The State of California has declared a ‘housing supply crisis’ and holds all local communities accountable for accommodating an assigned housing target, regardless of available land capacity. Your participation is essential to creating a plan that represents Fairfax’s core values while meeting regional and state-mandated housing goals.
The penalties for non-compliance have increased in scope and severity over the past few legislative cycles, and they currently include: Limited access to state funding, including transportation funding for local roadway maintenance and capital improvement projects. Court imposed fines of up to $600,000 per month. The statute also allows the state to collect these fines … Continued
Under current state law, cities are not required to build housing units. Housing construction is still driven by the private market. Instead, a city is required to ensure that sufficient lands are available to accommodate all assigned units ‘by right.’ To do so, cities must determine whether enough land is available to accommodate its RHNA … Continued
The Town’s appeal was officially denied and the City’s RHNA number remains at 490 housing units. The Town of Fairfax submitted an appeal to ABAG, and the Town’s hearing in front of ABAG Administrative Committee was reviewed. The Administrative Committee’s Preliminary Action was to deny the appeal. The final RHNA number was released in December … Continued
RHNA stands for Regional Housing Needs Allocation. For the Bay Area, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) was tasked with allocating a number of units to each city, town, or county according to their criteria. The Town of Fairfax was allocated 490 units according to ABAG. Visit the Project Documents page for more information.
The California Departments of Finance (DOF) as well as the Housing and Community Development (HCD) forecasts the need for housing within each region based on population projections. This process is called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). The regional planning agency for each region then must distribute the projected housing among its member local jurisdictions. … Continued
The number of housing units each city and county must plan for is determined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (State HCD) every eight years, referred to as housing ‘cycles.’ In the upcoming 6th cycle, Fairfax is currently expected to plan for a minimum of 490 housing units.
The need for every city and county in California to plan for their ‘fair share’ of the projected housing need is based in Housing Element Law, enacted in 1969 (Government Code Section 65583). The concept behind the law is that, in order for the private development market to adequately address housing demand, local governments must … Continued
A state-mandated policy document that identifies where and how cities will accommodate existing and projected future housing needs for people of all income groups. As one of 7 elements of the Fairfax General Plan, it is required to be updated every eight years.
