The way California requires local governments to plan for new housing is complete nonsense | “We’re kind of lying. It’s the only word I can come up with. We have no intention of actually building the units”

> In 2023, the city of Sausalito adopted a housing plan that would allow the construction of 724 new homes in the tourist-favorite city of 7,000 on the other side of Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. On the surface, everything seemed… ok. The city council had worked on the plan for two years. It had met a state deadline to produce its plan. And the city was long overdue for new housing.

> There was just one catch — some of the sites of that new housing weren’t exactly shovel ready. Because they were underwater.

# The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) is a joke

> In 1969, the state of California passed a law that requires cities and counties to regularly plan where to allow new housing. It was an example of a “Fair Share” law, with the idea being that every city should build some amount to alleviate the overall housing shortage. Every eight years, local governments must allow a number of new housing units — market-rate, subsidized affordable, everything — to be built. The target number is called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, often referred to by the acronym RHNA (pronounced rhee-nuh). And they have to figure out where to put them, a process that is often called the Housing Element (since it’s the housing element of their general plan.)

> Sometimes cities have simply refused to include a housing element in their general plan. In 1969, for example, the city council of Sebastopol, a small city in the North Bay near Santa Rosa, responded to the requirement to produce a housing element with a resounding “Nah.”

> And this is not some relic of the late 60s. Local governments have been playing shell games with RHNA for decades. **As one councilman from Foster City bluntly told the Los Angeles Times in 2017, “We’re kind of lying. It’s the only word I can come up with. We have no intention of actually building the units.”**

> At a 2014 meeting of the Cupertino City Council, elected officials openly discussed circumventing state law. “I think you should put it where [the Department of Housing and Community Development] will approve it, and you hope it’s not going to get built,” said one council member. “That’s called cheating,” another replied. “That’s been an effective strategy in the past,” a third council member said. Then everyone laughed.

# Goal setting mostly doesn’t work

> RHNA isn’t ineffective on accident — it’s hamstrung by design. **It’s an extreme example of a “Fair Share” housing law, which is supposed to mean that the state government dictates the what and lets local governments decide the how. For people who like “local control,” it sounds like a great way to enable local creativity. But when local and state governments have different objectives, goal-setting laws don’t work, exactly because of the space for “creativity.”** And without powerful, clear and guaranteed enforcement, cities have little reason to thoroughly comply with state laws.

> What does work better are Preemption laws, which explicitly require cities follow state guidelines. One good example would be the 2016 California law that legalized Accessory Dwelling Units. In so many words, it said, “Beverly Hills, you are going to accept applications for granny flats. Because we said so.”

!ping YIMBY&USA-CA