RHNA: How state law will mess up the County

The Daily Journal did a good job of summarizing the latest turn of the crank on "Regional Housing Needs Allocations" (Rhna) so let's just reiterate the numbers for future reference:

At the heart of state housing laws is the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA, which assigns housing growth to jurisdictions in eight-year cycles. While the law is nothing new, the upcoming cycle’s numbers (the sixth cycle in the law’s history) are larger than ever before and nearly three times those for the county’s current cycle.

Cities in San Mateo County will need to plan for a combined 44,800 new homes to be built over the next eight years.  With roughly 269,000 units of housing in the county and 2.8 people per home on average, the new housing could usher in upwards of 131,000 people, more growth than the county’s seen over the last 35 years. Combined with unincorporated land, the county’s total allocation for new homes is more than 47,000.

(Michael Lane, a state policy director with nonprofit public policy organization SPUR) said the big jump is "because of recent state legislation requiring new allocations be based on a more stringent look at housing affordability, job growth and vacancy rates.

“If they do fall behind, SB 35 will kick in. Hopefully that will speed up housing growth and bring some of those cities into compliance,” said Dylan Casey, executive director of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, or CaRLA.  Senate Bill 35, a law that became enforceable at the beginning of the year, removed cities’ abilities to deny projects that contain below-market-rate units if goals are not being met.

So there you have it.  "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  If all you look at is "housing affordability, job growth and vacancy rates" then you come up with these ridiculous demands, backed by multiple state laws, that will further mess up the County.

And in other news today in the SF Chronicle titled "Feds’ Central Valley Project expects to send no water to most California farms this year, little to cities" we are reminded yet again that

After an extraordinarily dry start to the year, the federal government announced Wednesday that most farms in California will likely receive no water from the state’s biggest reservoirs in 2022, the latest fallout from drought and a blow to an agricultural industry already crippled by tight supplies. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will get just a fraction of the water they requested.

Municipal agencies that receive federal water, which include suppliers in the Bay Area, are projected to get just 25% of what they asked for in 2022. This includes Contra Costa Water District and Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves the city of San Jose. Last year, most urban customers got about half of what they wanted.

While San Mateo County isn't as reliant on the Feds for our water, the steady downward drip from 50% to 25% to whatever in Silicon Valley is completely predictable across the state.  "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  If you are stuck in a big hole, stop digging.

Comments

[Spurinna]

Like the decision to take away 200+ parking places for bike lanes in San Mateo.

The residents, who don’t ride bikes to work, need the spaces so they can get to work and get home. They made that clear. One government official said that the council didn’t make it clear enough what needed to be done.

The government needed a bigger hammer.

How about the council listening to the people?

[Phinancier]

Tom Elias in the Post yesterday was pushing the ballot measure to stop SB9 and 10. Time to get that effort going.

[Joe]

I read Elias' column. He started with the recent judge's ruling stopping a big development in wildfire territory in Lake County and then posited that there were more limits coming in remote areas thus putting more pressure on suburban areas. Then he gets to "SB9 and SB10 which all but eliminated single family zoning...but those new laws require no new parking, no new water supplies, no new school buildings, no traffic mitigation--none of the measures developers of new tracts have had to provide over the last few decades."

He finishes by noting how politicians take donations from developers, and notes plenty of office space is empty and likely to stay empty. He's thinking wildfire zone limits may make "force legislators to make OKs automatic for much less expensive (office) conversions, even if that means less profit for their developer patrons." Bulleye except that any conversions still need the bits he says are missing.

All of this comes home in B'game here: https://www.burlingamevoice.com/2021/12/planning-for-a-rollicking-rollins-rd.html#comments

[MBGA]

100% agree. MRNA has messed up this county. And the state and the country. This vaccine crap and the mandates and business failures, handout scammers, printing trillions, excuse for election fraud, masking and vaccinating children who have a 0.000000000001% chance of dying from covid, was completely unnecessary. The virus could have been effectively handled with therapeutics that were criminally kept from the public. People should tried and hang for this.

ohhh, sorry, I see this is about RHNA, not MRNA... but this MRNA thing is also unnecessary in a free country, which unfortunately our country ain't no mo.

You masked for it, you got it.

[Lemming R Us]

Anyone care to bet that if Santa Clara and San Jose run dry Eshoo and Khanna will be screaming for water equity and demanding the upper peninsula give them water?