We’re now in the fourth quarter of the housing element update process in Southern California. For months, Abundant Housing LA and YIMBY Law have been auditing cities’ housing elements (strategic plans for meeting the “RHNA target”, a housing growth goal, over the coming 8 years), and we’ve been sounding the alarm when cities propose bad-faith plans that don’t actually encourage housing growth.
It’s not surprising that many cities in Southern California have created low-quality housing elements (one astonishing example: South Pasadena’s housing element counts utility easements, vacant railroad track, and its City Hall as places where new housing is likely to be built). Many city councilmembers frequently oppose new housing and seek to avoid following state laws that require cities to allow denser housing production. But we have been surprised that until recently, the State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) seemed willing to let cities get away with playing these games.
State law empowers HCD to review and certify cities’ housing elements, ensuring that cities adopt realistic plans that encourage strong housing growth at all levels of income. Unfortunately, in mid-2021, HCD failed an important first test on enforcement, when the agency certified housing element updates in San Diego, Imperial Beach, and San Marcos, even though these plans contained major flaws. Housing advocates worried that this foreshadowed a similar outcome when Southern California cities finalized their housing elements in early 2022.
In response, we’ve ramped up our data-driven approach to housing element advocacy. We estimated that without high-quality housing elements, Los Angeles County would only build 21-32% of its combined RHNA targets by 2029, leaving over 500,000 much-needed new homes unbuilt. We also partnered with MapCraft Labs to forecast the true amount of housing growth that is likely to occur under 10 LA-area cities’ proposed housing elements. We discovered that almost half of the homes that cities’ housing elements claim will be built are actually infeasible to build in practice (due to restrictive zoning, parking requirements, onerous permitting process, etc.)
Through these efforts, we’ve thoroughly debunked cities’ unrealistic claims, and highlighted what’s at stake if our region fails to deliver on transformative housing elements.
Now, hope has emerged from two unlikely places: Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach.
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Yes, you’re reading that right. The two housing-averse cities were relatively early to adopt housing elements, and also passed spectacularly poor plans. This means they offered an initial test case of whether HCD would push back against inadequate housing elements in Southern California, or would let these cities slide.
We’re very happy to see HCD did push back hard: in the past two weeks, the agency declined to certify the Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach housing elements, sending the plans back to these cities for major revisions. HCD’s review letters to the two cities pointed out major flaws in their housing elements, many of which were also highlighted in Abundant Housing LA’s comment letters to HCD.
Some of HCD’s critiques:
- Both cities provided inadequate evidence that their housing elements would affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), a core legal requirement. Redondo Beach was cited for a “lack of sites in all areas of the City”.
- Both cities failed to offer “substantial evidence” that the sites they proposed for housing growth are likely to be redeveloped in the coming years. This is a legal requirement under Assembly Bill 1397. In particular, Redondo Beach’s contention that the owner of a major shopping center has “strong interest” in redeveloping the property was (correctly) deemed insufficient proof that redevelopment is likely, and that more information (or additional housing growth sites) is needed.
- Both cities failed to provide a concrete plan with specific timelines for easing constraints and restrictions on development.
- Beverly Hills continued to forecast unrealistically high growth in ADU production, likely as a ruse to avoid rezoning parcels to meet the RHNA goal.
This is excellent news…but it gets better. Under newly-passed Assembly Bill 1398, cities whose housing elements fail to get HCD certification by February 11, 2022 get only one year to implement their rezoning plan (ordinarily, cities get three years to rezone.) So if Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach don’t pass improved housing elements soon, and HCD doesn’t certify them by February 11 (or rejects them a second time), these cities will have to rezone by October 2022.
Of course, the housing element fight is still far from won. HCD could ultimately back down under pressure from anti-housing cities, as happened in the case of San Diego. Additionally, there are still two major areas of ambiguity.
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First, the question of “what does it mean for a housing element to affirmatively further fair housing” is unanswered. While defining AFFH is somewhat subjective, HCD’s review letters didn’t provide numerical definitions or benchmarks for AFFH, or even a concrete set of qualitative criteria to determine whether cities’ plans measure up.
Second, HCD has only partially defined “substantial evidence” of likely site development. In a recent HCD letter declining to certify Davis’ housing element, the agency describes a site that did meet their standards for “substantial evidence”, explaining that the City “[demonstrated] a discontinued use, developer interest, and most importantly feasibility that the site has redevelopment potential during the planning period”. Per HCD’s letter, this is enough information to indicate that the site’s existing use isn’t a deterrent to new housing growth, and that the existing use is likely to discontinue in the coming years.
While this is a reasonable way for a small city with a short site list to demonstrate “substantial evidence”, it seems infeasible for a large city to provide this information for thousands of parcels. HCD hasn’t yet said how they’ll determine whether large cities’ site inventories meet the “substantial evidence” threshold.
But for now, we’re encouraged that pro-housing advocates across California are being heard and helping HCD enforce housing element law. YIMBYs are getting the goods, and HCD is getting tough on NIMBYs. Let’s keep it up! You can help HCD stay on course and encourage them to improve on lacking areas by sending them a thank you letter here.
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