As some coastal towns in California are forced to build more housing while some rural areas face fewer demands from the state’s housing laws, some local leaders say they want to stop high density development from altering their suburban idyllic beach towns.
Of concern to Gates is what’s known as a Regional Housing Needs Assessment, or better known as RHNA, which requires Huntington Beach to zone for 13,368 units of housing in the 2021 through 2029 planning cycle.
Its allocation is the largest in the state compared to other cities of the same size and population—which is one of the city’s arguments in a lawsuit filed May 9 against the state asking for relief from the mandates.
Gates said when it comes to the state’s plan on housing, “the unfortunate thing is if this were to succeed you would be looking then at high-density development and high-density living in only 5 percent of the territory, where 95 percent of California’s population lives, leaving the other 95 percent of the territory untouched,” he said.
With about 81,000 housing units currently in the city, Gates argues that Huntington Beach’s requirement to zone for over 13,000 units could lead to an increase in housing stock by as much as 50 percent.
“The aggressive housing policy by the state of California is having a massive impact on Huntington Beach,” he said, also noting that the potential for a 50 percent increase doesn’t include the “numbers that may come down the pike in the next planning cycle.”
Of concern to Huntington Beach officials is that of the more than 13,000 units it must zone for, a tad more than 8,000 must be set aside as “affordable” for individuals earning very low, low, and moderate incomes. Developers usually include around 20 percent affordable units in new projects, to maintain no net loss fiscally.
To meet that number, according to city officials, the affordable units would have to be spread out over multiple developments—meaning each new development would only include a quarter of units deemed affordable—which could result, they say, in having to plan for as many as 40,000 units overall.
In its lawsuit, Huntington Beach is challenging the state’s methodology for determining the numbers, pointing to a 2022 report by California’s independent auditor which determined the housing department’s 2021 calculations in question were created using a flawed system and are therefore inaccurate.
“There really are a lot of components to this fight. … The mandates themselves are flawed, and the state auditor found that it’s not even the city of Huntington Beach coming to that conclusion. It’s the state coming to that conclusion that the state didn’t follow its own housing law when it came to these [mandates],” Gates said.
According to Gates, Surf City’s lawsuit is “a winner.”
“I’ve heard from a lot of legal experts, frankly, that our case is remarkable,” he said.
Local planning and land use issues have always been left up to local decision-making by the city councils, and now that Huntington Beach is pushing back, other cities are watching on the sidelines, he said.
“What we’re seeing is an outpouring of support from other cities through the state saying, ‘Hey, keep up the good fight. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to join your lawsuit,’” he said.
When it comes to housing, the state is telling duly elected officials what to do, which has been raised as a possible constitutional violation in the city’s suit.
“The state’s basically coming in with these housing mandates and saying, ‘Hey, local city councils, you can’t exercise the discretion that the voters vested you with. You have to make the decisions we tell you to make in order to advance our housing agenda,’” he said.
According to California’s Housing Community Development Department—which develops policies and conducts research and analysis of the state’s housing needs—the mandatory RHNA is assigned to cities to meet the housing needs of people at all income levels and establishes how affordable those homes should be.
But Gates said building more homes has never been proven to increase affordability, so the state’s plans, he said, are based on theory without evidence to back up their position.
“A lot of property throughout the state of California is expensive, but simply increasing the supply does not address the problem of affordability,” he said.
According to Gates, if the state wanted to lower rents by increasing housing then they could target areas with more land to work with.
“If the state was serious about supply and demand … they would target undeveloped areas of the state and come up with an incentive program,” he said, which could determine if increased supply actually leads to less demand and better affordability.
If California continues on its path, suburban coastal communities like Huntington Beach might turn into transient cities with high-density development like Santa Monica, Gates said, which could mean a less engaged community, less home ownership, and more high rises.
“It really changes the culture of a community because you don’t have people coming in who are as invested in the city,” he said. “Whereas Huntington Beach right now, where you have a high percentage of home ownership, people who are invested in the community care about the community.”
