Majority of Southern California Cities Miss Housing Deadline

The saga of California’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) continues, with nearly two-thirds of Southern California’s cities and counties failing to meet the deadline for updating their housing elements to satisfy state housing mandates.

As Jeff Collins reports for the Orange County Register, “As a result, the remaining 124 governments have two hurdles to overcome to get into compliance with state housing laws and avoid a host of possible sanctions,” namely getting a new housing element approved and rezoning enough parcels to meet their housing goals. “Governments without an approved housing plan and completed rezoning can lose access to state housing and transportation grants, have less control over future developments and face the risk of lawsuits and fines.” The Southern California city of Santa Monica saw 4,000 housing units proposed when it fell out of compliance with the state law earlier this year. 

The RHNA requires cities and counties to revise their housing elements every eight years to account for population growth and ensure that housing supply meets demand. Formerly seen as rather toothless, the process garnered more attention this year when the state rejected many municipalities’ housing elements as unrealistic or insufficient and gave them an October 15 deadline for revising them.

As Collins explains, “The housing plans, which can run into hundreds of pages, outline where and how new housing can be built, creating an inventory of sites where developers can build new homes. Once the housing element is adopted, governments must rezone land to ensure there’s enough land for the new affordable and market-rate housing.”

Collins notes that “On the positive side, the 73 jurisdictions that won state approval represent 65% of the 1.3 million new housing units the state wants Southern California to build by 2030.” However, the needed housing in the jurisdictions without approved plans amounts to 474,210 new homes by 2030. Meanwhile, developers can use the “builder’s remedy” to get projects approved more easily in cities without approved housing elements.