his State of the City Speech, calling the group pushing the plan “the committee to destroy the Bay Area.” Its vision is “very scary,” he said. And he doesn’t intend to accept it.

“A lot of smaller cities are banding together regarding CASA,” Scharf said, “trying to at least mitigate the damage that it would do.”

Scharf said he’s talking with mayors from nearby cities, including Campbell and Los Gatos. He’s weighing the possibility of sending a lobbyist to Sacramento, in part to fight CASA bills, and splitting the cost with his neighboring cities.

Many Bay Area cities are balking at a CASA proposal that would require them to help fund the new housing initiatives by giving up 20 percent of their future property tax increases. The compact would cost an estimated $2.5 billion a year, $1.5 billion of which its authors hope to get from taxes and fees applied to property owners, developers, employers, local governments and taxpayers.

“That attack on our local revenue base would be problematic,” Resnikoff said. He’s working with the Cities Association of Santa Clara County on a formal response.

Pleasanton and its Tri-Valley neighbors — Livermore, Danville, Dublin and San Ramon — also are organizing a joint response.

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California gears up for round 2 on controversial battle over more homes near transit Pleasanton director of community development Gerry Beaudin worries CASA legislation could wreak havoc on the character of his city’s quaint, historic downtown. The neighborhood’s proximity to an ACE train station could subject it to mandatory higher-density zoning rules, he said.

“There’s a recognized need to address housing,” Beaudin said. “I’m not sure that the way that this happened is the right way to get momentum on this issue. It just created a lot of questions and concerns from a lot of the areas that need to be part of the conversation.”