California Rejects Oakland Housing Plan, Most Bay Area Cities Failed to File

It’s beginning to look like builder’s remedy—which allows affordable housing developers to bypass local zoning authorities—will become effective this month in dozens of cities across California.

In what may be a microcosm of the statewide response, only 30 out of 109 Bay Area cities and counties adopted “housing element” plans in time for the Jan. 31 state deadline to spell out their housing growth plans for the next eight years, according to a report in SiliconValley.com.

Perhaps even more ominous, in terms of the zoning reckoning to come—and what is likely to be a tsunami of litigation to follow—only four of the plans submitted to date have been approved by California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

HCD made it clear that it will not rubber-stamp these housing plans when it notified Oakland this week that it has rejected the city’s plan—which exceeded the state’s 26K housing goal for the city by pledging to create 36K new housing units in Oakland.

Even more eye-opening was the reason for HCD’s veto of Oakland’s plan, a 132-page housing blueprint that was submitted a month before the state’s deadline, and which included a detailed map of proposed affordable housing sites throughout Oakland:

In a Feb. 2 letter to city officials, HCD demanded that Oakland prove that many of the sites it identified as targets for affordable housing have “a realistic chance” of development. The housing regulators also told the Oakland it would need to create a program to track the city’s progress in meeting its state-mandated housing goal, SiliconValley reported.

Oakland city officials responded with a statement that they were reviewing HCD’s “suggested edits” and “anticipate being able to resolve all comments.”

Oakland’s housing plan designated more than 600 sites for new housing, most of which are concentrated in downtown and West Oakland. Major transportation arteries, including Foothill and MacArthur boulevards, would see transit-oriented housing development.

The city also partnered with a regional advocacy group, East Bay Housing Organizations, to produce a video explaining that the new housing plan is designed to serve the city’s 440,000 residents without gentrification that would drive out lower-income people.

Thus far, only four of the housing element plans submitted to the state—from San Francisco, Emeryville, San Leandro and Oakland’s neighbor, Alameda—have received final approval from HCD. A plan submitted the day before the Jan. 31 deadline by Berkeley also has been rejected by the state agency.

The plan submitted by San Francisco and approved by the state calls for 82K new homes to developed in the city in the next eight years, which more than half—46,000—to be designated as affordable to low- and moderate-income households.

San Francisco now on the hook to rezone neighborhoods to accommodate at least 36,282 new homes by 2026.

Cities that failed to submit a housing element plan—or had plans rejected, like Oakland and Berkeley—may cut out of state funding for housing and transportation; lack of plan may also trigger “builder’s remedies,” which allows the state to override local authorities in approving affordable housing projects.