In 2013, the city of Oakland was ordered to make room for 2,815 units of moderate-income housing between 2015 and 2022, part of the state-mandated process for assigning housing targets to more than 100 Bay Area cities and counties.
t the end of 2021, San Francisco had issued building permits for more than 150% of the market-rate units it was assigned — but just 57% of its assigned 16,333 below-market-rate units. Relatively speaking, San Francisco was a strong performer: San Jose built just 24% of the 20,849 below market rate units it had been assigned, including issuing permits for just 7.2% of the low-income units it had been told to plan for.
RHNA has come a long way in California since its creation in 1969. For the first five decades of its existence, RHNA was essentially a conceptual exercise: there were no meaningful punishments for cities that didn’t comply with the state’s demands, and little oversight to ensure cities that did comply were doing so in good faith.
“It’s, how do you zone for this not just so you can count it in your housing element, but so it’s actually financially feasible for developers to carry projects forward?” Saver said.