REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Direction on Santa Clara's Participation in Collaborative Efforts by the Cities Association of Santa Clara County to Address the Regional Housing Need Allocation
Report
BACKGROUND
Under state law, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) identifies the total statewide housing need at all income levels and assigns a corresponding regional allocation of housing units to each of the State's Councils of Governments (COGs) for an eight-year period to meet this need. In the Bay Area, the Association for Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is the COG. Once HCD assigns a quantified housing goal to each COG, the COGs then distribute a share of the region's housing need to each city, town and county in the region. This state-mandated housing goal is called the Regional Housing Need Allocation, or RHNA, and is the basis of each jurisdiction's housing element.
Although this is the standard process for establishing RHNAs, there is also a process for local jurisdictions to form a subregion through which participating cities and counties cooperatively allocate their subregion's RHNA units. A subregion cannot change its overall allocation, but can develop a methodology, consistent with state law, to distribute the total allocation amongst the jurisdictions in the subregion. The most common subregion is a single county plus each of the cities in that county, though a subregion can also consist of other combinations of contiguous local governments.
The Cities Association of Santa Clara County (Cities Association) is an association of the 15 cities of the county that meet monthly to collaborate on issues that affect each jurisdiction. In 2015, the Cities Association set up a RHNA Task Force for the purpose of determining whether to pursue the formation of a RHNA subregion prior to the next eight-year RNHA period, 2023-2031. The intent of the RHNA Subregion Task Force is to allow local governments and the County to cooperat...
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