Like many, if by now not most, of you, I’ve been interested in learning more about how RHNA works, especially as it relates to us. Digging through the Regional Plan for the Bay Area, I found some things I think are interesting:
Spoiler Alert:
RHNA Allocations were not affected by town Wildfire Danger Zones:
This being the hottest topic, I’ll start with it. On the bright side, it is considered, but in a roundabout way. Allocations are driven by a Blueprint document estimating future populations. That document takes off areas in towns that have been designated Very-high-fire danger by Cal Fire. In our case, the Highlands area. At no point is any mention made of paying any attention to what a town has done on its own. After that initial consideration, I can’t find any evidence that it is considered in the allocation process (which is documented in 80+ pages of tables and formulas). [I expect that when this process started new Cal Fire maps were to have been out long before now, but they aren’t]
ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) does the allocation for the Bay Area, based on total quota of 441,000 assigned by the State for this cycle, and with a bunch of guidance on best practices for allocating them.
Factors Specifically Affecting Portola Valley’s Allocation
- Two factors that directly affect Portola Valley in its allocation of Low-income and Very-low-income housing are that we aren’t transit friendly (15% weighting), but we are considered a High Opportunity area (70%) so for economic diversity, that increases our number. For Moderate income and above, those factors aren’t included.
- Overall, we have been assigned 73 of the 114,000 very-low-income housing units mandated for the Bay Area.
- After increased equity, the second RHNA objective is preservation of environmental and agricultural resources. (That would certainly encourage finding a non-open space solution, but they also encourage using vacant land, which in our town is mostly open space.) Greenhouse gas reduction is also an objective. Something to think about as we weigh alternatives.
- Economic integration is encouraged, so putting all our VLI housing on a site at the entrance to town might raise questions.
- The Plan says the methodology has taken into account availability of water, sewer, and available “infill” property, while also taking into account protected “agricultural or for preservation” (not sure how that was done?).
Note: This seems pretty optimistic, given the large-scale, rough-grained nature of the planning process
- Current local zoning is not considered in making allocations.
Note: There are a lot of other sections about farmworkers, homeless, etc. that don’t have much effect on PV. Note: A town can annex unincorporated land and then (I guess) get whatever allocation that area had, and manage the total?
- PV is projected to have .045% of the households in the Bay Area by 2050. That “score” was then modified up a bit because we are a high-opportunity area, and then down a fair amount because we don’t have access to transit, bring our final score to .030%. (details for every town are in Appendix 4 of the linked document below). Woodside had a similar net reduction from baseline. In our case those numbers get stuck in a meat grinder along with everyone else’s, and out comes our allocation.
- Our “Final” Housing Element is due by the end of January, 2023.
- RHNA also has an annual audit process in the legislation to ensure that jurisdictions are making progress with actually getting housing built, rather than just planning for it, but that doesn’t seem to be covered in this document.Source: Final RHNA Plan for SF Bay AreaPS For reference, % growth by town mandated in this RHNA cycle. It is makes anyone feel better, we’re on the low end:
