San Diego Not Meeting State Housing Goals

According to an article by Andrew Keatts in Voice of San Diego, the Southern California city, like others around the state, is falling far short of its state-mandated housing construction goal. “The city now needs to triple the number of housing permits it issues in each of the next seven years to meet the state target – a level it hasn’t come close to reaching anytime recently.” As Keatts states, “The city issued permits for 5,033 homes last year, short of the 13,505 the city needs to build each year to achieve the total assigned to it in a statewide housing program called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment.”

Yet “In a progress report headed before the City Council’s housing committee Thursday, city staff did not mention the city was far behind meeting its housing plan.” In the last eight-year cycle of the RHNA, “the state assigned San Diego 88,096 new homes; it ended up issuing permits for just 44,531, according to city reports.” This year, the state cracked down on city housing plans that did not sufficiently address how local jurisdictions would meet state goals, sending many of them back to the drawing board. 

Local leaders say some factors inhibiting more housing production are beyond the city’s control, and that the RHNA’s focus on the number of units built (with a large home counting the same as a small studio) obscuring the actual number of people new construction will house. 

California cities aren’t the only ones struggling to meet demand for housing. A recent report found that the United States is short of close to 3.8 million housing units.