As local jurisdictions try to figure out how to house their residents amidst a housing shortage, a new tool helps make clear the challenges they are facing.
The Southern California News Group (SCNG) has created a report card for judging how each county and municipality is doing with hitting its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) numbers. According to an article by Nikie Johnson in the Orange County Register, this is the second year the group has done this report card, which includes results from 2019.
What is RHNA?
The RHNA process is how the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) determines the total number of new homes each region needs to build, and how affordable those homes need to be in order to meet the housing needs of people at all income levels in that region.
When those numbers are finalized, regional authorities then take over to determine how those houses and housing types will be distributed within their region. Sonoma County’s regional authority is the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). ABAG must create one method for determining those allocations to each county and municipality within the region, and those entities must then update their Housing Element to demonstrate that there are sufficient sites for the housing to be built, and that the necessary policies and strategies to meet the community’s housing needs are in place.
In other words, each local government must zone enough of its land to ensure that sufficient housing can be built to accommodate their housing need, based on their RHNA numbers. If a community does not have adequate suitable land to zone for high-density housing, then it will not receive state certification of its Housing Element.
This is problematic because most state funding programs for housing and community benefits require a state-certified Housing Element. Entities which do not meet these requirements risk missing out on funding opportunities and are required to update their Housing Element every four years, rather than every eight years as well as being vulnerable to potential lawsuits by developers and housing advocates.
The new grading tool
According to the Register article, jurisdictions are graded on how close they are to being on track to meet their goals, depending on how far they are into their current RHNA cycle. Some were in the first year of a new cycle in 2019, some were in the last, others were in the middle.
Grades for each category:
- 100% or better on track = A / 4 points
- 75-99% on track = B / 3 points
- 50-74% on track = C / 2 points
- 1-49% on track = D / 1 point
- 0 units built = F / 0 points
If a jurisdiction was not required to permit any units in a given category it wasn’t included in their overall grade. Extra credit was given for showing improvement, prioritizing what’s needed most and degree of difficulty:
• Jurisdictions got a half-point bonus if they weren’t fully on track in a category but improved their score by at least 25 percentage points from 2018.
• Jurisdictions got a 1-point bonus for being at least 90% on track in each of the lower-income categories, and a half-point bonus for being at least 90% on track in the moderate category.
• Jurisdictions that asked to increase their housing stock by at least 10% during this RHNA cycle could get up to 2 bonus points, using a formula based on that overall increase and how well they were meeting their goals.
According to the Register, the overall grade comes from adding up the category scores and bonus points, then dividing by the number of categories (not always four; a few weren’t asked to permit any homes at higher income levels). The grade-point averages correspond to these letter grades:
- A+ = 4.33 or higher
- A = 4-4.32
- A- = 3.67-3.99
- B+ = 3.33-3.66
- B = 3-3.32
- B- = 2.67-2.99
- C+ = 2.33-2.66
- C = 2-2.32
- C- = 1.67-1.99
- D+ = 1.33-1.66
- D = 1-1.32
- D- = 0.67-0.99
- F = below 0.67
Local numbers
Locally, our numbers are mixed, according to the report card, with some areas doing significantly better than other.
The unincorporated parts of the county have done the best, with an overall grade of A+, with more permits issued in nearly every category than final goals numbers. The only exception is in the very low income category, but the number of permits issued (115) is only slightly lower that the final goal of 126. The county received 2.5 bonus points for how well it’s doing at the very low and low income levels.
Cloverdale received a B-, with an interesting mix of scores, with As for very low and above moderate income level, but Ds for low and moderate income levels. They received 1.0 bonus point for doing well with very low-income housing.
Healdsburg received an A, with As in every category but very low income, where it received a B. It received 1.5 bonus points for doing well and the low and moderate income levels.
Sebastopol received an overall score of B-, with a wide range of grades. It received a D for very low income, B for low income, A for moderate and C for above moderate. It also received 1. Bonus points for doing well at the low and moderate income levels.
Windsor did the worst of our local coverage areas, with an overall grade of C. I received a D for very low income housing, a C for low income housing, a D for moderate income housing and a B for above moderate housing. It also received 1.0 bonus points for improving it’s numbers from the previous year.
For comparison, Santa Rosa, the county’s most populous municipality, received a grade of D+, with Ds in every category but above moderate income, which received a B. To be fair however, they also had a significantly higher allocation number, 5,083, compared to Windsor’s 440, the county’s 515, Sebastopol’s 120, Healdsburg’s 157 and Cloverdale’s 211.
Statewide view
According to the Register story, very few jurisdictions are meeting their requirements.
Only 18 jurisdictions in the state are on track to meet their goals in every category they were given a RHNA goal for, though a few of them are local: the towns of Calistoga and St. Helena along with the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County. Just to our north both Ukiah and Mendocino County were also part of the 18.
“Another 33 jurisdictions were on track in three of four categories, 75 were on track in only two categories, 197 were on track in only one category (and for most of them, it was the above-moderate-income category) and 216 weren’t on track in any category. (That includes Industry, the only city in California that wasn’t asked to permit any new homes in this RHNA cycle),” the article said.
There continues to be an issue of jurisdictions ignoring affordable housing, but not more expensive housing
According to the article, almost one-third of jurisdictions — 172 cities and counties — have reported zero permits for low- and very-low-income housing during their current RHNA cycles. Those two categories are considered “affordable housing” — within the means of homebuyers who make less than 80% of the area’s median income. Moderate-income housing isn’t faring much better — about 83,000 units have been permitted statewide, short of the 143,000 needed to be on track.
However, jurisdictions statewide have permitted about 490,000 housing units during those years that would only be affordable to buyers making 120% or more of the area’s median income. That exceeds not just how many they’d need to be on track (339,000) but the total collective goal of about 488,000 homes.
There also appears to be a significant gap between wealthy cities and poorer ones in their ability to meet goals. There is also a correlation between the type of housing being built and the relative wealth of the jurisdiction, with “poorer cities … getting D’s in the moderate and expensive housing categories. But cities with medium and high income levels are permitting many more expensive housing units, averaging B grades in that category, which helps to pull their overall grades up.”
According to the story, half of the 116,661 homes permitted that year were in just 20 jurisdictions. Fifty-five jurisdictions, or about 10%, didn’t report any new homes.
Cities and counties added just under 10,000 affordable housing units in 2019. Los Angeles also had the most, with 1,255, followed by San Francisco with 1,132. More than half of jurisdictions didn’t permit any affordable housing in 2019.
