Four cities in San Diego County have launched a last-ditch effort to lower the number of new housing units they are expected to build over the next eight years through a controversial state-mandated program.
If the current numbers hold up, two of those cities, Coronado and Solana Beach, fear they’ll be forced to rezone neighborhoods to make room for high-density developments.
The other two cities, Lemon Grove and Imperial Beach, argue that the current housing allocation numbers perpetuate inequality by requiring cities that already have the highest concentration of low-income housing to build even more.
The controversial state program is officially known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, or RHNA. It started in the 1960s to require cities to plan to meet the housing needs of residents. Every eight years, state officials come up with the number of housing units needed to keep up with population trends and ask regional authorities to distribute that number among individual cities.