San Mateo County has highest rate of noncompliant housing plans in Bay Area, but opinions differ on why

Every eight years, the state assigns each city a minimum number of housing units it must plan for over that time period — broken down by income category — with annual updates and official certification from the state required.

But a year into the current 2023-31 Regional Housing Needs Allocation cycle, only eight of 21 jurisdictions in the county have received the Department of Housing and Community Development’s official stamp of approval for their housing elements, or growth blueprints. One city, Portola Valley, was recently decertified.

And while cities almost always face delays undergoing such arduous projects, the lack of certifications at this stage indicates that the yearslong groundswell pushing for more housing and, often by extension, state intervention, is in full swing.

“It’s pretty unusual to have this many [cities] uncertified,” Ali Sapirman, South Bay and Peninsula organizer at Housing Action Coalition, said.

San Mateo County’s total state-mandated housing targets, across all income levels, increased by about 4% between the 2007-14 and 2015-23 cycles. But from the last cycle to the current 2023-31 round, there was a nearly 200% bump.

For very low-income units, typically the hardest to build, increases averaged about 35% between 2007-14 and 2015-23, compared to a 393% jump between the previous and current cycle. Pacifica, Brisbane and Woodside received some of the highest jumps in such allotments, with increases ranging from 340% to a whopping 3,400%.

And many Bay Area cities are feeling the heat. Since the last cycle, there have been a slew of new state regulations that help streamline and even override local limitations on density requirements and entitlement processes. And recently popularized tactics like builder’s remedies allow developers to skirt certain local height and density requirements for as long as cities don’t have a compliant housing element.

Such strategies, including stricter HCD oversight, are critical for some jurisdictions that have proven stubborn on housing growth, Sapirman said, adding that several Peninsula cities have overexaggerated the capacity that could realistically fit on certain sites or employed questionable tactics, such as claiming their neighborhoods are historic districts to fend off unwanted development.

More affluent cities, like Atherton and Hillsborough, will also have to alter their approach to low-income housing. Interestingly, when looking at building permits issued, both cities achieved more than 200% of their very low-income housing targets last cycle, but the steep increase in allotments this round will virtually guarantee that more multiunit housing is built. That’s in contrast to their current accessory dwelling unit approach, which Sapirman said tends to help property owners’ individual family members or friends, rather than low-income families with children.

“Cities like Hillsborough and Atherton are over-relying on ADUs. A lot of times these units are owned by homeowners and not necessarily regulated,” they said. “Other cities are building low-income, multifamily units which take a lot longer and they’re a lot more regulated.”

Those other cities include South San Francisco, which happened to rank toward the bottom in its low-income permit approvals during the last cycle, although Sapirman said that’s not necessarily indicative of which cities have done a better job at implementing development-friendly policies.

“South City and Redwood City are actually putting really good programs in place,” they said, citing reasonable impact fees and generally strong tenant protections.

But for many elected city officials, the bureaucratic enforcement arm of the entire housing element process, HCD, is the main reason for certification delays, rather than local governments dragging their feet.

Both Belmont Mayor Julia Mates and Foster City Councilmember Jon Froomin stated HCD’s ambiguous standards are just as much of a culprit for approval delays.

“You make all those corrections, you take all that feedback, and then you get a new response related to everything, including the old stuff,” Froomin said. “Where are the objective standards for housing elements? If there are objective standards, then tell us in advance.”

Foster City’s allocation stipulates a 340% increase in all units compared to the last cycle, which Froomin said is difficult given a limited amount of land and water with which they have to work. In Belmont, which issued more than 100% of the building permits needed to meet its low-income housing goals last cycle, Mates said it sometimes feels like the state is treating bad actors the same as cities that are moving the needle and acting in good faith.

Assemblymember Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, has acted as a go-between for her district’s city governments and HCD, helping the former decipher the oftentimes amorphous nature of the latter’s expectations.

“The experience has been that HCD is very difficult to deal with to say the least,” Papan said, not just of the cities in her district but throughout the state. “Some of the issues that cities were encountering were subjectivity of the criteria, lack of knowledge by HCD of our local area and moving the goal post,” she said. “Something that was accepted one day wasn’t accepted the other.”

While some are pending HCD’s final review, San Mateo County has the highest percentage of noncompliant housing elements out of all nine Bay Area counties, according to the HCD website.