SCAG Regional Council Approves Objection to State’s Regional Housing Needs Determination for Southern California
On Nov. 5, the SCAG Regional Council voted to object to the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s (HCD) 7th Cycle Regional Housing Needs Determination (RHND) for the SCAG region, which totals 1,359,750.
The RHND was released last month and establishes the entire region’s total housing need for the 7th Cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) process. The RHND precedes SCAG’s statutorily required work to create the RHNA Allocation Plan, which will establish each local jurisdiction’s planning obligations for the 7th Cycle.
SCAG staff evaluated the RHND for consistency with statutory requirements before presenting an evaluation and recommendations to SCAG’s RHNA Subcommittee on Oct. 26. Overall, the evaluation found most components of the RHND to reflect a clear, data-driven approach. However, the evaluation also found that HCD’s use of cost-burden data to inform the RHND does not represent a reasonable application of the required methodology and assumptions.
Based on that evaluation, the RHNA Subcommittee moved to recommend narrowing the scope of HCD's cost-burden adjustment to lower-income households only. This approach creates a more direct connection between identified housing need and affordability, which this adjustment is intended to address. This change would revise the total RHND to 1,081,926 units. The RHNA Subcommittee voted to recommend that the Community, Economic, and Human Development Committee (CEHD) and the Regional Council approve an objection to this portion of the RHND. Both the CEHD policy committee and the Regional Council approved the staff and RHNA Subcommittee recommendation to object and to narrow the scope of HCD's cost-burden adjustment to lower-income households only. SCAG must submit its objection by Nov. 14.
The RHND is an early milestone in the RHNA process and is developed by HCD in technical consultation with SCAG, considering state requirements, demographic trends, and housing conditions. The RHND sets a regional target and does not establish the number of housing units that an individual city or county will be assigned; state law designates SCAG to assign local allocations through the RHNA Allocation Plan.
Read more about this critical early step in the RHNA process at SCAG News.