Reject Bay Area cities’ appeals to shirk housing obligations

It appears that just about every right-minded person in California agrees that we have a severe housing crisis on our hands. Homelessness rates are at all-time highs, home prices are at stratospheric levels making the dream of ownership out of reach to all but the wealthy, and too many of our fellow Californians are being forced every day to leave the Golden State for a more affordable life elsewhere.

Unfortunately this, it would appear, is where the consensus ends, and it is generally true that the only thing that people dislike more than this housing crisis are any proposed solutions to it. We are stuck in political gridlock where much heat is being generated, mostly by yelling at city council meetings and feverish hand-wringing, but little light. We are still mostly in the dark and disagreement as to the scale this crisis and as a result what actions are necessary to resolve it.

In 2017, the Bay Area Council began working with state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, on a bill, SB 828, that would overhaul how the state of California calculates our projected future housing needs and apportions those numbers across our state.

Prior to SB 828, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process was secretive, rife with political horse trading, and always underprojected the actual number of homes that would be needed to meet the demands of a growing economy and population. After the successful passage of SB 828 we now have a more scientific approach to measuring our housing needs. As a result the numbers are more accurate, and much larger. In the current eight-year RHNA cycle (2015-2023), Bay Area cities must zone sufficient land for roughly 189,000 new homes. In the next cycle (2023-2031) that number will be 441,000.

Of course, many cities across the Bay Area are not happy with this new, larger obligation. Twenty-eight have filed appeals to the Association of Bay Area

Governments asking that their share of the 441,000 be lowered and given to another city. The formula that apportioned numbers to individual cities was the product of a 14-monthlong stakeholder-driven series of meetings that focused on making sure that every community shouldered some of the load and those parts of our region that are job rich and have good transit alternatives should get a little more.

We hope that when ABAG meets this fall to review these appeals that, absent some very unique local challenges that were not considered during the long deliberation process, they are all dismissed. Unless all our communities recognize that we have a shared responsibility to ensure that there will be homes here for our children and grandchildren, we will continue to lose many of our best and brightest to other states. The Bay Area is not so much arranging deck chairs on the Titanic as we are auctioning them to the highest bidder. The status quo, the hand-wringing and platitudes are not working and the path we are on is not sustainable.