03/28/2024

Expensive Housing Imperils the California Dream

The unaffordability problem affecting the Bay Area-Silicon Valley region of California is a serious statewide crisis that Sacramento isn’t taking seriously.  But this problem isn’t the Bay Area’s alone.  California’s most populous region – Greater Los Angeles – is also plagued with unaffordable homes and rentals. And March 2017’s consolidated Los Angeles election has housing affordability front and center.

Los Angeles County – Delinquent on RHNA: The Regional Housing Need Assessment (RHNA) is part of the State Housing Law requiring forecasts (over an 8 year time period) of the housing need for all jurisdictions (both incorporated and unincorporated). For Los Angeles, this responsibility falls on the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG).  Communities within the region are then responsible for ensuring that the housing need is met over the 8 year time period.  The problem: while state law mandates the release of these forecasts, the law doesn’t mandate jurisdictions to actually add the housing need.  In the 2006 to 2014 RHNA period, the County of Los Angeles added 115,775 housing units – just 41 percent of the county-wide RHNA.  The fact that jurisdictions routinely fail to meet the RHNA forecasts is further exacerbated by the fact that these forecasts are notoriously conservative, meaning that the communities should be going above-and-beyond their RHNA. 

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