I talked about how the Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers (RHNA) will mess up cities in the County two and a half months ago. Little did I know at the time that the whole process of coming up with these numbers is shoddy at best and perhaps fraudulent at worst. A state auditor, Michael S. Tilden, has said as much as reported here
The Auditor found problems in the HCD methodology that may have inflated RHNA requirements by hundreds of thousands of housing units. The Auditor concludes that “The Department of Housing and Community Development must improve its processes to ensure that communities can adequately plan for housing.”
In his letter to the Governor and legislative leaders, the Auditor also states, “Overall, our audit determined that HCD does not ensure that its needs assessments are accurate and adequately supported. …This insufficient oversight and lack of support for its considerations risks eroding public confidence that HCD is informing local governments of the appropriate amount of housing they will need.”
Unfortunately, the audit reviewed the RHNA plans from only eight counties, which together contain less than eight percent of California’s population. Due to pending lawsuits the audit did not consider the RHNA plans of the two largest planning organizations, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). These two regions contain almost two-thirds (65.5 percent) of the state’s population. This omission makes it difficult to grasp the scale of the problems created by HCD’s errors.
ABAG is the one we care about here. They are the ones jamming big numbers down cities' throats and now we learn that the whole process may overestimate housing needs by 200,000 units. Who knows, maybe it's even more. But that hasn't stopped our Attorney General from getting into the act as reported by Tom Elias at the Daily Post on April 28th
Cities, especially B'game, should immediately question their allocations from ABAG. They should also get a read out on the full Tilden report from city staff before anymore giant projects get the green light. Getting a read out on the "pending lawsuits" noted above and the wisdom of joining one is action item #3. And as I said here, it's time for a new attorney general with better priorities and an ability to stay in his or her lane.
Are we governed by idiots? "Yes" argument--they really have no ability to look into the future. "No" argument: They really have no desire to look into the future, it would require real work. Third option? Please discuss:
San Mateo’s City Council declared its support for its draft housing element that articulates future goals and policies to allow for nearly 11,000 new units, with minor changes expected to density policy, fair housing language and senior housing.
“I think it gets us the greatest opportunity for the greatest number of housing units that we needed yesterday,” Deputy Mayor Diane Papan said. “So I’m very pleased to see what we’ve seen tonight.”
The City Council used its May 23 special meeting to ultimately accept its 2023-2031 draft housing element, a state-mandated document detailing housing policies and goals to further development opportunities. Under the housing element, San Mateo must provide the zoning conditions for more than 7,000 housing units as part of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation, a significant increase compared to the last cycle.
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/11-000-new-housing-units-sought-in-san-mateo/article_800b97dc-dbe5-11ec-adb7-53099fbea8d9.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1653487209&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline
Posted by: Joe | May 25, 2022 at 07:31 PM
Wonder why few people believe in the need to conserve water? Here:
A comprehensive document that outlines where and how 3,700 new housing units could be built in San Bruno over the next eight years was released last week, with many of the new homes planned for transit corridors.
The state-mandated “housing element” is the first step in the city’s process of meeting targets to build 3,165 new homes between 2023 and 2031 to comply with the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, a requirement from the California Housing and Community Development Department that assigns residential growth in eight-year cycles.
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/plans-for-3-700-homes-solidified-in-san-bruno/article_9c2f9e2c-e0b3-11ec-87f7-bfd6b718c107.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1654005617&utm_medium=email&utm_content=read%20more
I does get "boring" pointing out the same stupidity over and over....
Posted by: Joe | May 31, 2022 at 05:24 PM
DJ June 1st.
Burlingame population dropped by 3.6%
Posted by: Peter Garrison | June 01, 2022 at 08:38 AM
Hey, no worries about that little drop in population. It's only temporary. I hear there’s plenty of people a little further south that are planning on coming into this area.
I'm done using the terms "border",
or "our country" or "our state" or "our city". Those terms are becoming meaningless now.
Posted by: MBGA | June 01, 2022 at 03:58 PM