Regional Housing Needs Allocation
(RHNA - pronounced “ree-na”)
Overview
Since 1969, the State of California has required that all local governments adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in our communities. To meet this requirement, each city or county must develop a Housing Element as part of its General Plan (the local government’s long-range blueprint for growth) that shows how it will meet its community’s housing needs. There are many laws that govern this process, and collectively they are known as Housing Element Law.
The Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA) process is the part of Housing Element Law used to determine how many new homes, and the affordability of those homes, each local government must plan for in its Housing Element. This process is repeated every eight years, and for this cycle the Bay Area is planning for the period from 2023 to 2031.
Working with the State Department of Finance, the CA Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) assigns future housing and population growth projections in eight-year cycles to every Council of Government in the State (in our case, the Association of Bay Area Governments, or ABAG). ABAG then assigns a number of units to each member jurisdiction, like Lafayette, San Francisco, Hayward, etc., which must ensure that there is enough land zoned at appropriate densities to accommodate the assigned RHNA. The RHNA number includes a distribution of units to be provided across the four income categories discussed above.
Some key takeaways about RHNA
We are planning for housing, not building it.
The free market will determine if and when the required units are actually developed. Lafayette does not develop housing and no one will be forced to sell their property or build housing.
If we are planning for housing, how should we plan for it and where should it be located? The allocation has been provided by the state and regional governments, while there is an appeal process, we don’t know the outcome of the appeal. To be prepared, we must develop a compliant plan for how we want to handle our allocation. The Housing Element update process is your opportunity to decide where the housing should go.
How does RHNA assist in addressing the Bay Area’s housing crisis?
The Bay Area’s housing affordability crisis is decades in the making. State law is designed to match housing supply with demand—particularly for affordable homes. Each new RHNA cycle presents new requirements to address dynamic housing markets, which in recent years have seen demand dramatically outstrip supply across all affordability levels. RHNA provides a local government with a minimum number of new homes across all income levels for which it must plan in its Housing Element. The Housing Element must include sites zoned for enough capacity to meet the RHNA goals as well as policies and strategies to expand housing choices and increase housing affordability.
How is the allocation determined?
The methodology used to allocate units is the same for all jurisdictions within the nine-county Bay Area. ABAG convened a Housing Methodology Committee (HMC) in 2019 and 2020, consisting of elected officials and staff from each county, as well as stakeholders from interest groups. The methodology the HMC developed relied on growth modeling from a concurrent effort, Plan Bay Area 2050. To these basic assumptions about growth, the HMC applied a variety of statutorily-required factors and tested them to ensure that certain benchmarks were met, for example, meeting or exceeding greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Some of these factors included access to high opportunity/resource areas (an equity measure), as well as proximity to jobs based on both vehicle and transit access. For more information, check out the ABAG website or their Frequently Asked Questions on RHNA.
The current cycle of the Housing Element (the 5th Cycle) runs through the end of 2022 so projects that receive their certificate of occupancy before June 30, 2022 will be counted towards the city’s 5th cycle RHNA allocation (2015-2022). Only projects that receive their certificate of occupancy after July 1, 2022 will be counted towards the city’s 6th cycle RHNA allocation (2023-2031).
Click here for more information about the methodology.
Draft RHNA Allocation
In 2020, ABAG adopted the HMC’s recommended methodology for the distribution of the regional housing need of 441,176 units established by HCD. In May 2021, Lafayette’s draft allocation was 2,114 units, distributed among the four income categories: very-low income, low income, moderate income and above moderate income.
Compare Lafayette’s projected figure with the allocation from the last Housing Element of 400 units. The draft allocations throughout the Bay Area are high in part because the region’s bulk allocation from HCD is more than double the last Housing Element Cycle’s allocation, which was about 189,000 units.
NOTE: Although the RHNA allocation is not a direct requirement to build units – since governments do not build housing -- the State legislature has enacted increasingly stringent requirements on localities to ensure they are doing everything possible for housing to be built.
Appeal of Lafayette’s Allocation Denied
On May 20, 2021, the ABAG Executive Board approved the Final Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) Methodology and Draft Allocations. ABAG officially released the Draft RHNA Allocations on May 25, 2021 initiating the 45-day period during which a local jurisdiction or HCD could submit an appeal to ABAG requesting a change to any Bay Area jurisdiction’s allocation. Staff filed Lafayette's appeal on July 8.
On November 12, 2021, the ABAG Administrative Committee ratified a written final determination on each appeal. The Committee denied all appeals submitted by local jurisdictions, with the exception of the appeal submitted by the County of Contra Costa.
Lafayette's Final RHNA Allocation
You can see documents for the previous RHNA cycles here:
What is a RHNA Buffer?
The City’s previous Housing Element included a RHNA allocation of 400 units along with a “buffer” of 392 units (almost 100% of the allocation)– that is, the City identified enough land zoned at appropriate densities to accommodate a total of 792 units. A buffer is necessary to ensure that if identified potential housing sites are not developed with housing, there is remaining capacity to ensure an ongoing supply of sites for housing during the eight years of the Housing Element Cycle.
The need for a substantial buffer is even more important during this cycle because of new rules in the Housing Accountability Act’s “no net loss” provisions. SB 166 of 2017 requires that the land inventory and site identification programs in the Housing Element must always include sufficient sites to accommodate the unmet RHNA during the entirety of the eight-year cycle by income category. When a site identified in the Element as available for the development of housing to accommodate the lower‐income portion of the RHNA is actually developed with housing for a higher income group, the locality must either (1) identify and rezone, if necessary, an adequate substitute site, or (2) demonstrate that the land inventory already contains an adequate substitute site. A buffer will be critical to ensuring that City remain compliant with these provisions.
In order to plan for these units, the City must consider where to up-zone (increase the maximum allowable density) segments of Lafayette in order to accommodate an allocation of approximately 2,100 units, plus a buffer of some percentage above this amount. Were the City to use a buffer of 50%, the total number of units needing to be accommodated would total about 3,150 units (2,100 units allocated plus 1,050 unit buffer). While some additional changes may occur with the allocation, based on potential modifications by the State in its review of the methodology, it is unlikely there will be dramatic changes to the outcome.
Opportunity Sites
Like all California cities, Lafayette must work toward meeting the state requirements for a compliant General Plan Housing Element, which includes planning to accommodate its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). In order to accommodate the new units, the city may need to change the density of housing allowed in different areas of the city. Density is generally measured as housing or dwelling units per acre.
State law also requires that the Housing Element contain a site-by-site inventory of land suitable for development of all housing types, including multifamily. The sites included in this inventory are referred to as “opportunity sites”.
Opportunity Site Criteria
Each opportunity site must be evaluated to assess its development potential and how many of the total number of required units it could accommodate. The state provides guidelines for what can and cannot qualify as an opportunity site, such as the size of the lot, proximity to transit or other services, and environmental considerations. These sites may or may not eventually be developed for housing as the choice is, and always will be, the property owner’s decision. You can find a list of previously identified opportunity sites in the current Housing Element. You can also review the CA Dept. of Housing and Community Development’s (HCD) Housing Element Site Inventory Guidebook to understand the full scope of criteria used to identify opportunity sites.
Opportunity sites have been limited to the planning areas being studied under the environmental impact report for the Housing Element, which are shown in the map at left.
General Plan Advisory Committee Recommended Inventory
On March 15, 2022, the GPAC finalized its recommended inventory and forwarded the draft Housing Element to the Planning Commission for review. Below is a summary of the GPAC’s recommendation:
Include the BART Parking Lots at the AB 2923-mandated 75 du/acre (Planning Area 7)
Include 11 acres of the DeSilva South site at 30 du/acre (Planning Area 9)
Include 2 acres of the DeSilva North site at 35 du/acre (Planning Area 9)
Exclude the Deer Hill Corridor – retain existing zoning and density (Planning Area 8)
Include opportunity sites in the Downtown, but no change in density (Planning Areas 1-6)
Include opportunity sites in the Brookdale area, but no change in density (Planning Area 13)
Provide for a 15-30% combined buffer for low and very low income
Utilize a 95% density yield overall, except 90% in along Mt. Diablo Blvd.
Use the links below for more information on the GPAC sites inventory:
Planning Commission Recommended Inventory
On May 2, 2022, the Planning Commission reviewed the draft Housing Element and had its final discussion of the opportunity sites inventory. Below is a summary of the Commission’s recommended inventory:
The southern “DeSilva” site (site 9-1) should be excluded from the inventory.
The northern “DeSilva” site (site 9-2) should be upzoned to 35 du/acre, consistent with neighboring multifamily uses.
The proposed sites north of the BART station parking lots (planning area 8 – Deer Hill corridor) should be excluded from the inventory.
Parcels in the northern portion of planning areas 1, 3, upzoned to 50 du/ac.
Parcels fronting Mt. Diablo Blvd in areas 2, 4 and 6 should remain at 35 du/ac.
The BART parking lots should be upzoned to 80 du/ac, slightly above the mandated density of AB 2923, and realistic development should be set at 95% of zoned density.
