31 Southern California cities ignore housing reporting rules, study finds

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Thirty-one Southern California cities – from Huntington Beach to Hidden Hills and from Lancaster to Loma Linda – failed to meet a state requirement to report progress meeting housing goals each year, a new report says.

Out of at least five annual progress reports required since 2013, these 31 cities provided none.

According to the report, Southern California as a whole – excluding Los Angeles County – gets a grade of C when it comes to addressing the region’s homebuilding needs. The letter grade for Los Angeles County alone is a C minus.

Those are among the conclusions from a new report released Thursday, Feb. 28, by Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics and Next 10, a San Francisco policy research center. The study, based on newly unveiled housing data, seeks to grade California communities in addressing the state’s housing shortage.

Statewide, the report found, 100 out of 539 cities and counties failed to file even one report tracking their progress meeting homebuilding goals.

And while most California regions are halfway to their next deadline, just 26 percent of the needed housing have received building permits.

“On average, jurisdictions are only a fourth of the way to meeting their targets,” said F. Noel Perry, Next 10’s founder. “At the current pace of construction, some of the jurisdictions won’t meet their targets for decades or, in some cases, millennia.”

Under a 50-year-old state law, California cities and counties are required to plan for housing at all income levels to accommodate growth. But the so-called “Regional Housing Needs Assessment” process lacked teeth, resulting in “a chronic lack of participation” and rising homelessness and displacement, the report said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed to improve compliance, threatening to withhold transportation funds from communities that fail to adequately address their housing needs. In January, Newsom sued the city of Huntington Beach for cutting affordable housing units from its general plan, then later met in Long Beach with leaders of numerous Southern California cities the state says has failed to adequately plan for new housing.

The RHNA process, as it’s called, is “the primary tool to address California’s housing shortage,” Perry said. “(But) the RHNA tool is not working that well … to address the housing crisis.”

Among the findings:

• There’s less progress meeting goals for low-income housing than for upper-income housing, statewide and among the six-county Southern California Association of Governments. For example, Southern California communities approved building permits for just 8.4 percent of the low-income-housing units needed by October 2021. On the other hand, 15.2 percent of the needed moderate-income units have been permitted and 48 percent of the needed units for upper-income households (those earning at least 20 percent more than the area’s median income) have been approved.
• The report named five Southern California cities that are overbuilding upper-income housing while failing to build any low-income units. Malibu, for example, approved 49 homes for households earning at least a moderate income or greater even though it doesn’t need any, the report said.  Costa Mesa built 518 such homes. The report also named Laguna Hills, Westminster and Big Bear Lake as “misallocating” building permits for upper-tier units.
• Ten Southern California cities haven’t approved any new homes since the current planning cycle began in October 2013. Among them: Cudahy, Rosemead, Westlake Village, Laguna Woods, Rancho Santa Margarita, Banning and Apple Valley.
• San Bernardino County and the cities of Santa Ana and West Hollywood ranked among the state’s best-performing communities for meeting housing needs.

California’s overall letter grade for meeting housing goals also was a C, the report said.

Over half of the cities and counties in the state reported they hadn’t issued a single building permit for the poorest households in their communities — those earning less than half of the median income.

On the other hand, the Next 10 report found some communities earned the highest marks because their housing goals are too low. For example, Beverly Hills got an A, but only needed to approve three new homes to meet its RHNA goals, the report said. Meanwhile, a separate transportation plan showed Beverly Hills was expected to add 300 households and 3,400 jobs between 2008 and 2020.

Housing goals need to be aligned more with job growth, the report said.

The report argues local zoning rules favoring single-family homes over apartments or condos should be revised to ensure enough housing is built to keep up with growth.

“It’s become very apparent very quickly,” said Adam Fowler, Beacon’s director of research, “the (RHNA) assessment is very problematic in trying to solve the crisis at hand.”

The report notes that a majority of the California cities that fail to file progress reports are low-income communities in southeast Los Angeles County and the Central Valley that don’t have the planning staff needed to prepare the reports. Perhaps more support can be provided to those communities, Perry said.

The Southern Californian cities are Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Rolling Hills, Palos Verdes Estates, Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, Hidden Hills, Monte Bello, Commerce, Vernon, Maywood, Lynwood, Compton, Bradbury, Covina, La Puente, Pico Rivera, Hawaiian Gardens, Azuza, Pomona, Industry, La Habra Heights, Lancaster, Fillmore, Montclair, Adelanto, Victorville, Loma Linda, Jurupa Valley, Canyon Lake and Blythe.

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