New Housing Laws: Changes and Impacts

The Regional Housing Needs Determination (RHND), a complex, state-mandated housing process is impacted by three new housing laws: AB 2158, AB 2348, and SB 1818. These laws affect the housing need allocation methodology, site selection, and density bonuses as follows:

• AB 2158 allows for increased input from local jurisdictions into the RHND methodology and the regional planning process, including the creation of subregional entities
  
  
• AB 2348 is aimed at providing housing developers with greater certainty in the development process
  
  
• SB 1818 changes the existing density bonus laws to provide developers with more incentives to include affordable housing units in their projects.

To assist cities and counties in implementing these new laws, the Regional Planning Committee of the Association of Bay Area Governments held New Housing Laws: Changes and Impacts on May 18, 2005. This half-day workshop highlighted key changes in the law and offered diverse viewpoints about the anticipated effects of these laws. Discussion focused on issues related to implementation by local governments and the impact on affordable housing planning and production.

Panelist materials from the May 18th forum:

• Mark Lovington (473K PDF) - The final report of the Housing Element Working Group. HCD brought a group of stakeholders together to form the Working Group in order to develop consensus about ways to reform the Housing Element process.
  
  
• Barbara Kautz (369K PDF) - Ms. Kautz's presentation provides an overview of the latest changes to the density bonus law as a result of SB 1818. It summarizes the major elements of the law and tries to answer many frequently asked questions about how local jurisdictions should implement the law.
  
  
• Joe Carreras (485K PDF) - Mr. Carreras' slides provide an overview of SCAG's performance during the last RHNA period, an analysis of the expected impacts of the changes to the Housing Element process from AB 2158 and AB 2348, and describes SCAG's subregional allocation process.
  
  

Legislation and Government Code:

• AB 2158 - Chaptered (49K PDF)



• AB 2348 - Chaptered (78K PDF)



• SB 1818 - Chaptered (32K PDF)



• California Government Code §65580-65589.8 (120K PDF)



• California Government Code §65915-65918 (36K PDF)

You will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the PDF documents.