A new report from the California State Auditor identifies key recommendations to help address the state’s housing shortage, and targets the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process that municipalities are required to follow under state law.
The report, Regional Housing Needs Assessments; The Department of Housing and Community Development Must Improve Its Processes to Ensure That Communities Can Adequately Plan for Housing, was issued last month.
“This was a request for an emergency audit,” Michael S. Tilden, acting state auditor, said in an email response to the Northern California Record. “In his request, Senator Glazer referred to a large number of cities appealing the new housing needs allocations handed down by the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and regional planning agencies.”
The letter from Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, notes that RHNA numbers have increased exponentially in recent years and asks for an independent assessment from the auditor to assess how effectively RHNA numbers are determined.
While needs assessments can be contentious, the audit states, they represent a critical component for addressing housing challenges.
It is not known how the audit may impact the task for local governments to update their Housing Elements by next January.
A lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court alleges the HCD failed to adequately account for the jobs-housing balance and “severely underestimated” the amount of housing needed in San Francisco, anywhere from 86,000 to 138,000 units.
Many of the municipalities appealing to the state contend the RHNA projection estimates are too high.
But the Auditor report notes HCD made several errors when entering data into calculations, which reduced the amount of housing needs in the assessments for two of the three regions reviewed.
“We identified several problems with HCD’s methodology, such as its limited review of staff members’ data entries and a lack of adequate consideration of factors required by state law,” the audit states.
HCD and Department of Finance officials have said they are working to implement the auditor’s recommendations within specified timelines, generally expected to be completed within one year.
“Our office will follow-up with both HCD and Finance 60 days after our report was released, and then again after six months and one year, to ensure that they have implemented our recommendations,” Tilden said. “To the extent that the Legislature seeks to implement the recommendation we made to it, it may consider legislation to clarify a portion of state law that governs the RHNA process related to considerations for vacancy rates.”
The Auditor’s office also provides a page for tracking progress made by the state agencies and the Legislature on the RHNA report recommendations.