Efforts to fix obscure state housing law hits resistance from cities
It’s a little-known, wonky state housing requirement that almost every town, city and county fails.
It’s the bedrock for planning and building badly needed new homes across the state and in the housing-starved Bay Area.
But critics say it isn’t working. It’s underestimated housing needs for decades, they say. And it rewards politics over actual progress.
The Regional Housing Need Allocation, known by its acronym RHNA, reveals how little influence the state has over local housing decisions and how difficult it might be to regain power.
“It’s highly politicized and arbitrary,” said State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, an advocate for reforming state housing laws. The housing guidelines have underestimated the booming
economy and growing population, he said. “It’s important that we get RHNA right.”
RHNA (pronounced REEna) assigns specific numbers of housing units for each jurisdiction in the state, guiding local governments to build low-income apartments and luxury homes to serve all segments of the community. Local boards identify sites for potential development in their communities.
Efforts under way to reform the RHNA planning process in Sacramento could force towns, cities and counties to address long-neglected or dismissed housing needs and give state lawmakers and courts a bigger stick against local boards unwilling to approve new developments.
But lobbyists for counties and cities are resisting more reforms, saying state laws can’t address an issue central to the housing shortage — the high cost of new construction. Some local elected leaders also fear losing the
ability to shape their communities and respond to residents.
RHNA requires jurisdictions to plan for future housing in 8-year cycles. Counties and cities must identify specific properties for housing expansion. Sometimes the land is vacant, but often the parcels have long-standing businesses, apartments or other buildings requiring redevelopment.
State, regional and local officials review and revise the plans, and the state gives jurisdictions specific goals to build a range of housing.
Then, critics say, local governments simply ignore the recommendations.
“For the most part, cities don’t care,” said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. “It’s purely advisory.”
State lawmakers established RHNA in 1969 to ensure local governments planned for the housing needs of their entire community. It requires cities and towns to include housing growth in their general land-use plans.
Although municipalities plan for housing, it often hasn’t been built. In February, the state housing department
found that 97 percent of jurisdictions failed to keep pace with population growth. Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties failed to meet all of their housing targets, while San Jose and Santa Clara County are among the jurisdictions falling short in building affordable housing.
“Clearly, the requirements are not being met, and there’s not enough enforcement being done,” said Heather Bromfield, a housing research analyst at UC Berkeley.
Between 2007 and 2014, the state found that the Bay Area met its goals for building homes for households earning more than 120 percent of the region’s median income but permitted less than 30 percent of the recommended units for residents of middle-income or less. The median income for a four-person family in the San Jose metro area was $113,000 in 2017, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A Berkeley study also found racial disparities in the housing assessment. Cities with a higher percentage of white residents usually
received lower targets for building affordable housing.
Low targets for affluent communities sparked a Twitter feud between Wiener and former Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch. Beverly Hills was the rare city to meet its goal for low and moderate-income housing — three units. “No city should get a RHNA allocation of three,” Wiener said. “It’s absurd.”
Under a new law this year, local governments that fail to meet their goals must fast-track certain types of development in their communities. But cities and developers say the law will affect only a handful of projects around the Bay Area and is unlikely to spark new construction. Developers say a lack of funds for affordable housing stalls development, even if a project wins a fasttrack designation.
A package of bills has been introduced this year to attack the state’s deepening housing shortage, including measures to increase housing density around transit hubs. One bill, SB 828 by Wiener, attempts to put more truth and teeth into RHNA numbers.
Wiener’s bill calls for a
statewide re-assessment of housing needs and sets higher goals for lagging cities. It mandates that communities with high income growth — such as the Bay Area — plan for a higher rate of development and provide for all income levels, particularly for poor and moderate-income families.
It would double the amount of low and very lowincome housing included in a plan to encourage cities to build more.
Bay Area governments have badly underdeveloped in recent years, according to local planning studies. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group estimates that the region added more than six times as many jobs as homes between 2010 and 2015.
The League of California Cities has not taken a position on SB 828 but opposes other proposals to reform planning guidelines. Jason Rhine, a lobbyist for the league, said cities are still adjusting to last year’s housing reform package.
Rhine said most jurisdictions “are doing a pretty good job” reaching RHNA goals for market-rate housing. “At the end of the day, cities have identified many, many sites to develop on.”
He doubted the measures in Wiener’s bill would lead to more housing. “Just because you have more sites,” Rhine said, “doesn’t mean you’re going to have more development.”
Developers agree that expensive land and construction costs in the Bay Area force builders to develop high-end properties to make a profit.
Paul Campos, a lobbyist for the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, said change is necessary. Builders want wellplanned developments to face less red tape from local boards. “Cities and counties have been given monopolies on what land is available,” he said. “The last 40 years have shown, especially in the Bay Area, those monopoly powers have been abused.”
Wiener cautioned against quick fixes, as opponents gather against the bill and other housing proposals. “It took us 50 years to dig into this housing hole,” he said. “It’s going to take us some time to get out.”