California’s cities and counties make most decisions about when, where, and to what extent housing will be built. For decades, many California communities—particularly coastal communities—have used this control to limit home building. As a result, too little housing has been built to accommodate all those who wish to live here. This lack of home building has driven a rapid rise in housing costs.
Two important components of communities’ decisions about housing can limit home building. First, in crafting their long-term land use plans and implementing these plans through zoning, cities and counties can provide inadequate opportunities for new housing to be built. Second, cities and counties can create onerous processes for the approval of new housing developments. We discussed this latter issue last May in Considering Changes to Streamline Local Housing Approvals in which we looked at a proposal from the Governor to streamline approvals. We concurred with the Governor that state actions should be taken to limit local approval requirements faced by proposed housing developments that are consistent with local land use rules. And we suggested these changes apply to all types of housing development.
In Considering Changes to Streamline Local Housing Approvals, we cautioned that efforts to streamline approvals could be undermined if local planning and zoning rules do not provide adequate opportunities for projects to take advantage of this streamlining. The state’s primary existing tool for combatting the problem of inadequate planning and zoning is housing element law. Housing element law requires cities and counties to develop a plan that demonstrates how their planning and zoning rules will accommodate future home building.
View Article