ON THE COVER
The Eureka City Council recently approved the multi-use Eureka Regional Transit and Housing Center (EaRTH Center) proposed to be built on the parking lots of Third and H Streets in Old Town Eureka. City of Eureka Facebook
Parallel Crises
Humboldt desperately needs housing but how it’s built may determine the county’s role in combating climate change By Elaine Weinreb
newsroom@northcoastjournal.com
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f you’ve tried to find housing in the last few years, you know what a difficult task it is. Humboldt County property managers say local rental vacancy rates run between 0 and 3 percent — extreme, even in California, which has a roughly 4-percent vacancy rate statewide. Buying a home in Humboldt is also cost-prohibitive for most people, with the median price for a single-family home coming in at $451,000, according to statistics published by the California Association of Realtors. Homes for sale in Humboldt also only stay on the market for an average of 12 days before they are snapped up, another indication of a significant housing shortage. The reasons are multiple and include climate and wildfire refugees, as well people fleeing the city since COVID-19 enabled people to work from home. But the underlying issue is that demand for housing has outstripped the supply. The obvious answer is to build more housing, but that is a lot harder and more complicated than it seems.
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“California housing has become the most expensive in the nation,” states the preamble to Senate Bill 9, the Affordable Housing Act. “The excessive cost of the state’s housing supply is partially caused by activities and policies of many local governments that limit the approval of housing, increase the cost of land for housing, and require that high fees and exactions be paid by producers of housing.” The state has stepped in with both sticks and carrots to get communities to increase their housing stocks. One such law is Senate Bill 9, which basically does away with single-family zoning. Under S.B. 9, property owners need only get a simple ministerial building permit to add a second home on their lot. Each of these two homes can also have an additional “granny flat” or be divided into duplexes, resulting in four housing units on a lot zoned for single-family use. Some California cities have resisted what they believe to be an illegal incursion into local control and are filing suit against the state for violating the Califor-
NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, April 14, 2022 • northcoastjournal.com
nia Constitution’s legal designation for charter cities. Several cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, meanwhile, have reported that almost no landowners are taking advantage of these loosened restrictions. Here in Humboldt, County Planning Director John Ford reported that his department had seen an “uptick” in building permits for accessory dwelling units but was not specific as to the numbers. Likewise, Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery expects there will be an increase in people wanting to increase the housing density on their properties because it will increase their value. City and county planners are familiar with the state’s Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA, pronounced ree-na). In 2019, the California Department of Housing and Community Development presented each individual county with a requirement to build a certain number of new housing units by 2027. While the state cannot require the county or city to actually construct or pay for the units, it establishes that local governments
cannot prohibit such building through restrictive zoning codes, and requires they change their codes, if necessary. These code changes are supposed to be reflected in the Housing Element of the county or city’s General Plan. It is not easy to determine how the state comes up with RHNA numbers for each locality, but, according to Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG) Senior Planner Oona Smith, it is a formula based on census population data and on the number of jobs a region offers. The state wants 3,390 new housing units built in Humboldt by 2027. Of these, 829 must be affordable for very low-income households, 532 for low income, 613 for moderate income and the rest for above average income households. The figures are further broken down by HCAOG into allocations for the seven incorporated cities and the unincorporated areas of the county. These RHNA numbers are supposed to be reflected in the Housing Element of the city or county’s General Plan,
