In the last month your City was forced by the State of California to approve the construction of about 16 projects totaling over 4,562 new units (941 are affordable). These are a wide variety of projects: apparently the smallest is 34 units (6 stories) and the largest is 2,000 units (15 stories). These projects all have in common that 20% of their units must be affordable and that they are entirely exempt from all local zoning codes for height, density, floor area ratios, etc. They are given this carte blanche because of a 30-year-old law (SB 2011) that says that any 20% affordable project of any size gets automatic approval if it is applied for during a time window that a city does not have a compliant Housing Element on file with the State.
What is a Housing Element?
For a little back history, Housing Elements are a way that the State forces local cities and counties to build more housing. These Housing Element documents have to be updated every eight years and require a city to show how their zoning and other incentives, will allow that City, over the next eight years, to permit the building of sufficient units to meet the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) numbers. The RHNA target number between 2021 and 2029 for our city is about 9,000 units and about 6,000 of them have to be affordable. This requirement for each City to upzone its zoning codes to meet the RHNA numbers has been going on for 40 years. Every eight years the State assigns a City its…